Isle of Pines (island)

Melanesian people lived on the island for over 2000 years before the island was first visited by Europeans. Captain James Cook in 1774 saw the island and renamed it on his second voyage to New Zealand. Cook gave the island its name after seeing the tall native pines (Araucaria columnaris). He never disembarked onto the island, but as he saw signs of inhabitance (smoke) assumed it was inhabited. In the 1840s, Protestant and Catholic missionaries arrived, along with merchants seeking sandalwood. The French took possession of the island in 1853 at which time the native Kunies converted to the Catholic religion. In 1872, the island became a French penal colony, home to 3,000 political deportees from the Paris Commune. == Sights ==

The ruins of a penal colony can be seen in the village of Ouro in the west of the island. The water tower of Ouro which was built by prisoners in 1874/75 and renovated in 2005 is still used. At the cemetery Cimetière des Déportés near Ouro is a pyramid-shaped memorial and the graves of 300 deportees who died between 1872 and 1880. == Archaeology ==

Scattered across the central plateau of the island lie more than 300 poorly understood mounds, some of which have been excavated and found to have concrete cores. No human remains or man-made objects have been found in the mounds; Much as with the American mima mounds, there is no consensus on what these mounds are, and proposed explanations have included Paleolithic, Neolithic or later human construction, natural formations, or prehistoric birds’ nests, specifically of the extinct species Sylviornis neocaledoniae. ==Notable people==

• Guillaume Vama, Kanak insurrectionist and agroforestry entrepreneur ==References==