The shifting sand dunes
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The dunes are clearly visible from the main highway just outside Sigatoka. |
Near where the Sigatoka River meets the sea on South-Eastern Viti Levu stretches an expanse of barren wind-blown sand that has been the subject of myth and superstition for centuries.
The dunes are clearly visible from the main highway just outside Sigatoka.
All you need to do is park the car at the foot of the dunes and a short, steep ascent up the sands is rewarded with a panoramic view of rolling surf, the mouth of Sigatoka River and a desert-like vista of breathtaking beauty.
The Sigatoka sand dunes are constantly being reformed by wind and tide on the side nearest the sea and have revealed archaeological treasures that have done so much to establish Fiji's earliest human history.
Somewhere around 1,000 BC, migrants believed to be from Vanuatu arrived. Called the Lapita people, evidence of their early settlement has been found in the Sigatoka sand dunes and on Yanuca Island near the present site of The Fijian Hotel.
However, their exact origins and eventual fate are lost in time.
It has been suggested that Fiji's early settlers played a major role in the formation of the sand dunes through deforestation of the Sigatoka River's catchment.
These first settlers may have come and gone unnoticed, but for the ancient shards of pottery that has survived centuries in the sand and triggered modern scientific interest in the area.
There was a second epoch of settlement and it too remains largely unexplained.
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