Near Oceania
Encyclopedia
Near Oceania or Near Melanesia is the part of Oceania
settled 35,000 years ago, comprising western Island Melanesia
: the Bismarck Archipelago
and the Solomon Islands archipelago. Some definitions include Australia
and New Guinea
. Compare Remote Oceania
.
explored what is now Indonesia
, drawing attention to fundamental biological differences between the Australia-New Guinea region and Southeast Asia
. The boundary between the Asian and Australian faunal regions consists of a zone of smaller islands bearing the name of Wallacea
, in honor of the great co-discoverer of the theory of natural selection
.
Wallace speculated that the key to understanding these differences would lie in "now-submerged lands, uniting islands to continents" (1895). We now know that at several intervals during the Pleistocene
, the sea surface was 130 metres below the current sea level
. At these times New Guinea, Tasmania
, the Aru Islands
, and some smaller islands were joined to the Australian mainland. Biogeographers call this enlarged Greater Australian continent Sahul (Ballard, 1993) or Meganesia. West of Wallacea, the vast Sunda Shelf
was also exposed as dry land, greatly extending the Southeast Asian mainland to include the Greater Sunda Islands
of Sundaland
. However, the islands of Wallacea (primarily Sulawesi
, Ambon
, Ceram
, Halmahera
and the Lesser Sundas) always remained an island world, imposing a barrier to the dispersal of terrestrial vertebrate
s, including early hominids
.
To the north and east of New Guinea, the islands of Near Oceania (the Bismarck Archipelago
and the Solomons) were likewise never connected to Sahul by dry land, for deep-water trenches also separate these from the Australian continental shelf.
It seems that human colonization of this region was most likely effected during the interval between 60,000 and 40,000 years ago, although some researchers would push the possible dates earlier. But the key point is that even when the oceans were at their lowest levels, there were always significant open-water gaps between the islands of Wallacea, and therefore, the arrival of humans into Sahul, necessitated over-water transport.
This was also the case of the expansion of humans beyond New Guinea into the archipelagoes of Near Oceania. Herein lies one of the most exciting and intriguing aspects of Pacific prehistory: that we are likely dealing with the earliest purposive voyaging in the history of humankind.
and Near Oceania were proposed by archaeologist Roger Green
in 1991. They are designed to dispel the outdated categories of Polynesia
, Micronesia
, and Melanesia
; Near Oceania cuts right across the old category of Melanesia. The old categories have been in use since they were proposed by French explorer Louis d'Urville in the mid- 19th century. Though the push of academia has been to replace the categories with Green's terms since the early 1990s, the old categories have remained in popular culture and general usage.
Oceania
Oceania is a region centered on the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Conceptions of what constitutes Oceania range from the coral atolls and volcanic islands of the South Pacific to the entire insular region between Asia and the Americas, including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago...
settled 35,000 years ago, comprising western Island Melanesia
Island Melanesia
Island Melanesia is the part of Melanesia east of mainland New Guinea, from the Bismarck Archipelago to New Caledonia. Compare Near Oceania....
: the Bismarck Archipelago
Bismarck Archipelago
The Bismarck Archipelago is a group of islands off the northeastern coast of New Guinea in the western Pacific Ocean and is part of the Islands Region of Papua New Guinea.-History:...
and the Solomon Islands archipelago. Some definitions include Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and New Guinea
New Guinea
New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...
. Compare Remote Oceania
Remote Oceania
Remote Oceania is the part of Oceania settled within the last 10,000 years, comprising Island Melanesia south and east of the Solomon Islands archipelago, plus the open Pacific: Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Palau, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Compare Near Oceania....
.
Prehistory
The great nineteenth-century naturalist Alfred Russel WallaceAlfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist...
explored what is now Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
, drawing attention to fundamental biological differences between the Australia-New Guinea region and Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...
. The boundary between the Asian and Australian faunal regions consists of a zone of smaller islands bearing the name of Wallacea
Wallacea
Wallacea is a biogeographical designation for a group of Indonesian islands separated by deep water straits from the Asian and Australian continental shelves. Wallacea includes Sulawesi, the largest island in the group, as well as Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores, Sumba, Timor, Halmahera, Buru, Seram, and...
, in honor of the great co-discoverer of the theory of natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
.
Wallace speculated that the key to understanding these differences would lie in "now-submerged lands, uniting islands to continents" (1895). We now know that at several intervals during the Pleistocene
Pleistocene
The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....
, the sea surface was 130 metres below the current sea level
Sea level
Mean sea level is a measure of the average height of the ocean's surface ; used as a standard in reckoning land elevation...
. At these times New Guinea, Tasmania
Tasmania
Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...
, the Aru Islands
Aru Islands
The Aru Islands are a group of about ninety-five low-lying islands in the Maluku province of eastern Indonesia. They also form a regency of Indonesia.-Geography:...
, and some smaller islands were joined to the Australian mainland. Biogeographers call this enlarged Greater Australian continent Sahul (Ballard, 1993) or Meganesia. West of Wallacea, the vast Sunda Shelf
Sunda Shelf
Geologically, the Sunda Shelf is a south east extension of the continental shelf of Southeast Asia. Major landmasses on the shelf include the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo, Java, Madura, Bali and their surrounding smaller islands. It covers an area of approximately 1.85 million km2...
was also exposed as dry land, greatly extending the Southeast Asian mainland to include the Greater Sunda Islands
Greater Sunda Islands
The Greater Sunda Islands are a group of large islands within the Malay archipelago. Jawa , smallest but by far the most populous and important; Sumatera in the west, directly across the Strait of Malacca from Malaysia; Kalimantan, the Indonesian sector of large, compact, minicontinent Borneo; and...
of Sundaland
Sundaland
Sundaland is a biogeographical region of Southeastern Asia which encompasses the areas of the Asian continental shelf that was exposed during the last ice age. It included the Malay Peninsula on the Asian mainland, as well as the large islands of Borneo, Java, and Sumatra and their surrounding...
. However, the islands of Wallacea (primarily Sulawesi
Sulawesi
Sulawesi is one of the four larger Sunda Islands of Indonesia and is situated between Borneo and the Maluku Islands. In Indonesia, only Sumatra, Borneo, and Papua are larger in territory, and only Java and Sumatra have larger Indonesian populations.- Etymology :The Portuguese were the first to...
, Ambon
Ambon Island
Ambon Island is part of the Maluku Islands of Indonesia. The island has an area of , and is mountainous, well watered, and fertile. Ambon Island consists of 2 territories: The main city and seaport is Ambon , which is also the capital of Maluku province and Maluku Tengah Ambon Island is part of the...
, Ceram
CERAM
CERAM is a materials science and testing organisation based in Stoke-on-Trent specialising in the field of ceramics. The CERAM Group owns testing facilities around the world.-History:The British Refractories Research Association was formed in 1920...
, Halmahera
Halmahera
Halmahera is the largest island in the Maluku Islands. It is part of the North Maluku province of Indonesia.Halmahera has a land area of 17,780 km² and a population in 1995 of 162,728...
and the Lesser Sundas) always remained an island world, imposing a barrier to the dispersal of terrestrial vertebrate
Vertebrate
Vertebrates are animals that are members of the subphylum Vertebrata . Vertebrates are the largest group of chordates, with currently about 58,000 species described. Vertebrates include the jawless fishes, bony fishes, sharks and rays, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds...
s, including early hominids
Hominidae
The Hominidae or include them .), as the term is used here, form a taxonomic family, including four extant genera: chimpanzees , gorillas , humans , and orangutans ....
.
To the north and east of New Guinea, the islands of Near Oceania (the Bismarck Archipelago
Bismarck Archipelago
The Bismarck Archipelago is a group of islands off the northeastern coast of New Guinea in the western Pacific Ocean and is part of the Islands Region of Papua New Guinea.-History:...
and the Solomons) were likewise never connected to Sahul by dry land, for deep-water trenches also separate these from the Australian continental shelf.
It seems that human colonization of this region was most likely effected during the interval between 60,000 and 40,000 years ago, although some researchers would push the possible dates earlier. But the key point is that even when the oceans were at their lowest levels, there were always significant open-water gaps between the islands of Wallacea, and therefore, the arrival of humans into Sahul, necessitated over-water transport.
This was also the case of the expansion of humans beyond New Guinea into the archipelagoes of Near Oceania. Herein lies one of the most exciting and intriguing aspects of Pacific prehistory: that we are likely dealing with the earliest purposive voyaging in the history of humankind.
- The settlement of ManusManus IslandManus Island is part of Manus Province in northern Papua New Guinea and is the largest island of the Admiralty Islands. It is the fifth largest island in Papua New Guinea with an area of 2,100 km², measuring around 100 km × 30 km. According to the 2000 census, Manus Island had a...
— in the Admiralty IslandsAdmiralty IslandsThe Admiralty Islands are a group of eighteen islands in the Bismarck Archipelago, to the north of New Guinea in the south Pacific Ocean. These are also sometimes called the Manus Islands, after the largest island. These rainforest-covered islands form part of Manus Province, the smallest and...
— may represent a real threshold in voyaging ability as it is the only island settled in the PleistocenePleistoceneThe Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....
beyond the range of one-way intervisibilty. Voyaging to Manus involved a blind crossing of some 60-90 km in a 200-300 km voyage, when no land would have been visible whether coming from the north coast of Sahul or New HanoverNew Hanover IslandNew Hanover Island, , also called Lavongai, is a large volcanic island in New Ireland Province, part of the Bismarck Archipelago of the New Guinea Islands region of Papua New Guinea, at...
at the northern end of New IrelandNew Ireland (island)New Ireland is a large island in Papua New Guinea, approximately 7,404 km² in area. It is the largest island of the New Ireland Province, lying northeast of the island of New Britain. Both islands are part of the Bismarck Archipelago, named after Otto von Bismarck, and they are separated by...
. These would have been tense hours or days on board that first voyage and the name of Pleistocene Columbus who led this crew will never been known. The target arcs for Manus are 15° from New Hanover, 17° from Mussau and 28° from New Guinea. (Matthew Spriggs, The Island Melanesians, Oxford: Blackwell, 1997)
History of the Term
The terms Remote OceaniaRemote Oceania
Remote Oceania is the part of Oceania settled within the last 10,000 years, comprising Island Melanesia south and east of the Solomon Islands archipelago, plus the open Pacific: Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Palau, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Compare Near Oceania....
and Near Oceania were proposed by archaeologist Roger Green
Roger Curtis Green
Roger Curtis Green was an American born, New Zealand-based archaeologist, Professor Emeritus at The University of Auckland, and member of the National Academy of Sciences and Royal Society of New Zealand...
in 1991. They are designed to dispel the outdated categories of Polynesia
Polynesia
Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they share many similar traits including language, culture and beliefs...
, Micronesia
Micronesia
Micronesia is a subregion of Oceania, comprising thousands of small islands in the western Pacific Ocean. It is distinct from Melanesia to the south, and Polynesia to the east. The Philippines lie to the west, and Indonesia to the southwest....
, and Melanesia
Melanesia
Melanesia is a subregion of Oceania extending from the western end of the Pacific Ocean to the Arafura Sea, and eastward to Fiji. The region comprises most of the islands immediately north and northeast of Australia...
; Near Oceania cuts right across the old category of Melanesia. The old categories have been in use since they were proposed by French explorer Louis d'Urville in the mid- 19th century. Though the push of academia has been to replace the categories with Green's terms since the early 1990s, the old categories have remained in popular culture and general usage.