[23][24] 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 2011 book Maritime Adaptations of 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.

"[30] 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 the name Oceania."

[31] 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.

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.

[76][77] 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 a fifth grand division of the world."

[84] 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.

[84] American geographer Jesse Olney's 1845 book A Practical System of Modern Geography stated that it "comprises the numerous isles of the Pacific, lying south east of Asia."

"[86] 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.

[90] 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 the islands in the [Malay] archipelago, to which certain writers have given the name of Malesia.

Flick estimated this definition of Oceania had 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".

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.

[95] 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."

In addition, 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.

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.

"[67] Brown went on to add, "the small islands lying off the continent, like the Queen Charlotte's in the North Pacific, the Farallones off California, and the Chinchas off Peru are—to all intents and purposes, only detached bits of the adjoining shores.

[123] 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 the book.

[125] 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, the homeland of the Austronesian language family whose speakers colonized significant parts of the region about 6,000 years ago.

"[137] In 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."

[143][144] 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 the region of Oceania as it is understood today.

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 the Pacific Plate).

[191] It 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.

Between c. 3000 and 1000 BCE, speakers of Austronesian languages began spreading from Taiwan into Island Southeast Asia,[199][200][201] as tribes whose natives were thought to have arrived through South China c. 8,000 years ago to the edges of western Micronesia and on into Melanesia.

[246] The most diverse country of Oceania when it comes to the environment is Australia, with tropical rainforests in the north-east, mountain ranges in the south-east, south-west and east, and dry desert in the centre.

[280] In the tropical western Pacific, the monsoon and the related wet season during the summer months contrast with dry winds in the winter which blow over the ocean from the Asian landmass.

With regards to Papuan influence, autochthonous haplogroups support the hypothesis of a long history in Near Oceania, with some lineages suggesting a time depth of 60 thousand years.

The country has one of the most globalised economies and depends greatly on international trade – mainly with Australia, Canada, China, the European Union, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and the United States.

[419] The country's diverse scenery and compact size, plus government incentives,[420] have encouraged some producers to film big budget movies in New Zealand, including Avatar, The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Chronicles of Narnia, King Kong and The Last Samurai.

[427] The sasa is also a traditional dance where rows of dancers perform rapid synchronised movements in time to the rhythm of wooden drums (pate) or rolled mats.