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It's difficult to be sure, since no humans were anywhere nearby when it happened, but it was probably about 150,000 years ago.

We believe that there is a stationary "hot spot" in the Earth's mantle, and that the Pacific tectonic plate has been sliding to the northwest. So the western islands like Niihau and Kauai formed long ago, and become dormant and then extinct as the plate moved; then the "hot spot" formed the island of Oahu, and then Maui and Molokai as the plate continued to move. These volcanoes are long dormant. The big island of Hawaii is currently over (or just moving off of) the hot spot, because that volcano is still active.

There's another submerged volcano southeast of Hawaii which is still erupting, and growing another island; it'll probably be another 10,000 years before that island erupts from the sea.

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11y ago

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