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Micronesia

This article is about the geographical region of Micronesia. For the sovereign state, see Federated States of Micronesia.
Not to be confused with Macaronesia.

Subregions (Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia and Australasia), as well as sovereign and dependent islands of Oceania
Micronesia is one of three major cultural areas of the Pacific Ocean islands, along with Melanesia and Polynesia.
Outline of sovereign (dark orange) and dependent islands (bright orange)

Micronesia (UK: /ˌmaɪkrəˈniːziə/, US: /-ˈniːʒə/)[1] is a subregion of Oceania, consisting of approximately 2,000 small islands in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean. 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 region has a tropical marine climate and is part of the Oceanian realm. It includes four main archipelagos—the Caroline Islands, the Gilbert Islands, the Mariana Islands, and the Marshall Islands — as well as numerous islands that are not part of any archipelago.

Political control of areas within Micronesia varies depending on the island, and is distributed among six sovereign nations. Some of the Caroline Islands are part of the Republic of Palau and some are part of the Federated States of Micronesia (often shortened to "FSM" or "Micronesia"—not to be confused with the identical name for the overall region). The Gilbert Islands (along with the Phoenix Islands and the Line Islands in Polynesia) comprise the Republic of Kiribati. The Mariana Islands are affiliated with the United States; some of them belong to the U.S. Territory of Guam and the rest belong to the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The island of Nauru is its own sovereign nation. The Marshall Islands all belong to the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The sovereignty of Wake Island is contested: it is claimed both by the United States and by the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The United States has actual possession of Wake Island, which is under the immediate administration of the United States Air Force.

Notwithstanding the fact that the notion of "Micronesia" has been quite well established since 1832 and has been used ever since, by most popular works, this set does not correspond to any geomorphological, archaeological, linguistic, ethnic or cultural unity, but on the contrary represents a disparate ensemble, with no real deep unity. In fact, "Micronesian people" does not exist as a subset of the sea-migrating Austronesian people, who may also include the Polynesian people and the hypothetical Australo-Melanesian or "Melanesian people".[2]

Human settlement of Micronesia began several millennia ago.[3] Based on the current scientific consensus, the Austronesian peoples originated from a prehistoric seaborne migration, known as the Austronesian expansion, from pre-Han Formosa, at around 3000 to 1500 BCE. Austronesians reached the northernmost Philippines, specifically the Batanes Islands, by around 2200 BCE. Austronesians were the first people to invent oceangoing sailing technologies (notably catamarans, outrigger boats, lashed-lug boat building, and the crab claw sail), which enabled their rapid dispersal into the islands of the Indo-Pacific.[4][5][6] From 2000 BCE they assimilated (or were assimilated by) the earlier populations on the islands in their migration pathway.[7][8][9][10][11]

The earliest known contact of Europeans with Micronesia was in 1521, when Magellan expedition landed in the Marianas. Jules Dumont d'Urville is usually credited with coining the term "Micronesia" in 1832, but in fact, Louis Domeny de Rienzi used this term a year earlier.[12][13]

  1. ^ from Ancient Greek: μικρός mikrós "small" and νῆσος nêsos "island"
  2. ^ Patrick Vinton Kirch, On the Road of the Winds: an Archeological History of the Pacific Islands before European Contact, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2000:5.
  3. ^ Kirch 2001, p. 167.
  4. ^ Doran, Edwin B. (1981). Wangka: Austronesian Canoe Origins. Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 9780890961070.
  5. ^ Dierking, Gary (2007). Building Outrigger Sailing Canoes: Modern Construction Methods for Three Fast, Beautiful Boats. International Marine/McGraw-Hill. ISBN 9780071594561.
  6. ^ Horridge, Adrian (1986). "The Evolution of Pacific Canoe Rigs". The Journal of Pacific History. 21 (2): 83–89. doi:10.1080/00223348608572530. JSTOR 25168892.
  7. ^ Bellwood, Peter (1988). "A Hypothesis for Austronesian Origins" (PDF). Asian Perspectives. 26 (1): 107–117. Archived (PDF) from the original on 1 May 2019. Retrieved 1 May 2019.
  8. ^ Bellwood, Peter (1991). "The Austronesian Dispersal and the Origin of Languages". Scientific American. 265 (1): 88–93. Bibcode:1991SciAm.265a..88B. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0791-88. JSTOR 24936983.
  9. ^ Hill, Adrian V.S.; Serjeantson, Susan W., eds. (1989). The Colonization of the Pacific: A Genetic Trail. Research Monographs on Human Population Biology No. 7. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198576952.
  10. ^ Bellwood P, Fox JJ, Tryon D (2006). The Austronesians: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. Australian National University Press. ISBN 9781920942854. Archived from the original on 2 April 2020. Retrieved 23 March 2019.
  11. ^ Blench, Roger (2012). "Almost Everything You Believed about the Austronesians Isn't True" (PDF). In Tjoa-Bonatz, Mai Lin; Reinecke, Andreas; Bonatz, Dominik (eds.). Crossing Borders. National University of Singapore Press. pp. 128–148. ISBN 9789971696429. Archived (PDF) from the original on 30 December 2019. Retrieved 23 March 2019.
  12. ^ Rainbird 2004, p. 6.
  13. ^ « Although based on a superficial understanding of the Pacific islanders, Dumont d'Urville's tripartite classification stuck. Indeed, these categories — Polynesians, Micronesians, Melanesians — became so deeply entrenched in Western anthropological thought that it is difficult even now to break out the mould in which they entrap us (Thomas, 1989). Such labels provide handy geographical referents, yet they mislead us greatly if we take them to be meaningful segments of cultural history. Only Polynesia has stood the tests of time and increased knowledge, as a category with historical significance », Patrick Vinton Kirch, On the Road of the Winds : an Archeological History of the Pacific Islands before European Contact, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2000 : 5.
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