It is believed that Papuan speaking settlers began to arrive around 30,000 BC.
Austronesian speakers arrived circa 4,000 BC also bringing cultural elements such as the outrigger canoe.
It is between 1,200 and 800 BC that the ancestors of the Polynesians, the Lapita people, arrived from the Bismarck Archipelago with their characteristic ceramics.
The first European to discover the islands was the Spanish navigator Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira, coming from Peru in 1568.

The evils of the labor trade prompted the United Kingdom to declare a protectorate over the southern Solomons in 1893. This was the basis of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate. In 1898 and 1899, more outlying islands were added to the protectorate; in 1900 the remainder of the archipelago, an area previously under German jurisdiction, was transferred to British administration apart from the islands of Buka and Bougainville which remained under German administration as part of German New Guinea (until they were occupied by Australia in 1914, after the commencement of World War I).

Gerry Meijer, during his year as District Governor, pressed for the chartering of the Solomon's first Rotary Club.
In touch with Honiara entrepreneur and past Rotarian of the Rotary Club of Goroka, Papua New Guinea, Mr. Ken Ferris, it was not long before the Rotary Club of Aspley found itself meeting Gerry Meijer to support the chartering of the Rotary Club of Honiara. The close association of these two clubs has continued ever since.

The earliest ancestor of Rotary in the Solomons was the Rotary Club of Brisbane Australia, the ancestor in fact, of all clubs in this district.

 

The Rotary Club of Aspley (a northern suburb of Brisbane) was the sponsoring club for Honiara.

Rotary first came to Guadalcanal, the main island of the Solomons, before Honiara in turn spawned the Rotary Club of Gizo in 1999.

In the year 2000 Honiara also spawned the Rotary Club of Auki but there was considerable ethnic tensions on the island around that time, and within a short period, the Auki clubs was forced to close.

 

At this point in time therefore, there are two clubs in the Solomon Islands