Manus

The Manus are the seafaring people of the Admiralty or Manus Islands, a rainforested chain north of New Guinea of which volcanic Manus is the largest. Human settlement goes back roughly forty thousand years, and islanders cultivated taro and traded obsidian long before the Lapita culture reached the islands around three and a half thousand years ago.

The Manus built villages on stilts over the sea and spoke closely related Oceanic languages forming the Manus subgroup, the best known being Titan. Spanish ships under Álvaro de Saavedra first sighted the islands in 1528 and met canoe parties armed with bows; Willem Schouten followed in 1616, and Philip Carteret named the Admiralty Islands in 1767.