Micronesia
It has a close shared cultural history with three other island regions: Maritime Southeast Asia to the west, Polynesia to the east, and Melanesia to the south—as well as with the wider community of Austronesian peoples.
The Marianas were politically divided in 1898, when the United States acquired title to Guam under the Treaty of Paris, 1898, which ended the Spanish–American War.
Germany lost all of her colonies at the end of World War I and the Northern Mariana Islands became a League of Nations Mandate, with Japan as the mandatory.
[citation needed] Micronesians may have possibly visited Wake Island in prehistoric times to harvest fish, but there is nothing to suggest any kind of settlement.
By 1200 BCE, they again began crossing open seas beyond inter-island visibility, reaching Vanuatu, Fiji, and New Caledonia; before continuing eastwards to become the ancestors of the Polynesian people.
[28][30][31] Construction of Nan Madol, a megalithic complex made from basalt lava logs in Pohnpei, began in around 1180 CE.
Documents relating to the 1525 voyage of Diogo da Rocha suggest that he made the first European contact with inhabitants of the Caroline Islands, possibly staying on the Ulithi atoll for four months and encountering Yap.
When Russian explorer Otto von Kotzebue visited the Marshall Islands in 1817, he noted that Marshallese families practiced infanticide after the birth of a third child as a form of population planning due to frequent famines.
In contrast, it took until the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th centuries for missionaries to fully convert the inhabitants of Melanesia; however, a comparison of the cultural contrast must take into account the fact that Melanesia has always had deadly strains of malaria present in various degrees and distributions throughout its history (see De Rays Expedition) and up to the present; conversely, Micronesia does not have—and never seems to have had—any malarial mosquitos nor pathogens on any of its islands in the past.
Additional money comes in from government grants, mostly from the United States, and the $150 million the US paid into a trust fund for reparations of residents of Bikini Atoll who had to move after nuclear testing.
The tourist industry consists mainly of scuba divers that come to see the coral reefs, do wall dives and visit sunken ships from WWII.
Copra production used to be a more significant source of income, however, world prices have dropped in part to large palm plantations that are now planted in places like Borneo.
[49] Genetics also show a significant number of Micronesian have Japanese paternal ancestry: 9.5% of males from Micronesia as well as 0.2% in East Timor carry the Haplogroup D-M55.
[53] It is thought that ancestors of the Carolinian people may have originally immigrated from the Asian mainland and Indonesia to Micronesia around 2,000 years ago.
The immigration of Carolinians to Saipan began in the early 19th century, after the Spanish reduced the local population of Chamorro natives to just 3,700.
From the 1970s, to attend high school the children needed to travel to Pohnpei, bringing their parents with them to create communities of Kapings on the island.
[57] There are large East, South and Southeast Asian communities found across certain Micronesian countries that are either immigrants, foreign workers or descendants of either one, most migrated to the islands during the 1800s and 1900s.
Genetic testing found that 9.5% of males from Micronesia as well as 0.2% in East Timor[64] carry what is believed to reflect recent admixture from Japan.
That is, D-M116.1 (D1b1) is generally believed to be a primary subclade of D-M64.1 (D1b), possibly as a result of the Japanese military occupation of Southeast Asia during World War II.
On the eastern edge of the Federated States of Micronesia, the languages Nukuoro and Kapingamarangi represent an extreme westward extension of the Polynesian branch of Oceanic.
[65] The people of Palau, the Marianas and Yap often chew betel nuts seasoned with lime and pepper leaf.
[66] The archeological traditions of the Yapese people remained relatively unchanged even after the first European contact with the region during Magellan's 1520s circumnavigation of the globe.
Stylistically, traditional Micronesian art is streamlined and of a practical simplicity to its function, but is typically finished to a high standard of quality.
[68] The first half of the 20th century saw a downturn in Micronesia's cultural integrity and a strong foreign influence from both western and Japanese Imperialist powers.
Independence from colonial powers in the second half of the century resulted in a renewed interest in, and respect for, traditional arts.
Marshallese cuisine comprises the fare and foodways of the Marshall Islands, and includes local foods such as breadfruit, taro root, pandanus and seafood, among others.
Weriyeng[75] is one of the last two schools of traditional navigation found in the central Caroline Islands in Micronesia, the other being Fanur.
However, it explains that "law in Micronesia is an extraordinary flux and flow of contrasting thought and meaning, inside and outside the legal system".
In the Marshall Islands, the roro is a kind of traditional chant, usually about ancient legends and performed to give guidance during navigation and strength for mothers in labour.
[81] This quadrennial international multi-sport event involves all of Micronesia's countries and territories except Wake Island.
