Melanesia
[citation needed] The region includes the four independent countries of Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea.
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 ethnic and geographical regions forming the Pacific.
The concept among Europeans of Melanesia as a distinct region evolved gradually over time as their expeditions mapped and explored the Pacific.
Early European explorers noted the physical differences among groups of Pacific Islanders.
In 1756, Charles de Brosses theorized that there was an "old black race" in the Pacific who had been conquered or defeated by the peoples of what is now called Polynesia, whom he distinguished as having lighter skin.
[4]: 189–190 In the first half of the nineteenth century, Jean-Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent and Jules Dumont d'Urville characterized Melanesians as a distinct racial group.
In the nineteenth century, Robert Henry Codrington, a British missionary, produced a series of monographs on "the Melanesians", based on his long-time residence in the region.
Many apply the term only to the smaller islands, excluding New Guinea; Fiji has frequently been treated as an anomalous border region or even assigned wholly to Polynesia; and the people of the Torres Straits Islands are often simply classified as Australian aborigines.
[9]: 1 In 1998, Paul Sillitoe wrote: "It is not easy to define precisely, on geographical, cultural, biological, or any other grounds, where Melanesia ends and the neighbouring regions ...
It covers populations that have a certain linguistic, biological and cultural affinity – a certain ill-defined sameness, which shades off at its margins into difference.
[11]: 4 The author Bernard Narokobi has written that the concept of the "Melanesian Way" as a distinct cultural force could give the people of the region a sense of empowerment.
For instance, when the countries of Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, and Fiji reached a regional preferential trade agreement, they named it the Melanesian Spearhead Group.
Another wave of Austronesian migrants, originating ultimately from Taiwan, arrived in Melanesia much later, probably between 4000 and 3000 BC.
[15] This theory was later called into question, however, by the findings of a genetic study published by Temple University in 2008.
The genetic evidence suggests that they left few descendants in Melanesia, and therefore probably "only intermixed to a very modest degree with the indigenous populations there".
Examples of other Melanesian creoles are Unserdeutsch, Solomon Islands Pijin, Bislama, and Papuan Malay.
These include: Norfolk Island, listed above, has archaeological evidence of East Polynesian rather than Melanesian settlement.
