Mwotlap

The Mwotlap are the Melanesian islanders of the Banks Islands in northern Vanuatu, above all on Mota Lava and its companion islet Ra. Their ancestors were Austronesian voyagers of the Lapita culture, who settled the group around the twelfth century BCE and left obsidian tools and characteristic pottery behind.

Their Oceanic language, also called Mwotlap, belongs to the Torres-Banks linkage, while the closely related Volow speech once used in eastern Mota Lava has since died out. Europeans first sighted the island during the Spanish voyage of Pedro Fernández de Quirós in April 1606, when it was charted as Lágrimas de San Pedro.