224-636: Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea , is a country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and its offshore islands in Melanesia (a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean north of Australia ). It shares its only land border with Indonesia to the west and its other close neighbours are Australia to the south and the Solomon Islands to
448-430: A Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 8.84/10, ranking it 17th globally out of 172 countries. Mangrove swamps stretch along the coast, and in the inland it is inhabited by nipa palm (Nypa fruticans), and deeper in the inland the sago palm tree inhabits areas in the valleys of larger rivers. Trees such as oaks, red cedars, pines, and beeches are becoming predominant in the uplands above 3,300 feet. Papua New Guinea
672-708: A land bridge , particularly during ice ages when sea levels were lower than at present. As the Indo-Australian Plate (which includes landmasses of India , Australia, and the Indian Ocean floor in between) drifts north, it collides with the Eurasian Plate . The collision of the two plates pushed up the Himalayas , the Indonesian islands, and New Guinea's Central Range . The Central Range is much younger and higher than
896-471: A landslide hit the village of Kaokalam in Enga Province , about 600 kilometers (372 miles) northwest of the capital, Port Moresby , at about 3 a.m. local time. The landslide buried more than 2000 people alive, caused major destruction to buildings, and food gardens and caused major impact on the economic lifeline of the country. The casualty figure surpasses the 2006 Southern Leyte mudslide tragedy where
1120-780: A Spanish language segment of Oceania, and included the Desventuradas Islands, Easter Island, the Galápagos Islands, Guadalupe Island, the Juan Fernández Islands, the Revillagigedo Islands and Salas y Gómez. Cocos Island and Malpelo Island were not explicitly referenced in the book, despite being areas which would fall within this range. All other islands associated with Latin American countries were excluded, as they are continental in nature, unlike Guadalupe Island and
1344-689: A U.S. state in 1947, and as such was part of the original UN definition of Oceania. The island states of Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan, all located within the bounds of the Pacific or associated marginal seas, are excluded from the UN definition. The states of Hong Kong and Malaysia , located in both mainland Asia and marginal seas of the Pacific, are also excluded, as are Brunei , East Timor and Indonesian New Guinea/Western New Guinea . The CIA World Factbook also categorizes Oceania as one of
1568-676: A cachet. The monarch is represented by the Governor-General of Papua New Guinea , currently Bob Dadae . Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands are unusual among Commonwealth realms in that governors-general are appointed by the Sovereign, the Head of State, upon nomination by the National Parliament, which nomination the Head of State is not obliged to accept. The Prime Minister heads the cabinet , which consists of 31 members of Parliament from
1792-440: A chain of earthquakes hit Hela Province , causing widespread landslides and the deaths of 200 people. Various nations from Oceania and Southeast Asia immediately sent aid to the country. Another severe earthquake occurred on 11 September 2022, killing seven people and causing damaging shaking in some of the country's largest cities, such as Lae and Madang , it was also felt in the capital Port Moresby . On May 24, 2024,
2016-418: A chief Hotu Matuꞌa discovered the island in one or two large canoes with his wife and extended family. They are believed to have been Polynesian . Around 1200, Tahitian explorers discovered and began settling the area. This date range is based on glottochronological calculations and on three radiocarbon dates from charcoal that appears to have been produced during forest clearance activities. Moreover,
2240-509: A colony named German New Guinea , while the southern part of the country became a British protectorate . In 1888, the British protectorate, as well as some adjacent islands, were annexed by Britain as British New Guinea. In 1902, Papua was effectively transferred to the authority of the new British dominion of Australia . With the passage of the Papua Act 1905, the area was officially renamed
2464-591: A continent in the book, but did note that it was one of the six major divisions of the world. The Oxford Handbook of World History (2011) describes the areas encompassed in Oceania as being "afterthoughts in world history texts, lumped together and included at the end of global surveys as areas largely marginal to the main events of world history". The new terms Near Oceania and Remote Oceania were proposed in 1973 by anthropologists Roger Green and Andrew Pawley . By their definition, Near Oceania consists of New Guinea,
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#17328378154642688-721: A fifth grand division of the world." He also viewed Oceania as covering Australia, New Zealand, the Malay Archipelago and the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. In 1887, the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland referred to Australia as the area's westernmost land, while in 1870, British Reverend Alexander Mackay identified the Bonin Islands as its northernmost point, and Macquarie Island as its southernmost point. The Bonin Islands at that time were
2912-578: A large source of income for the Pacific island nations . Definitions of Oceania vary. The broadest definition encompasses the many islands between mainland Asia and the Americas . The island nation of Australia is the only piece of land in the area which is large enough to typically be considered a continent. The culture of the people who lived on these islands was often distinct from that of Asia and pre-Columbian America. Before Europeans arrived in
3136-425: A link between health of cardiac and smooth muscle. Low vitamin D levels have also been linked to impaired immune system and brain functions. In addition, recent studies have linked vitamin D deficiency to autoimmune diseases , hypertension , multiple sclerosis , diabetes and incidence of memory loss . Outside the tropics UVR has to penetrate through a thicker layer of atmosphere , which results in most of
3360-403: A lower chance of developing skin cancer and conditions related to folate deficiency , such as neural tube defects . Dark-skinned people living in low sunlight environments have been recorded to be very susceptible to vitamin D deficiency due to reduced vitamin D synthesis . A dark-skinned person requires about six times as much UVB than lightly pigmented persons. This is not a problem near
3584-449: A lower threshold of sufficiency. There is a correlation between the geographic distribution of UV radiation (UVR) and the distribution of skin pigmentation around the world. Areas that have higher amounts of UVR have darker-skinned populations, generally located nearer the equator . Areas that are further away from the equator and generally closer to the poles have a lower concentration of UVR and contain lighter-skinned populations. This
3808-462: A mechanism of natural selection against folate (vitamin B9) depletion, and to a lesser extent, DNA damage . The primary factor contributing to the evolution of dark skin pigmentation was the breakdown of folate in reaction to ultraviolet radiation ; the relationship between folate breakdown induced by ultraviolet radiation and reduced fitness as a failure of normal embryogenesis and spermatogenesis led to
4032-521: A national election and within 12 months of the next election. In 2012, the first two (of three) readings were passed to prevent votes of no confidence occurring within the first 30 months. This restriction on votes of no confidence has arguably resulted in greater stability, although perhaps at the cost of reducing the accountability of the executive branch of government. Elections in PNG attract numerous candidates. After independence in 1975, members were elected by
4256-499: A population of 70,000,000, and commented that, "brown and yellow races constitute the vast majority" and that the minority of whites were mainly "owners and rulers". Hutton Webster's 1919 book Medieval and Modern History also considered Oceania to encompass all islands in the Pacific, stating that, "the term Oceania, or Oceanica, in its widest sense applies to all the Pacific Islands." Webster broke Oceania up into two subdivisions;
4480-416: A population of around 44.4 million as of 2022. Oceania is the smallest continent in land area and the second-least populated after Antarctica . Oceania has a diverse mix of economies from the highly developed and globally competitive financial markets of Australia , French Polynesia , Hawaii , New Caledonia , and New Zealand , which rank high in quality of life and Human Development Index , to
4704-637: A possession of Britain; Macquarie Island, to the south of Tasmania , is a subantarctic island in the Pacific. It was politically associated with Australia and Tasmania by 1870. Alfred Russel Wallace believed in 1879 that Oceania extended to the Aleutian Islands , which are among the northernmost islands of the Pacific. The islands, now politically associated with Alaska , have historically had inhabitants that were related to Indigenous Americans , in addition to having non-tropical biogeography similar to that of Alaska and Siberia . Wallace insisted while
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#17328378154644928-417: A protection. Scientists have long assumed that humans evolved melanin in order to absorb or scatter harmful sun radiation. Some researchers assumed that melanin protects against skin cancer . While high UV radiation can cause skin cancer, the development of cancer usually occurs after child-bearing age. As natural selection favours individuals with traits of reproductive success, skin cancer had little effect on
5152-565: A province of New Guinea) in the west to Galápagos Islands (Equador) and Easter Island (Chile) in the east." In a 1980 report on venereal diseases in the South Pacific, the British Journal of Venereal Diseases categorized the Desventuradas Islands, Easter Island, the Galápagos Islands and the Juan Fernández Islands as being in an eastern region of the South Pacific, along with areas such as Pitcairn Islands and French Polynesia, but noted that
5376-535: A recent study which included radiocarbon dates from what is thought to be very early material suggests that the island was discovered and settled as recently as 1200. Oceania was first explored by Europeans from the 16th century onwards. Portuguese navigators, between 1512 and 1526, reached the Maluku Islands (by António de Abreu and Francisco Serrão in 1512), Timor , the Aru Islands (Martim A. Melo Coutinho),
5600-523: A reference to the skin pigmentation of Indigenous Australians; today it has been embraced by Aboriginal activists as a term for shared culture and identity, regardless of skin colour. Melanesia , a subregion of Oceania , whose name means "black islands", have several islands that are inhabited by people with dark skin pigmentation. The islands of Melanesia are located immediately north and northeast of Australia as well as east coast of Papua New Guinea. The western end of Melanesia from New Guinea through
5824-568: A result, much evidence is based on linguistic analysis. The earliest archaeological traces of civilization have been found on the island of Saipan , dated to 1500 BCE or slightly before. The ancestors of the Micronesians settled there over 4,000 years ago. A decentralized chieftain-based system eventually evolved into a more centralized economic and religious culture centred on Yap and Pohnpei . The prehistories of many Micronesian islands such as Yap are not known very well. The first people of
6048-576: A short curve of the river's thalweg to where it meets the 141°01'10" E meridian flowing west, then southwards to the south coast. The 141° E meridian formed the entire eastern boundary of Dutch New Guinea according to its 1828 annexation proclamation. By the Treaty of The Hague (1895) the Dutch and British agreed to a territorial exchange, bringing the entire left bank of the Fly River into British New Guinea and moving
6272-547: A significant non-indigenous European population, numbering around 71,000. Conversely, New Caledonia has still had a similar history to the rest of Melanesia, and their French -speaking Europeans make up only 27% of the total population. As such, it is not also culturally considered a part of the predominantly English-speaking Australasia. Some cultural and political definitions of Australasia include most or all of Melanesia, due to its geographical proximity to Australia and New Zealand, but these are rare. Australia, New Zealand and
6496-459: A total of 1,126 people lost their lives as the debris flow from a landslide followed 10 days of heavy rain. With over 2,000 reported dead by the Papua New Guinea government, this disaster has now emerged as the deadliest landslide of the 21st century. The climate on the island is essentially tropical, but it varies by region. The maximum mean temperature in the lowlands is 30 to 32 °C, and
6720-567: Is a geographical region including Australasia , Melanesia , Micronesia , and Polynesia . Outside of the English-speaking world , Oceania is generally considered a continent , while Mainland Australia is regarded as its continental landmass . Spanning the Eastern and Western hemispheres, at the centre of the water hemisphere , Oceania is estimated to have a land area of about 9,000,000 square kilometres (3,500,000 sq mi) and
6944-654: Is a megadiverse country . Many of the other islands within PNG territory, including New Britain, New Ireland, Bougainville, the Admiralty Islands , the Trobriand Islands , and the Louisiade Archipelago , were never linked to New Guinea by land bridges. As a consequence, they have their own flora and fauna; in particular, they lack many of the land mammals and flightless birds that are common to New Guinea and Australia. Australia and New Guinea are portions of
Papua New Guinea - Misplaced Pages Continue
7168-730: Is a full member of the Commonwealth of Nations , the Pacific Community , the Pacific Islands Forum , and the United Nations . Papua is derived from a local term of uncertain origin. Regarding the islands of New Guinea, the Portuguese captain and geographer António Galvão wrote that: The people of all these islands are blacke, and have their haire frisled, whom the people of Maluco do call Papuas. "New Guinea" ( Nueva Guinea )
7392-552: Is also affected by clothing, which tends to slow it down. Indigenous Australians , as with all other populations outside of Africa, are descendants of the Out-of-Africa wave. Genetic evidence has pointed out that the Indigenous peoples of Australia are genetically dissimilar to the dark-skinned populations of Africa and that they are more closely related to other non-African populations. The term black initially has been applied as
7616-813: Is also common among populations in North Africa , the Horn of Africa , West Asia , Central Asia and South Asia . Skin pigmentation is an evolutionary adaptation to various UVR levels around the world. As a consequence there are many health implications that are the product of population movements of humans of certain skin pigmentation to new environments with different levels of UVR. Modern humans are often ignorant of their evolutionary history at their peril. Cultural practices that increase problems of conditions among dark-skinned populations are traditional clothing and vitamin D -poor diet . Dark-pigmented people living in high sunlight environments are at an advantage due to
7840-437: Is believed to have begun around 1.2 million years ago, in light-skinned early hominid species after they moved from the equatorial rainforest to the sunny savannas . In the heat of the savannas, better cooling mechanisms were required, which were achieved through the loss of body hair and development of more efficient perspiration . The loss of body hair led to the development of dark skin pigmentation, which acted as
8064-506: Is caused by reduced vitamin D synthesis that causes an absence of vitamin D, which then causes the dietary calcium to not be properly absorbed. This disease in the past was commonly found among dark-skinned Americans of the southern part of the United States who migrated north into low sunlight environments. The popularity of sugary drinks and decreased time spent outside have contributed to significant rise of developing rickets. Deformities of
8288-512: Is certainly not necessary to consider the Hawaiian Islands and Australia as being in the same part of the world, it is however permissible to unite in one group all the islands which are scattered over the great ocean. It should be remarked that if we take the Malay Archipelago away from Oceania, as do generally the German geographers, the insular world contained in the great ocean is cut in two, and
8512-418: Is considerable variation between different body regions), but pigment-containing organelles, called melanosomes, are larger and more numerous in dark-skinned individuals. Keratocytes from dark skin cocultured with melanocytes give rise to a melanosome distribution pattern characteristic of dark skin. Melanosomes are not in aggregated state in darkly pigmented skin compared to lightly pigmented skin. Due to
8736-656: Is estimated that 4% to 6% of the genome in Melanesians (e.g. Papua New Guinean and Bougainville Islander) derives from the Denisova hominin , an ancient human species discovered in 2010, while no Eurasians or Africans displayed contributions of the Denisovan genes. The original inhabitants of the group of islands now named Melanesia were likely the ancestors of the present-day Papuan -speaking people. Migrating from Southeast Asia, they appear to have occupied these islands as far east as
8960-491: Is evidence of genetic and linguistic interchange between Australians in the far north and the Austronesian peoples of modern-day New Guinea and the islands, but this may be the result of recent trade and intermarriage . They reached Tasmania c. 40,000 years ago by migrating across a land bridge from the mainland that existed during the last ice age . It is believed that the first early human migration to Australia
9184-464: Is famous for its frequent seismic activity, being on the Ring of Fire . On 17 July 1998, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck north of Aitape . It triggered a 50-foot-high tsunami, which killed over 2,180 people in one of the worst natural disasters in the country. In September 2002, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck off the coast of Wewak , Sandaun Province , killing six people. From March to April 2018,
Papua New Guinea - Misplaced Pages Continue
9408-802: Is geologically a partially submerged volcanic extension of the Aleutian Range on the Alaskan mainland. He did not include the volcanic Kuril Islands and Ryukyu Islands, which similarly border both the Eurasian Plate and the Pacific Plate, nor did he include the neighbouring Kodiak archipelago in the North Pacific Ocean, which is firmly situated on the North American Plate. The Stockholm Journal of East Asian Studies stated in 1996 that Oceania
9632-561: Is geologically part of the Japanese Archipelago , but that has been administered by Russia since World War II . Hong Kong, partly located in another marginal sea of the Pacific (the South China Sea ) was also included in his definition. Australia and New Zealand were grouped together by Flick as Australasia, and categorized as being in the same area of the world as the islands of Oceania. Flick estimated this definition of Oceania had
9856-525: Is important to the development of healthy foetuses . In these abnormalities children are born with an incomplete brain or spinal cord. Nina Jablonski , a professor of anthropology and expert on evolution of human skin colouration, found several cases in which mothers' visits to tanning studios were connected to neural tube defects in early pregnancy. She also found that folate was crucial to sperm development; some male contraception drugs are based on folate inhibition. It has been found that folate may have been
10080-614: Is in spite of the geographical distance separating these areas from Hawaiʻi, which technically lies in the North Pacific. The 1985 edition of the South Pacific Handbook also groups the Galápagos Islands as being in Polynesia, while noting that they are not culturally a part of the subregion. The islands are typically grouped with others in the southeastern Pacific that were never inhabited by Polynesians. The Bonin Islands are in
10304-561: Is largely continental in character, New Zealand's are clearly insular; and neither Commonwealth realm has close ties with Asia." In his 2002 book Oceania: An Introduction to the Cultures and Identities of Pacific Islanders , Andrew Strathern excluded Okinawa and the rest of the Ryukyu Islands from his definition of Oceania, but noted that the islands and their indigenous inhabitants "show many parallels with Pacific island societies." In
10528-401: Is more condensed and contains more cornified cell layers than in lightly pigmented humans. These qualities of dark skin enhance the barrier protection function of the skin. Although darkly-pigmented skin absorbs about 30 to 40% more sunlight than lightly pigmented skin, dark skin does not increase the body's internal heat intake in conditions of intense solar radiation. Solar radiation heats up
10752-465: Is often the most efficient and reliable means of transportation. The highest peak is Mount Wilhelm at 4,509 metres (14,793 ft). Papua New Guinea is surrounded by coral reefs which are under close watch, in the interests of preservation. Papua New Guinea's largest rivers are in New Guinea and include Sepik , Ramu , Markham , Musa , Purari , Kikori , Turama , Wawoi and Fly . The country
10976-399: Is one of the few regions close to the equator that experience snowfall , which occurs in the most elevated parts of the mainland. The border between Papua New Guinea and Indonesia was confirmed by a treaty with Australia before independence in 1974. The land border comprises a segment of the 141° E meridian from the north coast southwards to where it meets the Fly River flowing east, then
11200-419: Is part of the humid tropics, and many Indomalayan rainforest plants spread across the narrow straits from Asia, mixing with the old Australian and Antarctic floras. New Guinea has been identified as the world's most floristically diverse island in the world, with 13,634 known species of vascular plants. Papua New Guinea includes several terrestrial ecoregions : Three new species of mammals were discovered in
11424-426: Is produced in specialized cells called melanocytes , which are found at the lowest level of the epidermis . Melanin is produced inside small membrane-bound packages called melanosomes . People with naturally-occurring dark skin have melanosomes which are clumped, large and full of eumelanin. A four-fold difference in naturally-occurring dark skin gives seven- to eight-fold protection against DNA damage, but even
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#173283781546411648-457: Is rich in various species of reptiles, indigenous freshwater fish and birds, but it is almost devoid of large mammals. Papua New Guinea is a Commonwealth realm with Charles III as King of Papua New Guinea . The constitutional convention , which prepared the draft constitution, and Australia, the outgoing metropolitan power, had thought that Papua New Guinea would not remain a monarchy. The founders, however, considered that imperial honours had
11872-666: Is situated on the Pacific Ring of Fire , at the point of collision of several tectonic plates . Geologically, the island of New Guinea is a northern extension of the Indo-Australian tectonic plate , forming part of a single land mass which is Australia-New Guinea (also called Sahul or Meganesia ). It is connected to the Australian segment by a shallow continental shelf across the Torres Strait , which in former ages lay exposed as
12096-478: Is the most populous Pacific island country. The country is believed to be the home of many undocumented species of plants and animals. Papua New Guinea is classified as a developing economy by the International Monetary Fund ; nearly 40% of the population are subsistence farmers , living relatively independently of the cash economy. Their traditional social groupings are explicitly acknowledged by
12320-638: Is the region in Africa situated south of the Sahara where a large number of dark-skinned populations live. Dark-skinned groups on the continent have the same receptor protein as Homo ergaster and Homo erectus had. According to scientific studies, populations in Africa also have the highest skin colour diversity. High levels of skin colour variation exists between different populations in Sub-Saharan Africa. These differences depend in part on general distance from
12544-538: Is the result of human evolution which contributed to variable melanin content in the skin to adapt to certain environments. A larger percentage of dark-skinned people are found in the Southern Hemisphere because latitudinal land mass distribution is disproportionate. The present distribution of skin colour variation does not completely reflect the correlation of intense UVR and dark skin pigmentation due to mass migration and movement of peoples across continents in
12768-511: Is true that eumelanin has antibacterial properties, its importance is secondary to 'physical adsorption' ( physisorption ) to protect against UVR-induced damage. This hypothesis is not consistent with the evidence that most of the hominid evolution took place in savanna environments and not in tropical rainforests. Humans living in hot and sunny environments have darker skin than humans who live in wet and cloudy environments. The antimicrobial hypothesis also does not explain why some populations (like
12992-412: Is used in the formation of myelin, the sheath that covers nerve cells and makes it possible to send electrical signals quickly. Folate also plays an important role in the development of many neurotransmitters, e.g. serotonin which regulates appetite, sleep, and mood. Serum folate is broken down by UV radiation or alcohol consumption. Because the skin is protected by the melanin, dark-pigmented people have
13216-579: Is usual for polygenic traits. Data collected from studies on MC1R gene has shown that there is a lack of diversity in dark-skinned African samples in the allele of the gene compared to non-African populations. This is remarkable given that the number of polymorphisms for almost all genes in the human gene pool is greater in African samples than in any other geographic region. So, while the MC1R f gene does not significantly contribute to variation in skin colour around
13440-527: The Bonin Islands , a politically integral part of Japan; Hawaii , a state of the United States ; Clipperton Island, a possession of France ; the Juan Fernández Islands , belonging to Chile; and Macquarie Island , belonging to Australia. The United Nations (UN) has used its own geopolitical definition of Oceania since its foundation in 1947, which utilizes four of the five subregions from
13664-579: The Denisovans , indicating that the ancestors of Papuans interbred in Asia with these archaic hominins. Agriculture was independently developed in the New Guinea highlands around 7000 BC, making it one of the few areas in the world where people independently domesticated plants. A major migration of Austronesian-speaking peoples to coastal regions of New Guinea took place around 500 BC. This has been correlated with
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#173283781546413888-691: The Farallones off California, and the Chinchas off Peru are—to all intents and purposes, only detached bits of the adjoining shores. But in the case of the Galápagos, at least, this is different." The Juan Fernández Islands and the neighbouring Desventuradas Islands are today seen as the easternmost extension of the Indo-West Pacific biogeographic region. The islands lie on the Nazca Plate with Easter Island and
14112-401: The French expression Terres océaniques (Oceanic lands) c. 1804. In 1814 another French cartographer, Adrien-Hubert Brué, coined from this expression the shorter "Océanie", which derives from the Latin word oceanus , and this from the Greek word ὠκεανός ( ōkeanós ), "ocean". The term Oceania is used because, unlike the other continental groupings, it is the ocean that links
14336-428: The Inuit or Tibetans ) who live far from the tropics and are exposed to high UVR have darker skin pigmentation than their surrounding populations. Dark-skinned humans have high amounts of melanin found in their skin. Melanin is derivative of the amino acid tyrosine . Eumelanin is the dominant form of melanin found in human skin. Eumelanin protects tissues and DNA from the radiation damage of UV light. Melanin
14560-411: The Papua New Guinea Constitution , which expresses the wish for "traditional villages and communities to remain as viable units of Papua New Guinean society" and protects their continuing importance to local and national community life. Papua New Guinea has been an observer state in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations ( ASEAN ) since 1976, and has filed its application for full membership status. It
14784-410: The Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions , a pontifical institute, reestablished the mission on Woodlark Island, encountering sickness and resistance from local people. The country's dual name results from its complex administrative history before independence. Beginning in 1884, the region was split between two colonial powers. Germany ruled the northern half of the country for several decades as
15008-505: The Tanimbar Islands , some of the Caroline Islands (by Gomes de Sequeira in 1525), and west Papua New Guinea (by Jorge de Menezes in 1526). In 1519, a Spanish expedition led by Ferdinand Magellan sailed down the east coast of South America, found and sailed through the strait that bears his name and on 28 November 1520 entered the ocean which he named "Pacific". The three remaining ships, led by Magellan and his captains Duarte Barbosa and João Serrão , then sailed north and caught
15232-539: The Territory of New Guinea . In contrast to establishing an Australian mandate in former German New Guinea, the League of Nations determined that Papua was an external territory of the Australian Commonwealth; as a matter of law it remained a British possession. The difference in legal status meant that until 1949, Papua (former British protectorate Territory of Papua ) and New Guinea (former German territory German New Guinea ) had entirely separate administrations, both controlled by Australia. These conditions contributed to
15456-422: The U.S. military ). This is due to their location in the centre of the Pacific, their biogeography and their oceanic geology. Less isolated oceanic islands that were once uninhabited, such as the Bonin Islands, the Galápagos Islands and the Juan Fernández Islands, have since been sparsely populated by citizens of their political administrators. Archaeological evidence suggests that Micronesians may have lived on
15680-757: The dark skin of the inhabitants. Archaeological evidence indicates that humans first arrived in Papua New Guinea around 42,000 to 45,000 years ago. They were descendants of migrants out of Africa , in one of the early waves of human migration. A 2016 study at the University of Cambridge by Christopher Klein et al. suggests that it was about 50,000 years ago that these peoples reached Sahul (the paleocontinent consisting of present-day Australia and New Guinea). The sea levels rose and isolated New Guinea about 10,000 years ago, but Aboriginal Australians and Papuans diverged from each other genetically earlier, about 37,000 years BP. Evolutionary geneticist Svante Pääbo found that people of New Guinea share 4%–7% of their genome with
15904-479: The east coast of Australia for the first time. The arrival of European settlers in subsequent centuries resulted in a significant alteration in the social and political landscape of Oceania. The Pacific theatre saw major action during the First and Second World Wars . The rock art of Aboriginal Australians is the longest continuously practiced artistic tradition in the world. Most Oceanian countries are parliamentary democracies , with tourism serving as
16128-556: The equator , such as Chiloé Island, Macquarie Island, Tasmania, and the southern portions of mainland Australia and New Zealand, were not included in this category. According to the 1998 book Encyclopedia of Earth and Physical Sciences , Oceania refers to Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, and more than 10,000 islands scattered across the Pacific Ocean. It notes that, "the term [has] also come under scrutiny by many geographers. Some experts insist that Oceania encompasses even
16352-603: The first-past-the-post system, with winners frequently gaining less than 15% of the vote. Electoral reforms in 2001 introduced the Limited Preferential Vote system (LPV), a version of the alternative vote . The 2007 general election was the first to be conducted using LPV. Oceania Oceania ( UK : / ˌ oʊ s i ˈ ɑː n i ə , ˌ oʊ ʃ i -, - ˈ eɪ n -/ OH -s(h)ee- AH -nee-ə, - AY - , US : / ˌ oʊ ʃ i ˈ æ n i ə , - ˈ ɑː n -/ OH -shee- A(H)N -ee-ə )
16576-481: The trade winds which carried them across the Pacific to the Philippines where Magellan was killed. One surviving ship led by Juan Sebastián Elcano returned west across the Indian Ocean and the other went north in the hope of finding the westerlies and reaching Mexico. Unable to find the right winds, it was forced to return to the East Indies. The Magellan-Elcano expedition achieved the first circumnavigation of
16800-533: The 16th of September 1975 as the date of independence. Whitlam and then- Prince Charles attended the independence ceremony, with Somare continuing as the country's first Prime Minister. A secessionist revolt in 1975–76 on Bougainville Island resulted in an eleventh-hour modification of the draft Constitution of Papua New Guinea to allow for Bougainville and the other eighteen districts to have quasi-federal status as provinces. A renewed uprising on Bougainville started in 1988 and claimed 20,000 lives until it
17024-555: The 19th century: Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. This definition consists of discrete political entities, and so excludes the Bonin Islands, Hawaii, Clipperton Island and the Juan Fernández Islands, along with Easter Island — which was annexed by Chile in 1888. It is used in statistical reports, by the International Olympic Committee , and by many atlases. The UN categorizes Oceania, and by extension
17248-422: The 2006 book Extinction and Biogeography of Tropical Pacific Birds , American paleontologist David Steadman wrote, "no place on earth is as perplexing as the 25,000 islands that make Oceania." Steadman viewed Oceania as encompassing Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia (including Easter Island and Hawaii). He excluded from his definition the larger islands of New Guinea and New Zealand, and argued that Cocos Island,
17472-748: The 2013 book The Environments of the Poor in Southeast Asia, East Asia and the Pacific , Paul Bullen critiqued the definition of Oceania in Encyclopedia of Islands , and wrote that since Koppers included areas such as Vancouver Island, it is "not clear what the referents of 'Pacific Region', 'Oceania' or 'Pacific Islands' are." Bullen added that, "Asia, Europe and the Maritime Continent are not literal geographic continents. The ' Asia–Pacific region' would comprise two quasi-continents. 'The Pacific' would not refer to
17696-705: The Aleutian Islands, Japan's Izu Islands , the Kuril Islands, the Ryukyu Islands and most of the Solomon Islands, were also excluded from his definition. Unlike the United Nations, the World Factbook defines the still-uninhabited Clipperton Island as being a discrete political entity, and they categorize it as part of North America, presumably due to its relative proximity (situated 1,200 kilometres off Mexico on
17920-552: The Aleutian Islands, the Bonin Islands, the Japanese archipelago, the Juan Fernández Islands, the Kuril Islands, the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, California 's Channel Islands and Farallon Islands , Canada 's Vancouver Island and Queen Charlotte Islands (now known as Haida Gwaii), Chile's Chiloé Island , Ecuador's Galápagos Islands, Mexico's Guadalupe Island , Revillagigedo Islands , San Benito Islands and Tres Marías Islands , and Peru's Chincha Islands . Islands in marginal seas of
18144-546: The Asian continent. They are now often referred to as Maritime Southeast Asia , with Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore being founding members of the ASEAN regional organization for Southeast Asia in 1967 (Brunei and East Timor did not exist as independent nations at that point). Brown also categorized Japan and Taiwan as being in the same part of the world as the islands of Oceania, and excluded them from The Countries of
18368-552: The Asian mainland, as well as the Aleutians and the small island groups situated near the Americas. Thus, Oceania most commonly refers to the land areas of the South and Central Pacific. Kennedy defined Oceania as including Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. The U.S. Government Publishing Office 's Area Handbook for Oceania from 1971 states that Australia and New Zealand are
18592-464: The Australian Plate and have been geographically associated with Southeast Asia, due to their proximity to western Indonesia. Both were uninhabited when discovered by Europeans during the 17th century. Approximately half of the population on these islands are European Australian mainlanders (with smaller numbers being European New Zealanders ), while the other half are immigrants from China or
18816-570: The Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands, with the exception of the Santa Cruz Islands . They are designed to dispel the outdated categories of Melanesia , Micronesia , and Polynesia ; many scholars now replace those categories with Green's terms since the early 1990s, but the old categories are still used in science, popular culture and general usage. Islands at the geographic extremes of Oceania are generally considered to be
19040-504: The Bonin Islands c. 2,000 years ago, but they were uninhabited at the time of European discovery in the 16th century. Depending on the definition, New Zealand could be part of Polynesia, or part of Australasia with Australia. New Zealand was originally settled by the Polynesian Māori , and has long maintained a political influence over the subregion. Through immigration and high Māori birth rates, New Zealand has attained
19264-422: The Desventuradas Islands and the Juan Fernández Islands as being part of a region titled Insular Chile . They further include in this region Salas y Gómez, a small uninhabited island to the east of Easter Island. PLOS One describe Insular Chile as having "cultural and ecological connections to the broader insular Pacific." In her 1997 book Australia and Oceania , Australian historian Kate Darian-Smith defined
19488-691: The Galápagos Islands were not a member of the South Pacific Commission , like other islands in the South Pacific. The South Pacific Commission is a developmental organization formed in 1947 and is currently known as the Pacific Community; its members include Australia and other Pacific Islands Forum members. In a 1947 article on the formation of the South Pacific Commission for the Pacific Affairs journal, author Roy E. James stated
19712-480: The Galápagos Islands, and have a significant south central Pacific component to their marine fauna. According to scientific journal PLOS One , the Humboldt Current helps create a biogeographic barrier between the marine fauna of these islands and South America. Chile's government have occasionally considered them to be within Oceania along with Easter Island. Chile's government also categorize Easter Island,
19936-468: The Galápagos Islands, the Juan Fernández Islands, Costa Rica 's Cocos Island and Colombia 's Malpelo Island (all oceanic) as making up a Spanish language segment of Oceania. Cocos Island and Malpelo Island are the only landmasses located on the Cocos Plate , which is to the north of the Nazca Plate. The book observed that a native Polynesian language was still understood on Easter Island, unlike with
20160-446: The Galápagos Islands, the Revillagigedo Islands and other oceanic islands nearing the Americas were not part of Oceania, due to their biogeographical affinities with that area and lack of prehistoric indigenous populations. In his 2018 book Regionalism in South Pacific , Chinese author Yu Changsen wrote that some "stress a narrow vision of the Pacific as those Pacific Islands excluding Australia and even sometimes New Zealand", adding that
20384-573: The Hawaiian and Galápagos ." In 1876, French geographer Élisée Reclus labelled Australia's flora as "one of the most characteristic on the globe", adding that "the Hawaiian archipelago also constitutes a separate vegetation zone; of all tropical insular groups it possesses the relatively largest number of endemic plants. In the Galápagos group also more than half of the species are of local origin." Rand McNally & Company , an American publisher of maps and atlases, claimed in 1892 that, "Oceania comprises
20608-559: The Malay Archipelago, not the modern country of Malaysia ) and Polynesia (which included both the Polynesian and Micronesian islands in her definition). Aside from mainland Australia, areas that she identified as of high importance were Borneo, Hawaii, Indonesia's Java and Sumatra , New Guinea, New Zealand, the Philippines, French Polynesia's Society Islands , Tasmania, and Tonga. American geographer Jesse Olney 's 1845 book A Practical System of Modern Geography stated that it "comprises
20832-811: The Marshall Islands during the 2nd millennium BC E, with inter-island navigation made possible using traditional stick charts . The Polynesian people are considered to be by linguistic, archaeological and human genetic ancestry a subset of the sea-migrating Austronesian people and tracing Polynesian languages places their prehistoric origins in the Malay Archipelago , and ultimately, in Taiwan . Between c. 3000 and 1000 BCE, speakers of Austronesian languages began spreading from Taiwan into Island Southeast Asia , as tribes whose natives were thought to have arrived through South China c. 8,000 years ago to
21056-473: The Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian subdivisions, but not with the Indonesian or non-tropical subdivisions. The Pacific Islands Handbook (1945), by Robert William Robson, stated that, "Pacific Islands generally are regarded as Pacific islands lying within the tropics. There are a considerable number of Pacific Islands outside the tropics. Most of them have little economic or political importance." He noted
21280-665: The Northern Mariana Islands navigated to the islands and discovered it at some period between 4000 BCE to 2000 BCE from Southeast Asia . They became known as the Chamorros . Their language was named after them. The ancient Chamorro left a number of megalithic ruins, including Latte stone . The Refaluwasch or Carolinian people came to the Marianas in the 1800s from the Caroline Islands . Micronesian colonists gradually settled
21504-497: The Pacific , by Richard W. Casteel and Jean-Claude Passeron, states that, "for the purpose of anthropology , Oceania has long been a continent like Africa, Asia and America." Scottish geographer John Bartholomew wrote in 1873 that, "the New World consists of North America , and the peninsula of South America attached to it. These divisions [are] generally themselves spoken as continents, and to them has been added another, embracing
21728-618: The Pacific Ocean and everything in it e.g., the Philippines." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names (2017), by John Everett-Heath, states that Oceania is "a collective name for more than 10,000 islands in the Pacific Ocean" and that "it is generally accepted that Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and the islands north of Japan (the Kurils and Aleutians) are excluded." In his 1993 book A New Oceania: Rediscovering Our Sea of Islands , New Guinea-born Fijian scholar Epeli Hauʻofa wrote that, "Pacific Ocean islands from Japan, through
21952-501: The Pacific Plate). Clipperton is not politically associated with the Americas, as is the case with other oceanic islands nearing the Americas, having had almost no interaction with the continent throughout its history. From the early 20th century to 2007, the island was administratively part of French Polynesia, which itself was known as French Oceania up until 1957. In terms of marine fauna, Clipperton shares similarities with areas of
22176-586: The Pacific area, as one of the major continental divisions of the world, along with Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Their definition includes American Samoa , Australia and their external territories , the Cook Islands , Federated States of Micronesia , French Polynesia , Fiji, Guam , Kiribati , the Marshall Islands, Nauru , New Caledonia, New Zealand, Niue , the Northern Mariana Islands , Palau , Papua New Guinea, Pitcairn Islands , Samoa ,
22400-471: The Pacific such as those of Japan or the Channel Islands off the southern California coast are not typically considered Oceania as the indigenous populations of these places do not share a common ancestry with Oceanic groups, except for a time far before humans sailed Pacific waters." It has been theorized that the indigenous Jōmon people of the Japanese archipelago are related to Austronesians, along with
22624-679: The Pacific were also covered in the book, including Alaska's Pribilof Islands and China's Hainan . Tyler additionally profiled the Anson Archipelago , which during the 19th century was a designation for a widely scattered group of purported islands in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean between Japan and Hawaii. The Anson archipelago included phantom islands such as Ganges Island and Los Jardines which were proven to not exist, as well as real islands such as Marcus Island and Wake Island. Tyler described Australia as "the leviathan of
22848-498: The Pacific which are much farther removed from the Americas. Scottish author Robert Hope Moncrieff considered Clipperton to be the easternmost point of Oceania in 1907, while Ian Todd also included it in his definition of Oceania in Island Realm: A Pacific Panorama . Other uninhabited Pacific Ocean landmasses have been explicitly associated with Oceania, including the highly remote Baker Island and Wake Island (now administered by
23072-458: The Philippines and Indonesia, which are adjacent to the Asian mainland, do not have oceanic cultures, and are therefore not part of Oceania." The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Oceania (2018) defined Oceania as only covering Austronesian-speaking islands in Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, with this definition including New Guinea and New Zealand. Other Austronesian areas such as Indonesia and
23296-501: The Philippines were not included, due to their closer cultural proximity to mainland Asia. Australia was also not included, as it was settled several thousands of years before the arrival of Austronesian-speaking peoples in Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. The book stated, "this definition of Oceania might seem too restrictive: Why not include Australia, for example, or even too broad, for what does Highland New Guinea have to do with Hawai'i?", further noting that, "a few other islands in
23520-543: The Revillagigedo Islands (both situated on the Pacific Plate) and the oceanic islands situated on the Cocos Plate and Nazca Plate. Todd defined the oceanic Bonin Islands as making up a Japanese language segment of Oceania, and excluded the main Japanese archipelago. Todd further included the Aleutian Islands in his definition of Oceania. The island chain borders both the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate , and
23744-602: The Ryukyu Islands. He added that, "besides the proceeding, the Pacific contains many other islands, of which the most important are Hainan and Formosa, on the coast of China, the Japan isles, the Kuriles, the Aleutian Islands (stretching from the New World to the Old), Vancouver Island, the Galápagos, Juan Fernández and Chiloé." Scottish academic John Merry Ross in 1879 considered Polynesia to cover
23968-435: The Solomon Islands were first colonized by humans about 40,000 to 29,000 years ago. In the world, blond hair is exceptionally rare outside Europe, North Africa and West Asia, especially among dark-skinned populations. However, Melanesians are one of the dark-skinned human populations known to have naturally-occurring blond hair. The indigenous Papuan people of New Guinea have dark skin pigmentation and have inhabited
24192-502: The Solomon Islands, Tokelau , Tonga , Tuvalu , Vanuatu , Wallis and Futuna , and the United States Minor Outlying Islands ( Baker Island , Howland Island , Jarvis Island , Midway Atoll , Palmyra Atoll , and Wake Island ). The original UN definition of Oceania from 1947 included these same countries and semi-independent territories, which were mostly still colonies at that point. Hawaii had not yet become
24416-415: The Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, and New Zealand and the oceanic islands of Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia." He went on to write that his preferred definition of Oceania emphasis islands with oceanic geology, stating that oceanic islands are, "islands with no past connections to a continental landmass" and that, "these boundaries encompass the Hawaiian and Bonin Islands in the north and Easter Island in
24640-566: The Territory of Papua, and the Australian administration became formal in 1906. Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Australian forces captured German New Guinea and occupied it throughout the war. After Germany and the Central Powers were defeated in the war, the League of Nations authorised Australia to administer this area as a League of Nations mandate territory, which became
24864-497: The World: Volume 5 , which covered mainland Asia and Hong Kong. However, Brown did not explicitly associate Japan or Taiwan with the term Oceania. He divided Oceania into two subregions: Eastern Oceania, which included the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, and Southwestern Oceania, which included Australia and New Zealand. The Galápagos Islands, the Juan Fernández Islands and the Revillagigedo Islands were identified as
25088-527: The [Malay] archipelago." In a 1972 article for the Music Educators Journal titled Musics of Oceania , author Raymond F. Kennedy wrote: many meanings have been given to the word Oceania. The most inclusive–but not always the most useful–embraces about 25,000 land areas between Asia and the Americas. A more popular and practical definition excludes Indonesia, East Malaysia (Borneo), the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan and other islands closely related to
25312-652: The ancestors of most people living today likely also resided in a different place and had a different skin colour. According to Nina Jablonski, darkly-pigmented modern populations in South India and Sri Lanka are an example of this, having re-darkened after their ancestors migrated down from areas much farther north. Scientists originally believed that such shifts in pigmentation occurred relatively slowly. However, researchers have since observed that changes in skin colouration can happen in as little as 100 generations (~2,500 years), with no intermarriage required. The speed of change
25536-673: The ancient supercontinent of Gondwana , which started to break into smaller continents in the Cretaceous period, 65–130 million years ago. Australia finally broke free from Antarctica about 45 million years ago. All the Australasian lands are home to the Antarctic flora , descended from the flora of southern Gondwana, including the coniferous podocarps and Araucaria pines, and the broad-leafed southern beech ( Nothofagus ). These plant families are still present in Papua New Guinea. New Guinea
25760-667: The area as covering Australia, New Zealand and the islands of the Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. She excluded Hawaii from her definition, but not Easter Island. The International Union for Conservation of Nature stated in a 1986 report that they include Easter Island in their definition of Oceania "on the basis of its Polynesian and biogeographic affinities even though it is politically apart", further noting that other oceanic islands administered by Latin American countries had been included in definitions of Oceania. In 1987, The Journal of Australasian Cave Research described Oceania as being "the region from Irian Jaya (Western New Guinea,
25984-424: The area, the sea shielded Australia and south central Pacific islands from cultural influences that spread through large continental landmasses and adjacent islands. The islands of the Malay Archipelago , north of Australia, mainly lie on the continental shelf of Asia, and their inhabitants had more exposure to mainland Asian culture as a result of this closer proximity. The geographer Conrad Malte-Brun coined
26208-402: The bodies of humans faster. A few million years of evolution later, early humans had sparse body hair and more than 2 million sweat glands in their body. Hairless skin, however, is particularly vulnerable to be damaged by ultraviolet light and this proved to be a problem for humans living in areas of intense UV radiation, and the evolutionary result was the development of dark-coloured skin as
26432-511: The body's surface and not the interior. Furthermore, this amount of heat is negligible compared to the heat produced when muscles are actively used during exercise. Regardless of skin colour, humans have excellent capabilities to dissipate heat through sweating. Half of the solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface is in the form of infrared light and is absorbed similarly regardless of skin colouration. In people with naturally occurring dark skin,
26656-486: The book adds that Hawaii is still within Oceania, despite being politically integrated into the U.S., and that the Pacific Ocean "gives unity to the whole" since "all these varied lands emerge from or border upon the Pacific." The 1876 book The Countries of the World , by British scientist and explorer Robert Brown , labelled the Malay Archipelago as Northwestern Oceania, but Brown still noted that these islands belonged more to
26880-591: The book. Hainan, which neighbours Taiwan, also has Austronesian ethnolinguistic origins, although it was not included in the book. The book defined Oceania's major subregions as being Australia, Indonesia (which included all areas associated with the Malay Archipelago), Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. In 2010, Australian historian Bronwen Douglas claimed in The Journal of Pacific History that "a strong case could be made for extending Oceania to at least Taiwan,
27104-533: The cold Aleutian Islands and the islands of Japan. Disagreement also exists over whether or not Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan should be included in Oceania." The Japanese Archipelago, the Malay Archipelago and Taiwan and other islands near China are often deemed as a geological extension of Asia, since they do not have oceanic geology , instead being detached fragments of the Eurasian continent that were once physiologically connected. Certain Japanese islands off
27328-494: The complexity of organising the country's post-independence legal system. The highland valleys were first explored by Australians in the 1930s and were found to be inhabited by over a million people. During World War II , the New Guinea campaign (1942–1945) was one of the major military campaigns and conflicts between Japan and the Allies . Approximately 216,000 Japanese, Australian, and U.S. servicemen died. After World War II and
27552-518: The continental group, which included Australia, the Japanese archipelago, the Malay Archipelago and Taiwan, and the oceanic group, which included New Zealand and the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. Charles Marion Tyler's 1885 book The Island World of the Pacific Ocean considered Oceania to ethnographically encompass Australia, New Zealand, the Malay Archipelago, and the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. However, Tyler included other Pacific islands in his book as well, such as
27776-481: The country is the eastern half of New Guinea island, where the largest towns are also located, including Port Moresby (capital) and Lae ; other major islands within Papua New Guinea include New Ireland , New Britain , Manus and Bougainville . Located north of the Australian mainland, the country's geography is diverse and, in places, extremely rugged. A spine of mountains, the New Guinea Highlands , runs
28000-482: The darkest skin colour cannot protect against all damage to DNA. Dark skin offers great protection against UVR because of its eumelanin content, the UVR-absorbing capabilities of large melanosomes, and because eumelanin can be mobilized faster and brought to the surface of the skin from the depths of the epidermis. For the same body region, light- and dark-skinned individuals have similar numbers of melanocytes (there
28224-400: The darkest skin pigmentation in the world. Although these people are widely separated they share similar physical environments. In both regions, they experience very high UVR exposure from cloudless skies near the equator which is reflected from water or sand. Water reflects, depending on colour, about 10 to 30% of UVR that falls on it. People in these populations spend long hours fishing on
28448-445: The development of dark skin pigmentation. Studies have found that even serious sunburns could not affect sweat gland function and thermoregulation . There are no data or studies that support that sunburn can cause damage so seriously it can affect reproductive success. Another group of hypotheses contended that dark skin pigmentation developed as antibacterial protection against tropical infectious diseases and parasites. Although it
28672-828: The driving force behind the evolution of dark skin. As humans dispersed from equatorial Africa to low UVR areas and higher latitudes sometime between 120,000 and 65,000 years ago, dark skin posed a disadvantage. Populations with light skin pigmentation evolved in climates of little sunlight. Light skin pigmentation protects against vitamin D deficiency. It is known that dark-skinned people who have moved to climates of limited sunlight can develop vitamin D-related conditions such as rickets , and different forms of cancer . A 2022 study revealed that traits such as dark skin show strong signals for Convergent evolution and selective pressure ( positive Selection ). The main other hypotheses that have been put forward through history to explain
28896-506: The east. Its capital, located on its southern coast, is Port Moresby . The country is the world's third largest island country , with an area of 462,840 km (178,700 sq mi). Split in the 1880s between German New Guinea in the North and the British Territory of Papua in the South, all of present-day Papua New Guinea came under Australian control following World War I , with
29120-459: The easternmost areas of Oceania in the book. Brown wrote, "they lie nearest the American continent of all oceanic islands, and though rarely associated with Polynesia, and never appearing to have been inhabited by any aboriginal races, are, in many ways, remarkable and interesting." Brown went on to add, "the small islands lying off the continent, like the Queen Charlotte's in the North Pacific,
29344-469: The edges of western Micronesia and on into Melanesia. In the archaeological record there are well-defined traces of this expansion which allow the path it took to be followed and dated with some certainty. It is thought that by roughly 1400 BCE, " Lapita Peoples", so-named after their pottery tradition, appeared in the Bismarck Archipelago of north-west Melanesia. Easter Islanders claimed that
29568-546: The effects of epistasis , which would probably increase the number of related genes. Variations in the SLC24A5 gene account for 20–25% of the variation between dark- and light-skinned populations of Africa, and appear to have arisen as recently as within the last 10,000 years. The Ala111Thr or rs1426654 polymorphism in the coding region of the SLC24A5 gene reaches fixation in Europe , and
29792-493: The entire 25,000 islands of the Pacific Ocean. In this book, he included the Aleutian Islands, the Galápagos Islands, the Japanese archipelago, the Kuril Islands and continental islands off the coast of the Americas such as the Channel Islands, the Farallon Islands and Vancouver Island; all of these islands lie in or close to the Pacific Ring of Fire , as is the case with New Guinea and New Zealand, which were also included. In
30016-484: The entire South and Central Pacific area, not just islands ethnographically within Polynesia. He wrote in The Globe Encyclopedia of Universal Information that, "literally interpreted, the name would include all the groups from Sumatra to the Galápagos, together with Australia." Ross further wrote, "and to this vast region the term Oceania has been applied. It is more usual at the present time, however, to exclude
30240-710: The equator, illustrating the complex interactions of evolutionary forces which have contributed to the geographic distribution of skin colour at any point of time. Due to frequently differing ancestry among dark-skinned populations, the presence of dark skin in general is not a reliable genetic marker , including among groups in Africa. For example, Wilson et al. (2001) found that most of their Ethiopian samples showed closer genetic affinities with lighter-skinned Armenians than with darker-skinned Bantu populations. Mohamoud (2006) likewise observed that their Somali samples were genetically more similar to Arab populations than to other African populations. South Asia has some of
30464-515: The equator, in tropical areas with intense sunlight: Africa , Australia , Melanesia , South Asia , Southeast Asia , West Asia , and the Americas . Studies into non-African populations indicates dark skin is not necessarily a retention of the pre-existing high UVR-adapted state of modern humans before the out of Africa migration, but may in fact be a later evolutionary adaptation to tropical rainforest regions. Due to mass migration and increased mobility of people between geographical regions in
30688-413: The equator; however, it can be a problem at higher latitudes. For humans with dark skin in climates of low UVR, it can take about two hours to produce the same amount of vitamin D as humans with light skin produce in 15 minutes. Dark-skinned people having a high body-mass index and not taking vitamin D supplements were associated with vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D plays an important role in regulating
30912-455: The evolution of dark skin colouration relate to increased mortality due to skin cancers, enhanced fitness as a result of protection against sunburns, and increasing benefits due to antibacterial properties of eumelanin . Darkly pigmented, eumelanin-rich skin protects against DNA damage caused by the sunlight. This is associated with lower skin cancer rates among dark-skinned populations. The presence of pheomelanin in light skin increases
31136-518: The evolution of dark skin. Previous hypotheses suggested that sunburned nipples impeded breastfeeding, but a slight tan is enough to protect mothers against this issue. A 1978 study examined the effect of sunlight on folate —a vitamin B complex—levels. The study found that even short periods of intense sunlight are able to halve folate levels if someone has light skin. Low folate levels are correlated with neural tube defects, such as anencephaly and spina bifida . UV rays can strip away folate, which
31360-414: The evolutionary reason behind the development of dark skin pigmentation. Of all the major skin cancer types, only malignant melanoma have a major effect in a person's reproductive age. The mortality rates of melanoma have been very low (less than 5 per 100,000) before the mid-20th century. It has been argued that the low melanoma mortality rates during reproductive age cannot be the principal reason behind
31584-459: The female pelvis related to severe rickets impair normal childbirth, which leads to higher mortality of the infant, mother, or both. Vitamin D deficiency is most common in regions with low sunlight, especially in the winter. Chronic deficiencies in vitamin D may also be linked with breast , prostate , colon , ovarian , and possibly other types of cancers . The relationship between cardiovascular disease and vitamin D deficiency also suggest
31808-633: The first Papua New Guinean Chief Minister of the Territory. In December, Whitlam was elected as Prime Minister at the 1972 Australian federal election . The Whitlam Government then instituted self-governance under the rule of Somare in late 1973. Over the next two years, further arguments for independence were forwarded, culminating in the Whitlam Government passing the Papua New Guinea Independence Act 1975 in September 1975, citing
32032-638: The first administrator of this new council. In 1964, the Council was replaced by the 64-member House of Assembly of Papua and New Guinea , which for the first time had a majority of Papua New Guinean members. The Assembly increased to 84 members in 1967 and 100 by 1971. Debate began over Australian administration both in Papua New Guinea and Australia, with the Bougainville independence movement pushing for greater autonomy as Australian mining company Rio Tinto 's exploitative practices became extremely controversial to
32256-558: The forests of Papua New Guinea by an Australian-led expedition in the early 2010s. A small wallaby, a large-eared mouse and a shrew-like marsupial were discovered. The expedition was also successful in capturing photographs and video footage of some other rare animals such as the Tenkile tree kangaroo and the Weimang tree kangaroo. Nearly one-quarter of Papua New Guinea's rainforests were damaged or destroyed between 1972 and 2002. Papua New Guinea had
32480-416: The great ocean itself." Conrad Malte-Brun in 1824 defined Oceania as covering Australia, New Zealand, the islands of Polynesia (which then included all the Pacific islands) and the Malay Archipelago. American lexicographer Joseph Emerson Worcester wrote in 1840 that Oceania is "a term applied to a vast number of islands which are widely dispersed in the Pacific Ocean [...] they are considered as forming
32704-499: The heavily melanised melanosomes in darkly-pigmented skin, it can absorb more energy from UVR and thus offers better protection against sunburns and by absorption and dispersion UV rays. Darkly-pigmented skin protects against direct and indirect DNA damage. Photodegration occurs when melanin absorbs photons. Recent research suggest that the photoprotective effect of dark skin is increased by the fact that melanin can capture free radicals , such as hydrogen peroxide , which are created by
32928-423: The high amounts of melanin produced in their skin. The dark pigmentation protects from DNA damage and absorbs the right amounts of UV radiation needed by the body, as well as protects against folate depletion. Folate is a water-soluble vitamin B complex which naturally occurs in green, leafy vegetables, whole grains, and citrus fruits. Women need folate to maintain healthy eggs, for proper implantation of eggs, and for
33152-548: The homeland of the Austronesian language family whose speakers colonized significant parts of the region about 6,000 years ago." For political reasons, Taiwan was a member of the Oceania Football Confederation during the 1970s and 1980s, rather than the Asian Football Confederation . Ian Todd's 1974 book Island Realm: A Pacific Panorama also defines oceanic Latin American islands as making up
33376-486: The human immune system. Chronic deficiencies in vitamin D can make humans susceptible to specific types of cancers and many kinds of infectious diseases. Vitamin D deficiency increases the risk of developing tuberculosis five-fold and also contributes to the development of breast, prostate, and colourectal cancer. The most prevalent disease to follow vitamin D deficiency is rickets , the softening of bones in children potentially leading to fractures and deformity. Rickets
33600-546: The indigenous inhabitants of the Ryukyu Islands. Some also theorize that Indigenous Australians are related to the Ainu people , who are the original inhabitants of Japan's Hokkaido , the Kuril Islands and the southern part of Sakhalin. In their 2019 book Women and Violence: Global Lives in Focus , Kathleen Nadeau and Sangita Rayamajhi wrote: the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and most of Indonesia are not usually considered to be part of
33824-426: The interaction of UVR and layers of the skin. Heavily pigmented melanocytes have greater capacity to divide after ultraviolet irradiation, which suggests that they receive less damage to their DNA. Despite this, medium-wave ultraviolet radiation ( UVB ) damages the immune system even in darker skinned individuals due to its effect on Langerhans cells . The stratum corneum of people with dark or heavily tanned skin
34048-565: The intermediate wavelength UVB reflected or destroyed en route; because of this there is less potential for vitamin D biosynthesis in regions far from the equator. Higher amount of vitamin D intake for dark-skinned people living in regions with low levels of sunlight are advised by doctors to follow a vitamin D-rich diet or take vitamin D supplements, although there is recent evidence that dark-skinned individuals are able to process vitamin D more efficiently than lighter-skinned individuals so may have
34272-469: The introduction of pottery, pigs, and certain fishing techniques. In the 18th century, traders brought the sweet potato to New Guinea, where it was adopted and became a staple food . Portuguese traders had obtained it from South America and introduced it to the Moluccas . The far higher crop yields from sweet potato radically transformed traditional agriculture and societies. Sweet potato largely supplanted
34496-472: The island for at least 40,000 years. Due to their similar phenotype and the location of New Guinea being in the migration route taken by Indigenous Australians , it was generally believed that Papuans and Aboriginal Australians shared a common origin. However, a 1999 study failed to find clear indications of a single shared genetic origin between the two populations, suggesting multiple waves of migration into Sahul with distinct ancestries. Sub-Saharan Africa
34720-464: The island groups of the world". In his 1857 book A Treatise on Physical Geography , Francis B. Fogg commented that "the Pacific and its dependencies may be said to contain that portion of the globe termed Oceanica or 'the Maritime World', which is divided into Australasia, Malesia and Polynesia." Fogg defined Polynesia as covering the combined islands of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, as well as
34944-593: The island until the 19th century, although Portuguese and Spanish explorers, such as Dom Jorge de Menezes and Yñigo Ortiz de Retez , had encountered it as early as the 16th century. Traders from Southeast Asia visited New Guinea beginning 5,000 years ago to collect bird-of-paradise plumes. Christianity was introduced to New Guinea on 15 September 1847 when a group of Marist missionaries came to Woodlark Island . They established their first mission on Umboi Island . Following that year, they were forced to withdraw their mission endeavour. Five years later on 8 October 1852,
35168-518: The island's long houses, a demonstration of past practices. According to Marianna Torgovnick, writing in 1991, "The most fully documented instances of cannibalism as a social institution come from New Guinea, where head-hunting and ritual cannibalism survived, in certain isolated areas, into the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies, and still leave traces within certain social groups." Little was known in Europe about
35392-430: The islands in the [Malay] archipelago, to which certain writers have given the name of Malesia ." It added there was controversy over the exact limits of Oceania, saying that, "scarcely any two geographers appear to be quite agreed upon the subject". British physician and ethnologist James Cowles Prichard claimed in 1847 that the Aleutian Islands and the Kuril Islands form "the northern boundary of this fifth region of
35616-409: The islands of Melanesia are more commonly grouped together as part of the Australasian biogeographical realm . Papua New Guinea is geographically the closest country to Australia, and is often geologically associated with Australia as it was once physiologically connected. Australia's Indian Ocean external territories of Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands are situated within the bounds of
35840-399: The islands of the Malay Archipelago, while the non-tropical islands were categorized as being North Pacific islands such as Alaska's Kodiak archipelago , the Aleutian Islands, Japan, the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin. Japan's Bonin and Ryukyu Islands are also considered to be subtropical islands , with the main Japanese archipelago being non-tropical. The journal associated the term Oceania with
36064-420: The large island of Australia and numerous others in the [Pacific] Ocean, under the name of Oceania. There are thus six great divisions of the earth — Europe , Asia, Africa , North America, South America and Oceania." American author Samuel Griswold Goodrich wrote in his 1854 book History of All Nations that, "geographers have agreed to consider the island world of the Pacific Ocean as a third continent, under
36288-426: The large island of Australia and the innumerable islands of the Pacific Ocean" and also that the islands of the Malay Archipelago "should be grouped in with Asia." British linguist Robert Needham Cust argued in 1887 that the Malay Archipelago should be excluded since it had participated in Asian civilization. Cust considered Oceania's four subregions to be Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. New Zealand
36512-470: The largest population of Polynesians in the world, while Australia has the third largest Polynesian population (consisting entirely of immigrants). Modern-day Indigenous Australians are loosely related to Melanesians, and Australia maintains political influence over Melanesia, which is mostly located on the same tectonic plate. Despite this, Australia is rarely seen as a part of the subregion. As with Australia and New Zealand, Melanesia's New Caledonia has
36736-468: 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. Micronesia began to be settled several millennia ago, although there are competing theories about the origin and arrival of the first settlers. There are numerous difficulties with conducting archaeological excavations in the islands, due to their size, settlement patterns and storm damage. As
36960-403: The least populated of the five parts of the world is diminished in order to increase the number of inhabitants of the most densely populated continent. Regarding Australia and the Pacific, Chambers's New Handy Volume American Encyclopædia observed in 1885 that, "the whole region has sometimes been called Oceania, and sometimes Australasia—generally, however, in modern times, to the exclusion of
37184-485: The legally distinct Territory of New Guinea being established out of the former German colony as a League of Nations mandate . The nation was the site of fierce fighting during the New Guinea campaign of World War II . Papua New Guinea became an independent Commonwealth realm in 1975 with Elizabeth II as its Queen. Since Elizabeth II's death in 2022, Charles III has been the King . There are 840 known languages of Papua New Guinea (including English), making it
37408-458: The length of the island of New Guinea , forming a populous highlands region mostly covered with tropical rainforest , and the long Papuan Peninsula , known as the 'Bird's Tail'. Dense rainforests can be found in the lowland and coastal areas as well as very large wetland areas surrounding the Sepik and Fly rivers. This terrain has made it difficult for the country to develop transportation infrastructure. This has made it so that air travel
37632-421: The lightly pigmented because their dark skin protects them from most photoaging . Skin colour is a polygenic trait, which means that several different genes are involved in determining a specific phenotype . Many genes work together in complex, additive, and non-additive combinations to determine the skin colour of an individual. The skin colour variations are normally distributed from light to dark, as it
37856-463: The main archipelago are not geologically associated with Asia. The book The World and Its Peoples: Australia, New Zealand, Oceania (1966) asserts that, "Japan, Taiwan, the Aleutian Islands, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia [and] the Pacific archipelagos bordering upon the Far East Asian mainland are excluded from Oceania", and that "all the islands lying between Australia and the Americas, including Australia, are part of Oceania." Furthermore,
38080-407: The main islands in the Solomon Islands archipelago , including Makira and possibly the smaller islands farther to the east. 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 pre-existing populations of Papuan-speaking peoples. In
38304-546: The major continental divisions of the world, but the name "Australia and Oceania" is used. Their definition does not include all of Australia's external territories, but is otherwise the same as the UN's definition, and is also used for statistical purposes. The Pacific Islands Forum expanded during the early 2010s, and areas that were already included in the UN definition of Oceania, such as French Polynesia, gained membership. French writer Gustave d'Eichthal remarked in 1844 that, "the boundaries of Oceania are in reality those of
38528-532: The minimum 23–24 °C. In the highlands above 2100 metres, colder conditions prevail and night frosts are common there, while the daytime temperature exceeds 22 °C, regardless of the season. Many species of birds and mammals found on New Guinea have close genetic links with corresponding species found in Australia. One notable feature in common for the two landmasses is the existence of several species of marsupial mammals , including some kangaroos and possums , which are not found elsewhere. Papua New Guinea
38752-405: The most linguistically diverse country in the world. It is also one of the most rural countries, with only 13.25% of its population living in urban centres in 2019. Most of its people live in customary communities . Although government estimates reported the country's population to be 11.8 million, it was reported in December 2022 that its population was in fact closer to 17 million. Papua New Guinea
38976-433: The mountains of Australia, so high that it is home to rare equatorial glaciers . There are several active volcanoes , and eruptions are frequent. Earthquakes are relatively common, sometimes accompanied by tsunamis . On 25 February 2018, an earthquake of magnitude 7.5 and depth of 35 kilometres struck the middle of Papua New Guinea. The worst of the damage was centred around the Southern Highlands region. Papua New Guinea
39200-444: The much less developed economies of Kiribati , Papua New Guinea , Tuvalu , Vanuatu , and Western New Guinea . The largest and most populous country in Oceania is Australia, and the largest city is Sydney . Puncak Jaya in Indonesia is the highest peak in Oceania at 4,884 m (16,024 ft). The first settlers of Australia, New Guinea, and the large islands just to the east arrived more than 60,000 years ago. Oceania
39424-470: The name Oceania." In this book, the other two continents were categorized as being the New World (the Americas) and the Old World ( Afro-Eurasia ). In his 1879 book Australasia , British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace commented that, "Oceania is the word often used by continental geographers to describe the great world of islands we are now entering upon" and that "Australia forms its central and most important feature." He did not explicitly label Oceania
39648-491: The nearby Malay Archipelago. Australia's Indian Ocean external territory Heard Island and McDonald Islands lie on the Antarctic Plate and are also thought of as being in Antarctica or no region at all, due to their extreme geographical isolation. The World Factbook define Heard Island and McDonald Islands as part of Antarctica, while placing Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands as the westernmost extent of Oceania. Norfolk Island , an external territory of Australia,
39872-471: The normal development of placenta after fertilization. Folate is needed for normal sperm production in men. Folate is essential for fetal growth, organ development, and neural tube development. Folate breaks down in high intensity UVR. Dark-skinned women suffer the lowest level of neural tube defects. Folate plays an important role in DNA production and gene expression. It is essential for maintaining proper levels of amino acids which make up proteins. Folate
40096-623: The numerous isles of the Pacific, lying south east of Asia." Olney divided up Oceania into three groups; Australasia (which included Australia, New Guinea, and New Zealand), Malesia and Polynesia (which included the combined islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia in his definition). Publication Missionary Review of the World claimed in 1895 that Oceania was divided up into five groups; Australasia, Malesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. It did not consider Hawaii to be part of Polynesia, due to its geographic isolation, commenting that Oceania also included, "isolated groups and islands, such as
40320-441: The organization's scope encompassed all non-self governing islands below the equator to the east of Papua New Guinea (which itself was included in the scope and then known as Dutch New Guinea ). Easter Island and the Galápagos Islands were defined by James as falling within the organization's geographical parameters. The 2007 book Asia in the Pacific Islands: Replacing the West , by New Zealand Pacific scholar Ron Crocombe , defined
40544-426: The other islands, which were uninhabited when discovered by Europeans and mostly being used as prisons for convicts. Additionally, the book includes Taiwan and the entire Malay Archipelago as part of Oceania. While not oceanic in nature, Taiwan and Malay Archipelago countries like Indonesia and the Philippines share Austronesian ethnolinguistic origins with Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, hence their inclusion in
40768-422: The oxidative stress in melanocytes , and this combined with the limited ability of pheomelanin to absorb UVR contributes to higher skin cancer rates among light-skinned individuals. The damaging effect of UVR on DNA structure and the entailing elevated skin cancer risk is widely recognized. However, these cancer types usually affect people at the end or after their reproductive career and could have not been
40992-432: The palms of the hand and the soles of the feet. At times, individuals with more sweat glands were born. These humans could search for food and hunt for longer periods before being forced back to the shades. The more they could forage, the more and healthier offspring they could produce, and the higher the chance they had to pass on their genes for abundant sweat glands. With less hair, sweat could evaporate more easily and cool
41216-475: The parts of the region together. John Eperjesi's 2005 book The Imperialist Imaginary says that it has "been used by Western cartographers since the mid-19th century to give order to the complexities of the Pacific area." In the 19th century, many geographers divided Oceania into mostly racially based subdivisions: Australasia , Malesia (encompassing the Malay Archipelago ), Melanesia , Micronesia and Polynesia . The 2011 book Maritime Adaptations of
41440-511: The political significance of the Aleutian Islands, which were invaded by the Japanese military in World War II, and categorized New Zealand's Antipodes Islands , Auckland Islands , Bounty Islands , Campbell Islands , Chatham Island and Kermadec Islands as being non-tropical islands of the South Pacific, along with Australia's Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island. The Kermadec Islands, Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island are also considered to be subtropical islands. Other non-tropical areas below
41664-414: The previous national election. In the early years of independence, the instability of the party system led to frequent votes of no confidence in parliament, with resulting changes of the government, but with referral to the electorate, through national elections only occurring every five years. In recent years, successive governments have passed legislation preventing such votes sooner than 18 months after
41888-445: The previous staple, taro , and resulted in a significant increase in population in the highlands. Although by the late 20th century headhunting and cannibalism had been practically eradicated, in the past they were practised in many parts of the country as part of rituals related to warfare and taking in enemy spirits or powers. In 1901, on Goaribari Island in the Gulf of Papua , missionary Harry Dauncey found 10,000 skulls in
42112-403: The principal large sovereignties of the area. It further states: In its broadest definition Oceania embraces all islands and island groups of the Pacific Ocean that lie between Asia and the two American continents. In popular usage, however, the designation has a more restricted application. The islands of the North Pacific, such as the Aleutians and the Kuriles, usually are excluded. In addition,
42336-536: The recent past, dark-skinned populations today are found all over the world. Due to natural selection, people who lived in areas of intense sunlight developed dark skin colouration to protect against ultraviolet (UV) light, mainly to protect their body from folate depletion. Evolutionary pigmentation of the skin was caused by ultraviolet radiation of the sun. As hominids gradually lost their fur between 1.2 and 4 million years ago, to allow for better cooling through sweating, their naked and lightly pigmented skin
42560-447: The recent past. Dark-skinned populations inhabiting Africa , Australia , Melanesia , South Asia , Southeast Asia and South America live in some of the areas with the highest UV radiation in the world, and have evolved very dark skin pigmentations as protection from the sun's harmful rays. Evolution has restricted humans with darker skin in tropical latitudes, especially in non-forested regions, where ultraviolet radiation from
42784-466: The region of Oceania as it is understood today. These regions are usually considered to be part of Maritime Southeast Asia. Although these regions, as well as the large East Asian islands of Taiwan, Hainan and the Japanese archipelago, have varying degrees of cultural connections. In Reptiles and Amphibians of the Pacific Islands: A Comprehensive Guide (2013), George R. Zug claimed that "a standard definition of Oceania includes Australia, Papua New Guinea,
43008-407: The region's indigenous landowners, with demands for compensation being made. Australian Opposition Leader Gough Whitlam visited Papua New Guinea in 1970 and 1971, amid further calls for independence by the Tolai people in Gazelle Peninsula . He called for self-governance for the Territory as early as 1972. At the 1972 Papua New Guinean general election in July, Michael Somare was elected as
43232-412: The ruling coalition, which makes up the government. The current prime minister is James Marape . The unicameral National Parliament has 111 seats, of which 22 are occupied by the governors of the 22 provinces and the National Capital District . Candidates for members of parliament are voted upon when the prime minister asks the governor-general to call a national election, a maximum of five years after
43456-582: The same biogeographical realm as the geographically adjacent Micronesia, and are often grouped in with the subregion because of this. Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands who migrated from Africa to Asia c. 70,000 years ago and arrived in Australia c. 50,000 years ago. They are believed to be among the earliest human migrations out of Africa . Although they likely migrated to Australia through Southeast Asia they are not demonstrably related to any known Asian or Polynesian population. There
43680-431: The same levels of vitamin D. This is possibly attributed to lower presence of vitamin D binding agents (and thus its higher bioavailability) in dark-skinned individuals. The global distribution of generally dark-skinned populations is strongly correlated with the high ultraviolet radiation levels of the regions inhabited by them. These populations, with the exception of indigenous Tasmanians , almost exclusively live near
43904-544: The savannas of sub-Saharan Africa . They not only had to cope with more intense sunlight but had to develop a better cooling system. It was harder to get food in the hot savannas and as mammalian brains are prone to overheating—5 or 6 °C rise in temperature can lead to heatstroke—there was a need for the development of better heat regulation. The solution was sweating and loss of body hair. Sweating dissipated heat through evaporation. Early humans, like chimpanzees now, had few sweat glands, and most of them were located in
44128-476: The sea. Because it is impractical to wear extensive clothing in a watery environment, culture and technology does little to buffer UVR exposure. The skin takes a very large amount of ultraviolet radiation. These populations are probably near or at the maximum darkness that human skin can achieve. More recent research has found that human populations over the past 50,000 years have changed from dark-skinned to light-skinned and vice versa. Only 100–200 generations ago,
44352-539: The selection of dark skin pigmentation. By the time modern Homo sapiens evolved, all humans were dark-skinned. Humans with dark skin pigmentation have skin naturally rich in melanin , especially eumelanin , and have more melanosomes which provide superior protection against the deleterious effects of ultraviolet radiation. This helps the body to retain its folate reserves and protects against damage to DNA. Dark-skinned people who live in high latitudes with mild sunlight are at an increased risk—especially in
44576-418: The series of sovereign island nations fringing Asia (Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, East Malaysia, the Republic of Indonesia) are not ordinarily considered to be part of the area. In 1948, American military journal Armed Forces Talk broke the islands of the Pacific up into five major subdivisions; Indonesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia and the non-tropical Islands. The Indonesia subdivision consisted of
44800-433: The south, and the Palau Islands in the west to the Galápagos Islands in the east." Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand and New Caledonia (which is geologically associated with New Zealand) were all excluded, as these areas are descendants of the ancient Pangaea supercontinent, along with landmasses such as the Americas and Afro-Eurasia . Volcanic islands which are geologically associated with continental landmasses, such as
45024-411: The southern border east to the Torasi Estuary . The maritime boundary with Australia was confirmed by a treaty in 1978. In the Torres Strait it runs close to the mainland of New Guinea, keeping the adjacent North Western Torres Strait Islands ( Dauan , Boigu and Saibai ) under Australian sovereignty. Maritime boundaries with the Solomon Islands were confirmed by a 1989 treaty . Papua New Guinea
45248-528: The sun is usually the most intense. Different dark-skinned populations are not necessarily closely related genetically. Before the modern mass migration, it has been argued that the majority of dark-pigmented people lived within 20° of the equator. Natives of Buka and Bougainville at the northern Solomon Islands in Melanesia and the Chopi people of Mozambique in the southeast coast of Africa have darker skin than other surrounding populations. The native people of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, have some of
45472-460: The surface area of this wide definition was greater than that of Asia and Europe combined, the land area was only a little greater than that of Europe. American geographer Sophia S. Cornell claimed that the Aleutian Islands were not part of Oceania in 1857. She stated that Oceania was divided up into three groups; Australasia (which included Australia, New Zealand, and the Melanesian islands), Malesia (which included all present-day countries within
45696-402: The tanning occurs with the dramatic mobilization of melanin upward in the epidermis and continues with the increased production of melanin. This accounts for the fact that dark-skinned people get visibly darker after one or two weeks of sun exposure, and then lose their colour after months when they stay out of the sun. Darkly-pigmented people tend to exhibit fewer signs of aging in their skin than
45920-554: The term "Pacific Islands" as being islands in the South Pacific Commission, and stated that such a definition "does not include Galápagos and other [oceanic] islands off the Pacific coast of the Americas; these were uninhabited when Europeans arrived, then integrated with a South American country and have almost no contact with other Pacific Islands." He adds, "Easter Island still participates in some Pacific Island affairs because its people are Polynesian." Thomas Sebeok 's two volume 1971 book Linguistics in Oceania defines Easter Island,
46144-513: The term Oceania "promotes a broader concept that has room for Australia and New Zealand." American marine geologist Anthony A. P. Koppers wrote in the 2009 book Encyclopedia of Islands that, "as a whole, the islands of the Pacific Region are referred to as Oceania, the tenth continent on earth. Inherent to their remoteness and because of the wide variety of island types, the Pacific Islands have developed unique social, biological and geological characteristics." Koppers considered Oceania to encompass
46368-445: The third-largest island country . Papua New Guinea is part of the Australasian realm , which also includes Australia , New Zealand , eastern Indonesia , and several Pacific island groups, including the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu . Including all its islands, it lies between latitudes 0° and 12°S , and longitudes 140° and 160°E . It has an exclusive economic zone of 2,402,288 km (927,529 sq mi). The mainland of
46592-497: The victory of the Allies, the two territories were combined into the Territory of Papua and New Guinea . This was later referred to as "Papua New Guinea." After World War II, Australia administered the two newly combined territories of Papua and New Guinea. By 1951, a 28-member Legislative Council was instituted, although this was largely dominated by Australian administrative members, with only 3 seats allocated to Papua New Guineans. Sir Donald Cleland , an Australian soldier, became
46816-544: The winter—of vitamin D deficiency . As a consequence of vitamin D deficiency, they are at a higher risk of developing rickets , numerous types of cancers, and possibly cardiovascular disease and low immune system activity. However, some recent studies have questioned if the thresholds indicating vitamin D deficiency in light-skinned individuals are relevant for dark-skinned individuals, as they found that, on average, dark-skinned individuals have higher bone density and lower risk of fractures than lighter-skinned individuals with
47040-440: The world and reached the Philippines , the Mariana Islands , and other islands of Oceania. Dark skin Dark skin is a type of human skin color that is rich in melanin pigments . People with dark skin are often referred to as black people , although this usage can be ambiguous in some countries where it is also used to specifically refer to different ethnic groups or populations. The evolution of dark skin
47264-408: The world, and with the coasts of Asia and America completing its literal termination." However, he wrote that these islands "are not usually reckoned as belonging to it, because they are known to be inhabited by races of people who came immediately from the adjacent continents and are unconnected with those tribes of the human race who peopled the remote islands of this great ocean." He added that Hawaii
47488-424: The world, the allele found in high levels in African populations probably protects against UV radiation and was probably important in the evolution of dark skin. Skin colour seems to vary mostly due to variations in a number of genes of large effect as well as several other genes of small effect ( TYR , TYRP1 , OCA2 , SLC45A2 , SLC24A5 , MC1R , KITLG and SLC24A4 ). This does not take into account
47712-404: Was first explored by Europeans from the 16th century onward. Portuguese explorers, between 1512 and 1526, reached the Tanimbar Islands , some of the Caroline Islands and west New Guinea . Spanish and Dutch explorers followed, then British and French. On his first voyage in the 18th century, James Cook , who later arrived at the highly developed Hawaiian Islands , went to Tahiti and followed
47936-428: Was a choice between greater autonomy within Papua New Guinea and full independence for Bougainville, and voters voted overwhelmingly (98.31%) for independence. Negotiations between the Bougainville government and national Papua New Guinea on a path to Bougainville independence began after the referendum, and are ongoing. At 462,840 km (178,704 sq mi), Papua New Guinea is the world's 54th-largest country and
48160-510: Was a strong evolutionary pressure which acted on the development of dark skin pigmentation in early members of the genus Homo . The effect of sunlight on folic acid levels has been crucial in the development of dark skin. The earliest primate ancestors of modern humans most likely had pale skin, like our closest modern relative—the chimpanzee . About 7 million years ago human and chimpanzee lineages diverged, and between 4.5 and 2 million years ago early humans moved out of rainforests to
48384-416: Was achieved when this landmass formed part of the Sahul continent , connected to the island of New Guinea via a land bridge. The Torres Strait Islanders are indigenous to the Torres Strait Islands, which are at the northernmost tip of Queensland near Papua New Guinea . The earliest definite human remains found in Australia are that of Mungo Man , which have been dated at c. 40,000 years old. It
48608-432: Was categorized by him as being in Polynesia; and the only country in his definition of Australasia was Australia. His definition of Polynesia included both Easter Island and Hawaii, which had not yet been annexed by either Chile or the United States. The Journal of the Royal Statistical Society stated in 1892 that Australia was a large island within Oceania rather than a small continent. It additionally commented: it
48832-502: Was defined as Australia and an ensemble of various Pacific Islands, "particularly those in the central and south Pacific [but] never those in the extreme north, for example the Aleutian chain." In the Pacific Ocean Handbook (1945), author Eliot Grinnell Mears claimed, "it is customary to exclude the Aleutians of the North Pacific, the American coastal islands and the Netherlands East Indies ", and that he included Australia and New Zealand in Oceania for "scientific reasons; Australia's fauna
49056-482: Was exposed to sunlight. In the tropics, natural selection favoured dark-skinned human populations as high levels of skin pigmentation protected against the harmful effects of sunlight. Indigenous populations' skin reflectance (the amount of sunlight the skin reflects) and the actual UV radiation in a particular geographic area is highly correlated, which supports this idea. Genetic evidence also supports this notion, demonstrating that around 1.2 million years ago there
49280-427: Was inhabited in prehistoric times by either Melanesians or Polynesians, and is geographically adjacent to the islands of Melanesia. The current inhabitants are mostly European Australians, and the UN categorize it as being in the Australasia subregion. The 1982 edition of the South Pacific Handbook , by David Stanley, groups Australia, New Zealand, Norfolk Island, and Hawaiʻi together under an "Anglonesia" category. This
49504-539: Was resolved in 1997. Bougainville had been the primary mining region of the country, generating 40% of the national budget. The native peoples felt they were bearing the adverse environmental effects of the mining, which contaminated the land, water and air, without gaining a fair share of the profits. The government and rebels negotiated a peace agreement that established the Bougainville Autonomous District and Province. The autonomous Bougainville elected Joseph Kabui as president in 2005, who served until he died in 2008. He
49728-412: Was succeeded by his deputy John Tabinaman as acting president while an election to fill the unexpired term was organised. James Tanis won that election in December 2008 and served until the inauguration of John Momis, the winner of the 2010 elections. As part of the current peace settlement, a non-binding independence referendum was held, between 23 November and 7 December 2019. The referendum question
49952-472: Was the most northerly area to be inhabited by races associated with Oceania. The 1926 book Modern World History, 1776–1926 , by Alexander Clarence Flick, considered Oceania to include all islands in the Pacific, and associated the term with the Malay Archipelago, the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, the Aleutian Islands, Japan's Ryukyu Islands , Taiwan and the Kuril Islands. He further included in his definition Sakhalin , an island which
50176-415: Was the name coined by the Spanish explorer Yñigo Ortiz de Retez . In 1545, he noted the resemblance of the people to those he had earlier seen along the Guinea coast of Africa. Guinea, in its turn, is etymologically derived from the Portuguese word Guiné . The name is one of several toponyms sharing similar etymologies , ultimately meaning "land of the blacks" or similar meanings, in reference to
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