Map of Melanesia, showing its location within OceaniaMelanesia is one of three major cultural areas of thePacific Ocean islands, along withMicronesia andPolynesia.Outline of sovereign (orange) and dependent islands (yellow)
The nameMelanesia (in French,Mélanésie) was first used in 1832 by French navigatorJules Dumont d'Urville: he coined the termsMelanesia andMicronesia to go alongside the pre-existingPolynesia to designate what he viewed as the three mainethnic and geographical regions forming the Pacific.
The concept among Europeans ofMelanesia as a distinct region evolved gradually over time as their expeditions mapped and explored the Pacific. Early European explorers noted the physical differences among groups of Pacific Islanders. In 1756,Charles de Brosses theorized that there was an "old black race" in the Pacific who had been conquered or defeated by the peoples of what is now calledPolynesia, whom he distinguished as having lighter skin.[4]: 189–190 In the first half of the nineteenth century,Jean-Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent andJules Dumont d'Urville characterizedMelanesians as a distinct racial group.[5][6]: 165
Over time, however, Europeans increasingly viewed Melanesians as a distinct cultural, rather than racial, grouping. Scholars and other commentators disagreed on the boundaries of Melanesia, descriptions of which were therefore somewhat fluid. In the nineteenth century,Robert Henry Codrington, a British missionary, produced a series ofmonographs on "the Melanesians", based on his long-time residence in the region. In his published works on Melanesia, includingThe Melanesian Languages (1885) andThe Melanesians: Studies in Their Anthropology and Folk-lore (1891), Codrington defined Melanesia as including Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, and Fiji. He reasoned that the islands of New Guinea should not be included because only some of its people were Melanesians. Also, like Bory de Saint-Vincent, he excluded Australia from Melanesia.[7]: 528 It was in these works that Codrington introduced the Melanesian cultural concept ofmana to the West.[8]
Uncertainty about the best way to delineate and define the region continues to this day. The scholarly consensus now includes New Guinea within Melanesia.Ann Chowning wrote in her 1977 textbook on Melanesia that there is no general agreement even amonganthropologists about the geographical boundaries of Melanesia. Many apply the term only to the smaller islands, excluding New Guinea; Fiji has frequently been treated as an anomalous border region or even assigned wholly to Polynesia; and the people of the Torres Straits Islands are often simply classified as Australian aborigines.[9]: 1
In 1998, Paul Sillitoe wrote: "It is not easy to define precisely, on geographical, cultural, biological, or any other grounds, where Melanesia ends and the neighbouring regions ... begins".[10]: 1 He ultimately concludes that the region is a historical category which evolved in the nineteenth century from the discoveries made in the Pacific and has been legitimated by use and further research in the region. It covers populations that have a certain linguistic, biological and cultural affinity – a certain ill-defined sameness, which shades off at its margins into difference.[10]: 1
Both Sillitoe and Chowning include the island of New Guinea in the definition of Melanesia, and both exclude Australia. Most of the peoples of Melanesia live either in politically independent countries or in regions that currently have active independence movements, such as inWestern New Guinea (Indonesia) andNew Caledonia (France). Some have recently embraced the term "Melanesia" as a source of identity and empowerment. Stephanie Lawson writes that despite "a number of scholars finding the term problematic due to its historical associations with European exploration and colonisation, as well as the racism embedded in these", the term "has acquired a positive meaning and relevance for many of the people to whom it applies",[11]: 1 and has "moved from a term of denigration to one of affirmation, providing a positive basis for contemporary subregional identity as well as a formal organisation".[11]: 14 Additionally, while the terms "Polynesia" and "Micronesia" refer to the geographic characteristics of the islands, "Melanesia" specifically refers to the color of the inhabitants as the "black race of Oceania.[11]: 4 The authorBernard Narokobi has written that the concept of the "Melanesian Way" as a distinct cultural force could give the people of the region a sense of empowerment. This concept has in fact been used as a force ingeopolitics. For instance, when the countries ofVanuatu,Solomon Islands,Papua New Guinea, andFiji reached a regionalpreferential trade agreement, they named it theMelanesian Spearhead Group.
The people of Melanesia have a distinctive ancestry. According to theSouthern Dispersal theory, hominid populations fromAfrica dispersed along the southern edge ofAsia some 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. For some, the endpoint of this ancient migration was the ancient continent ofSahul, a single landmass comprising both the areas that are nowAustralia andNew Guinea. At that time, they were united by a land bridge, because sea levels were lower than in the present day. The first migration into Sahul was over 40,000 years ago. Some migrants settled in the part that is now New Guinea, while others continued south and became theaboriginal inhabitants of Australia.
Another wave ofAustronesian migrants, originating ultimately fromTaiwan, arrived in Melanesia much later, probably between 4000 and 3000 BC. They settled mostly along the north coast of New Guinea and on the islands to its north and east.[13][14] When they arrived, they came into contact with the much more ancient indigenous Papuan-speaking peoples.
Some late-20th-century scholars developed a theory, known as the "Polynesian theory", that there then followed a long period of interaction between these newcomers and the pre-existing inhabitants that led to many complex genetic, linguistic, and cultural mixing and other changes among the descendants of all the groups.[15] This theory was later called into question, however, by the findings of agenetic study published byTemple University in 2008. That study found that neither Polynesians norMicronesians have much genetic relation to Melanesians. The study's results suggest that, after ancestors of the Polynesians, having developed sailing outrigger canoes, migrated out of East Asia, they moved quickly through the Melanesian area, mostly without settling there, and instead continued on to areas east of Melanesia, finally settling in those areas.
The genetic evidence suggests that they left few descendants in Melanesia, and therefore probably "only intermixed to a very modest degree with the indigenous populations there". The study did find a small Austronesian genetic signature (below 20%) in some of the Melanesian groups who speakAustronesian languages, but found no such signature at all inPapuan-speaking groups.[13][16]
Most of the languages of Melanesia are members of theAustronesian language family or one of the numerousPapuan languages. The term "Papuan languages" refers to their geographical location rather than implying that they are linguistically related. In fact they comprise many separate language families. By one count, there are 1,319 languages in Melanesia, scattered across a small amount of land. On average, there is one language for every 716 square kilometers on the island. This is by far the densest collection of distinct languages on Earth, almost three times as dense as in Nigeria, a country famous for having a very large number of languages in a very compact area.[17]
In addition to the many indigenous Melanesian languages,pidgins andcreole languages have developed from trade and cultural interaction within the area and with the wider world. Most notable among these areTok Pisin andHiri Motu in Papua New Guinea. They are now both considered distinct creole languages. Use of Tok Pisin is growing. It is sometimes learned as a first language, above all by multi-cultural families. Examples of other Melanesian creoles areUnserdeutsch,Solomon Islands Pijin,Bislama, andPapuan Malay.
A distinction is often made between the island ofNew Guinea and what is known asIsland Melanesia, which consists of "the chain of archipelagos, islands, atolls, and reefs forming the outer bounds of the sheltered oval-shaped coral sea".[18]: 5 This includes theLouisiade Archipelago (a part ofPapua New Guinea), theBismarck Archipelago (a part of Papua New Guinea andSolomon Islands), and theSanta Cruz Islands (a part of the country called Solomon Islands). The country of Vanuatu is composed of the New Hebrides island chain (and in the past 'New Hebrides' has also been the name of the political unit located on the islands).New Caledonia is composed ofone large island and several smaller chains, including theLoyalty Islands. The nation ofFiji is composed of two main islands,Viti Levu andVanua Levu, and smaller islands, including theLau Islands.
The names of islands in Melanesia can be confusing: they have both indigenous and European names. National boundaries sometimes cut across archipelagos. The names of the political units in the region have changed over time, and sometimes have included geographical terms. For example, the island ofMakira was once known as San Cristobal, the name given to it by Spanish explorers. It is in the country Solomon Islands, which is a nation-state and not a contiguous archipelago. The border of Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands separates the island of Bougainville from the nearby islands of Choiseul, although Bougainville is geographically part of the chain of islands that includes Choiseul and much of the Solomons.
In addition to the islands mentioned above, there are many smaller islands and atolls in Melanesia. These include:
Norfolk Island, listed above, hasarchaeological evidence of East Polynesian rather than Melanesian settlement.Rotuma inFiji has strong affinities culturally andethnologically to Polynesia.
Several Melanesian states are members of intergovernmental and regional organizations. Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu are members of theCommonwealth of Nations and are also members of theMelanesian Spearhead Group.
The frequent occurrence of blond hair among these peoples is due to a specific random mutation, different from the mutation that led to blond hair in peoples indigenous to northern regions of the globe. This is evidence that the genotype and phenotype for blond hair arose at least twice in human history.[21]
^Keesing, Roger M.; Kahn, Miriam (21 April 2023)."Melanesian culture".Encyclopædia Britannica.Archived from the original on 20 December 2023. Retrieved23 April 2023.[...] Pacific Islands known as Melanesia. From northwest to southeast, the islands form an arc that begins with New Guinea (the western half of which is called Papua and is part of Indonesia and the eastern half of which comprises the independent country of Papua New Guinea) and continues through the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu (formerly New Hebrides), New Caledonia, Fiji, and numerous smaller islands.
^Matthews, P. H. (2014).Melanesia. Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-967512-8.Archived from the original on 1 September 2024. Retrieved23 April 2023.Group of islands in the south-west Pacific running from New Guinea in the west to Fiji in the east.
^Bedford, Stuart (2014). "Melanesia". In C. Renfrew; P. Bahn (eds.).The Cambridge World Prehistory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 622–631.doi:10.1017/CHO9781139017831.043.ISBN978-1-139-01783-1.Melanesia, home to some 7 million people, covers a vast geographic region of the Southwest Pacific, comprising more than ten thousand islands, ranging from New Guinea, the world's second largest at some 785,753 km², to a myriad of high volcanic islands through to small low atolls, stretching for thousands of kilometres across the Pacific Ocean.
^Tcherkezoff, Serge (2003). "A Long and Unfortunate Voyage Toward the Invention of the Melanesia-Polynesia Distinction 1595–1832".Journal of Pacific History.38 (2):175–196.doi:10.1080/0022334032000120521.S2CID219625326.
^Landweer, M. Lynn; Unseth, Peter (2012). "An introduction to language use in Melanesia".International Journal of the Sociology of Language (214):1–3.doi:10.1515/ijsl-2012-0017.S2CID146952244.
^Moore, Clive (2003).New Guinea: Crossing Boundaries and History. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Ancient humans, dubbed 'Denisovans', interbred with usBBC News online (2010-12-22) report (with video) on study that shows that Denisovans interbred with the ancestors of the present-day people of the Melanesian region north and north-east of Australia. Melanesian DNA comprises between 4% and 6% Denisovan DNA.
Melanesia - photographs, recordings, and digital objects drawn primarily from the Tuzin Archive for Melanesian Anthropology at the UC San Diego Library.
