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.
For a start, arriving at and inhabiting these isolated islands over three millennia ago was a big achievement for the Lapita people, the first ones that are believed to have inhabited the island. The Lapita people were a pre-historic culture predating the Polynesians who later populated the islands from Hawaii to Easter Island - clearly showing navigational skills. The ancient capital of Tonga was the city of Mu’a, the name of which may remind us of the lost continent of Mu (identified with Atlantis), which today is considered by conventional archaeology to be a mythological place.