Kanak people
The earliest history of Europeans arriving on these islands is when Captain Cook of the United Kingdom landed in these islands in 1775 at a time when there were reportedly 70,000 Kanaks living in the archipelago. Cook gave the name "New Caledonia" to these islands, after Caledonia, his Scottish highlands.
Biodiversity of New Caledonia
Some New Caledonia plant communities are true living fossils. Flora contains many groups of plants that appear to be remnants of the Gondwanan flora in late Cretaceous - early Tertiary that once covered large parts of Australasia. The flora is exceedingly diverse and includes a level of endemism, per square kilometre, seen almost nowhere else on Earth. Three quarters of native plant species on New Caledonia are endemic, but a quarter of those are "at risk" of decline or extinction.
There are besides 454 species of marine macrophytes.