Ancient Hawaii is the period of Hawaiian human history preceding the unification in 1810 of the Kingdom of Hawaii by Kamehameha the Great. Researchers had based their estimates of first settlement by Polynesian long-distance navigators sometime between 300 and 800 CE. But in 2010, a study was published based on radiocarbon dating of more reliable samples and it suggests that the islands were settled much later, within a short timeframe, in ~1219–1266CE.