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Melanesia
Melanesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It extends from New Guinea in the west to the Fiji Islands in the east, and includes the Arafura Sea. The region includes the four independent countries of Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea. It also includes the West New Guinea, Indonesian part of New Guinea, the French overseas collectivity of New Caledonia, and the Torres Strait Islands. Almost all of the region is in the Southern Hemisphere; only a few small islands that are not politically considered part of Oceania—specifically the northwestern islands of Western New Guinea—lie in the Northern Hemisphere. The name ''Melanesia'' (in French, ''Mélanésie'') was first used in 1832 by French navigator Jules Dumont d'Urville: he coined the terms ''Melanesia'' and ''Micronesia'' to go alongside the pre-existing ''Polynesia'' to designate what he viewed as the three main Ethnicity, ethnic and geographical regions forming the Pacif ...
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West New Guinea
Western New Guinea, also known as Papua, Indonesian New Guinea, and Indonesian Papua, is the western half of the island of New Guinea, formerly Dutch and granted to Indonesia in 1962. Given the island is alternatively named Papua, the region is also called West Papua (). It is one of the seven geographical units of Indonesia in ISO 3166-2:ID. Lying to the west of Papua New Guinea and geographically a part of the Australian continent, the territory is almost entirely in the Southern Hemisphere and includes the Biak and Raja Ampat archipelagoes. The region is predominantly covered with rainforest where traditional peoples live, including the Dani of the Baliem Valley. A large proportion of the population live in or near coastal areas. The largest city is Jayapura. The island of New Guinea has been populated for tens of thousands of years. European traders began frequenting the region around the late 16th century due to spice trade. In the end, the Dutch Empire emerge ...
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Melanesian Mythology
Melanesian mythology refers to the folklore, myths, and religions of Melanesia, a region in Southwest Oceania that encompasses the archipelagos of New Guinea (including Indonesian New Guinea and Papua New Guinea), the Torres Strait Islands, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Fiji. The various mythologies consist primarily of the traditions of oral literature in the different populations of Melanesia. More recent aspects include the cargo cults born in the 20th century during the Pacific War. The Mythology of All Races (1916) In 1916 Roland Burrage Dixon wrote an early account of Melanesian mythology in '' The Mythology of All Races''. Dixon (1916). Dixon's compilation reflects beliefs by some Western observers of the time in the existence of a mythology at the scale of Melanesia as a whole. It was then accepted practice to blend together mythological traditions from different regions of the South Pacific as if they were examples of a single "Melanesian" culture. Mo ...
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Melanesians
Melanesians are the predominant and Indigenous peoples of Oceania, indigenous inhabitants of Melanesia, in an area stretching from New Guinea to the Fiji Islands. Most speak one of the many languages of the Austronesian languages, Austronesian language family (especially ones in the Oceanic languages, Oceanic branch) or one of the many unrelated families of Papuan languages. There are several creoles of the region, such as Tok Pisin, Hiri Motu, Pijin language, Solomon Islands Pijin, Bislama, and Papuan Malay. Origin and genetics The origin of Melanesians is generally associated with the first settlement of Australasia by a lineage dubbed 'Australasians' or 'Australo-Papuans' during the Initial Upper Paleolithic, which is "ascribed to a population movement with uniform genetic features and material culture" (Ancient East Eurasians), and sharing deep ancestry with modern East Asian people, East Asian peoples and other Asia-Pacific groups. It is estimated that people reached Austral ...
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Solomon Islands
Solomon Islands, also known simply as the Solomons,John Prados, ''Islands of Destiny'', Dutton Caliber, 2012, p,20 and passim is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 1000 smaller islands in Melanesia, part of Oceania, to the northeast of Australia. It is directly adjacent to Autonomous Region of Bougainville, Bougainville, a part of Papua New Guinea to the west, Australia to the southwest, New Caledonia and Vanuatu to the southeast, Fiji, Wallis and Futuna, and Tuvalu to the east, and Nauru and the Federated States of Micronesia to the north. It has a total area of 28,896 square kilometres (11,157 sq mi), and a population of 734,887 according to the official estimates for mid-2023. Its capital and largest city, Honiara, is located on the largest island, Guadalcanal. The country takes its name from the wider area of the Solomon Islands (archipelago), Solomon Islands archipelago, which is a collection of Melanesian islands that also includes the Autonomous ...
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Oceania UN Geoscheme - Map Of Melanesia Cropped
Oceania ( , ) 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 and a population of around 46.3 million as of 2024. 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 the much less developed economies of Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and Western New Guinea. The largest and most populous list of sovereign states and dependent territories in Oceania, cou ...
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Northern Hemisphere
The Northern Hemisphere is the half of Earth that is north of the equator. For other planets in the Solar System, north is defined by humans as being in the same celestial sphere, celestial hemisphere relative to the invariable plane of the Solar System as Earth's North Pole. Due to Earth's axial tilt of 23.439281°, there is a seasonal variation in the lengths of the day and night. There is also a seasonal variation in temperatures, which lags the variation in day and night. Conventionally, winter in the Northern Hemisphere is taken as the period from the December solstice (typically December 21 UTC) to the March equinox (typically March 20 UTC), while summer is taken as the period from the June solstice through to the September equinox (typically on 23 September UTC). The dates vary each year due to the difference between the calendar year and the Year#Astronomical years, astronomical year. Within the Northern Hemisphere, oceanic currents can change the weather patterns that aff ...
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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 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 a mechanism of natural selection against folate (vitamin B9) depletion, and to a lesser extent, Direct DNA damage, DNA damage. The primary factor contributing to the evolution of dark skin pigmentation was the breakdown of folate in reaction to ultraviolet radiat ...
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Place Name Origins
In much of the " Old World" (approximately Africa, Asia and Europe) the names of many places cannot easily be interpreted or understood; they do not convey any apparent meaning in the modern language of the area. This is due to a general set of processes through which place names evolve over time, until their obvious meaning is lost. In contrast, in the "New World" (roughly North America, South America, and Australasia), many place names' origins are known. Although the origin of many place names is now forgotten, it is often possible to establish likely meanings through consideration of early forms of the name. Some general conclusions about the nature of place names, and the way in which place names change, can be made and are examined below. It is also possible to distinguish regional trends and differences in the naming of places, as is also discussed below. Types of place name There are several clearly definable types of place name, the primary division being between the ...
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Melanesian Languages
In linguistics, Melanesian is an obsolete term referring to the Austronesian languages of Melanesia: that is, the Oceanic, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, or Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages apart from Polynesian and Micronesian. A typical classification of the Austronesian languages ca. 1970 would divide them into something like the following branches: *Formosan languages (Northern) * Western Malayo-Polynesian * Eastern Malayo-Polynesian **Melanesian languages (including Fijian) **Micronesian languages **Polynesian languages Phylogenetic affiliations It is now known that the Melanesian languages do not form a genealogical node: they are at best paraphyletic, and very likely polyphyletic; like Papuan, the term is now used as one of convenience, and sometimes placed in scare quotes. Although the term was at least in the beginning partially racial rather than linguistic, the Melanesian and other Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages are typologically similar ...
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Oceanian Art
Oceanic art or Oceanian art comprises the creative works made by the native people of the Pacific Islands and Australia, including areas as far apart as Hawaii and Easter Island. Specifically it comprises the works of the two groups of people who settled the area, though during two different periods. They would in time however, come to interact and together reach even more remote islands. The area is often broken down into four separate regions: Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia and Australia. Australia, along with interior Melanesia (Papua), are populated by descendants of the first waves of human migrations into the region by Australo-Melanesians. Micronesia, Island Melanesia, and Polynesia, on the other hand, are descendants of later Austronesian voyagers who intermixed with native Australo-Melanesians; mostly via the Neolithic Lapita culture. All of the regions in later times would be greatly affected by western influence and colonization. In more recent times, the people of O ...
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Music Of Melanesia
Melanesian music refers to the various musical traditions found across the vast region of Melanesia. Vocal music is very common across Melanesia; Hand gestures are an important part of many songs, and most traditional music is dance music. left, Wax cylinder recording from German New Guinea on August 23, 1904, recorded by German anthropologist Rudolf Pöch. Folk instruments include various kinds of drums and slit-log gongs, flutes, panpipes, stamping tubes, rattles, among others. Occasionally, European guitars and ukuleles are also used.See also Stern (2000). Notes References * Ammann, Raymond. 2012. ''Sounds of Secrets: Field Notes on Ritual Music and Musical Instruments on the Islands of Vanuatu''. KlangKulturStudien – SoundCultureStudies, 7. Berlin: LIT Verlag. * Crowe, Peter. 1994. ''Vanuatu (Nouvelles Hébrides): Singsing-Danis Kastom–Musiques Coutumières''. AIMP XXXIV, CD-796. Genève: VDE-GALLO. *. * Huffman, Kirk. 1996. Single bamboo flutes. In Joël Bonnema ...
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Y-DNA Haplogroups In Populations Of Oceania
Listed here are notable ethnic groups and native populations from the Oceania (Pacific Islands and Australia) and East Indonesia by human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups based on relevant studies. See also *Oceania **Languages of Oceania ** Demographics of Oceania ** List of Oceanian countries by population Notes References External linksY-DNA Ethnographic and Genographic Atlas and Open-Source Data Compilation {{Y-chromosome haplogroups by population Oceania Oceania ( , ) is a region, 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 co ...
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