Melanesia

Melanesia 

Melanesia is a subregion of Oceania (and occasionally Australasia) extending from New Guinea island in the southwestern Pacific Ocean to the Arafura Sea, and eastward to Fiji.

The region includes the four countries of Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea.

Besides these independent countries, Melanesia also includes:

- New Caledonia, a special collectivity of France

- Western New Guinea Region of Indonesia, within Papua Province and West Papua Province on western New Guinea island and adjacent small islands.

The name Melanesia was first used by Jules Dumont d'Urville in 1832 to denote an ethnic and geographical grouping of islands whose inhabitants he thought were distinct from those of Micronesia and Polynesia.

History

The people of Melanesia have a distinctive ancestry. Along with the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia, they are believed to derive from the Proto-Australoids who emigrated from Africa between 5,000 and 100,000 years ago and dispersed along the southern edge of Asia, giving rise to Australoid populations in various places, including South India, Sri Lanka, the Andaman Islands, the Philippines, and others. The limit of this ancient migration was Sahul, the continent formed when Australia and New Guinea were united by a land bridge as a result of low sea levels. The first migration into Sahul came over 40,000 years ago. A further expansion into the eastern islands of Melanesia came much later, probably between 4000 B.C. and 3000 B.C.

Particularly along the north coast of New Guinea and in the islands north and east of New Guinea, the Austronesian people, who had migrated into the area somewhat more than 3,000 years ago, came into contact with these preexisting populations of Papuan-speaking peoples. In the late 20th century, some scholars theorized a long period of interaction, which resulted in many complex changes in genetics, languages, and culture among the peoples. This Polynesian theory, however, is contradicted by the findings of a genetic study published by Temple University in 2008. It found that neither Polynesians nor Micronesians have much genetic relation to Melanesians. It appeared that, having developed their sailing outrigger canoes, the ancestors of the Polynesians migrated from East Asia, moved through the Melanesian area quickly on their way, and kept going to eastern areas, where they settled. They left little genetic evidence in Melanesia.