![]() ![]() During his third voyage, Captain James Cook visited the island on Christmas Eve (24 December) 1777 and the island was put on a map in 1781 as île des Tortues (Turtles Island) by Tobias Conrad Lotter in Augsburg. This discovery was referred by a contemporary, the Portuguese António Galvão, governor of Ternate, in his book Tratado dos Descubrimientos of 1563. The atoll was then discovered by Europeans with the Spanish expedition of Hernando de Grijalva in 1537, that charted it as Acea. ![]() Īrchaeological sites on the island are concentrated along the east (windward) side of the island and known sites represent a series of habitation sites, marae, and supporting structures such as canoe storage sheds and navigational aids. As such, some researchers have suggested that Kiritimati was used intermittently (likely by people from Tabuaeran to the north) as a place to gather resources such as birds and turtles in a similar fashion to the ethnographically documented use of the five central atolls of the Caroline Islands. Stratigraphic layers excavated in fire pits show alternating bands of charcoal indicating heavy use and local soil indicating a lack of use. Permanent human settlement on Kiritimati likely never occurred. Radiometric dating from sites on the island place the period of human use between 12 CE. Kiritimati was initially inhabited by Polynesian people. The entire island is a Wildlife Sanctuary access to five particularly sensitive areas is restricted. During these tests, the island was not evacuated, exposing the i-Kiribati residents and the British, New Zealand, and Fijian servicemen to nuclear radiation. Nuclear tests were conducted on and around Kiritimati by the United Kingdom in the late 1950s, and by the United States in 1962. Although it lies 2,460 km (1,530 mi) east of the 180th meridian, the Republic of Kiribati realigned the International Date Line in 1995, placing Kiritimati to the west of the dateline. Kiritimati is in the world's farthest forward time zone, UTC+14, and is therefore one of the first inhabited places on Earth to experience New Year's Day. Kiritimati comprises over 70% of the total land area of Kiribati, a country encompassing 33 Pacific atolls and islands. The atoll is about 150 km (93 mi) in perimeter, while the lagoon shoreline extends for over 48 km (30 mi). Kiritimati has the greatest land area of any atoll in the world, about 388 square kilometres (150 square miles) its lagoon is roughly the same size. ![]() The name is derived from the English word "Christmas" written in Gilbertese according to its phonology, in which the combination ti is pronounced s, giving. Kiritimati (also known as Christmas Island) is a Pacific Ocean atoll in the northern Line Islands. ![]()
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