[3][4][5] However, with more testing and refined samples, including chronologically tracing settlements in Society Islands and the Marquesas, two archipelagoes which have long been considered to be the immediate source regions for the first Polynesian voyagers to Hawaii, it has been concluded that the settlement of the Hawaiian Islands took place around 1219 to 1266 AD,[6] with the paleo-environmental evidence of agriculture indicating the Ancient Hawaiian population to have peaked around 1450 AD around 140,000 to 200,000.
[8] Subsequent director of the Bishop Museum, Te Rangi Hiroa postulated though that Menehune may have arrived as early as 450 AD.
By the 1990s with the advances in radiocarbon dating taking place and more samples tracking the spread across the Polynesian islands, including New Zealand archaeologists found significant support for a late colonization of the eastern Polynesian islands, suggesting Hawai'i, like New Zealand was colonized around 1000-1200 AD.
[15] Equally important to the refinements in laboratory methods was the realization by archaeologists that they needed to pay close attention to the kinds of samples they submitted for dating.
The problem, of course, was that such samples in many cases included old growth timber, which had an “in built” age that was potentially much older than the time at which the wood was actually burnt in the hearth or oven.
[1][2] By 2010 some of the latest researchers using high-precision radiocarbon dating and more reliable samples established that the period of eastern and northern Polynesian colonization took, in a shorter time frame and much later than.
Note from the perspective of Hawaiian settlement are the colonization dates for the Society Islands and the Marquesas, as these two archipelagoes have long been considered to be the immediate source regions for the first Polynesian voyagers to Hawai‘i.
"[6] Using plant fossils, charcoal deposit particulates and organic samples and high-precision radiocarbon dating there has been evidence of influences from humans sometimes determined to be around 1000 AD in Kaua'i.