After an astonishingly rapid maritime expansion that saw expert Polynesian seafarers colonize the remote islands of West Polynesia, their eastward exploration came to an inexplicable halt around 900 BCE. For nearly two thousand years, a period now known as "The Long Pause," these master navigators made no new long-distance voyages into the unpopulated regions of the central and eastern Pacific. Then, as suddenly as it began, the moratorium on exploration ended around 1000 CE with a new burst of activity that led to the settlement of Hawaii, Rapa Nui, and New Zealand. What prompted history's greatest mariners to cease their defining cultural practice for so long is still not known today.