Scattered over 700,000 square kilometres in the southern Pacific Ocean are the Tonga islands. On one of the 176 islands that make up Tonga, there stands one of the strangest megalithic monuments in the Pacific, a trilithon called Ha’amonga ‘a Maui (A carrying stick/burden of Maui).
The kingdom of Tonga is a Polynesian sovereign state and archipelago comprising nearly two hundred islands with around a quarter of them inhabited. The date that the first occupation of the islands took place is ambiguous - as is the dating of most of the archaeological sites in the region. However, the mainstream opinion suggests the first settlers of the islands arrived in around 1500 BC with the oldest occupied site found on the island of Tongatapu, where the unusual megalithic monument exists.