Solomon Islands - A village, Simbo - A charming photographic blending of traditional huts, people, and forest foliage - Circa 1901 - Real Photo Stereoscope Card - Rose's Stereoscopic Views Photograph #336912 Solomon Islands - Solomon Islands is a sovereign state consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania lying to the east of Papua New Guinea and northwest of Vanuatu and covering a land area of 28,400 square kilometres (11,000 sq mi). - The country's capital, Honiara, is located on the island of Guadalcanal. The country takes its name from the Solomon Islands archipelago, which is a collection of Melanesian islands that also includes the North Solomon Islands (part of Papua New Guinea), but excludes outlying islands, such as Rennell and Bellona, and the Santa Cruz Islands. - In 1568, the Spanish navigator Álvaro de Mendaña was the first European to visit the Solomon Islands archipelago, naming it Islas Salomón ("Solomon Islands") after the wealthy biblical King Solomon. It is said that they were given this name in the mistaken assumption that they contained great riches, and he believed them to be the Bible-mentioned city of Ophir. - It is believed that Papuan-speaking settlers began to arrive around 30,000 BC. Austronesian speakers arrived c. 4000 BC also bringing cultural elements such as the outrigger canoe. - Between 1200 and 800 BC the ancestors of the Polynesians, the Lapita people, arrived from the Bismarck Archipelago with their characteristic ceramics. - The first European to visit the islands was the Spanish navigator Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira, coming from Peru in 1568. - Some of the earliest and most regular foreign visitors to the islands were whaling vessels from Britain, the United States and Australia. - They came for food, wood and water from late in the 18th century and, later, took aboard islanders to serve as crewmen on their ships. - Relations between the islanders and visiting seamen was not always good and sometimes there was violence and bloodshed. - Missionaries began visiting the Solomons in the mid-19th century. They made little progress at first, because "blackbirding" (the often brutal recruitment or kidnapping of labourers for the sugar plantations in Queensland and Fiji) led to a series of reprisals and massacres. - The evils of the slave trade prompted the United Kingdom to declare a protectorate over the southern Solomons in June 1893. (source - Wikipedia)