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176-680: The Honda AX-1 is a modified version of Honda NX250 intended only for the Japanese market but was offered in Oceania . Using the same chassis as the NX250, the AX-1 came standard with alloy rims, aluminum Pro-Link rear suspension this time with a rear disc brake, dual round headlights, taller cams, stainless steel exhaust and different carburetor settings. The valve clearance check interval is every 24,000 miles (39,000 km). Spares commonality with NX250

352-572: A Dutch fleet reached Japan from the Strait of Magellan. The Dutch had little success in China but established themselves at Hirado, Nagasaki in 1609 and monopolized the Japan trade from 1639. In 1639 Matthijs Quast and Abel Tasman searched the empty ocean east of Japan looking for two islands called ' Rica de Oro ' and ' Rica de Plata '. In 1643 Maarten Gerritsz Vries reached and charted Sakhalin and

528-821: A Spanish language segment of Oceania, and included the Desventuradas Islands, Easter Island, the Galápagos Islands, Guadalupe Island, the Juan Fernández Islands, the Revillagigedo Islands and Salas y Gómez. Cocos Island and Malpelo Island were not explicitly referenced in the book, despite being areas which would fall within this range. All other islands associated with Latin American countries were excluded, as they are continental in nature, unlike Guadalupe Island and

704-703: A U.S. state in 1947, and as such was part of the original UN definition of Oceania. The island states of Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan, all located within the bounds of the Pacific or associated marginal seas, are excluded from the UN definition. 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 . The CIA World Factbook also categorizes Oceania as one of

880-418: A chief Hotu Matuꞌa discovered the island in one or two large canoes with his wife and extended family. They are believed to have been Polynesian . Around 1200, Tahitian explorers discovered and began settling the area. This date range is based on glottochronological calculations and on three radiocarbon dates from charcoal that appears to have been produced during forest clearance activities. Moreover,

1056-596: A continent in the book, but did note that it was one of the six major divisions of the world. The Oxford Handbook of World History (2011) describes the areas encompassed in Oceania as being "afterthoughts in world history texts, lumped together and included at the end of global surveys as areas largely marginal to the main events of world history". The new terms Near Oceania and Remote Oceania were proposed in 1973 by anthropologists Roger Green and Andrew Pawley . By their definition, Near Oceania consists of New Guinea,

1232-750: A fifth grand division of the world." He also viewed Oceania as covering Australia, New Zealand, the Malay Archipelago and the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. In 1887, the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland referred to Australia as the area's westernmost land, while in 1870, British Reverend Alexander Mackay identified the Bonin Islands as its northernmost point, and Macquarie Island as its southernmost point. The Bonin Islands at that time were

1408-520: A large mass attached to North America. Joao-da-Gama-Land was thought to be east of Japan. There was an overgrown Puget Sound called "Grande Mer de l'Ouest" possibly connected to Hudson Bay . In the far south was a Terra Australis . The map published in Diderot 's Encyclopédie in 1755 is filled with nonsense . In 1875 no less than 123 mythical islands were removed from the Royal Navy chart of

1584-588: A large source of income for the Pacific island nations . Definitions of Oceania vary. The broadest definition encompasses the many islands between mainland Asia and the Americas . The island nation of Australia is the only piece of land in the area which is large enough to typically be considered a continent. The culture of the people who lived on these islands was often distinct from that of Asia and pre-Columbian America. Before Europeans arrived in

1760-605: A new ocean. He named it Mar del Sur (literally, "Sea of the South" or "South Sea") because the ocean was to the south of the coast of the isthmus where he first observed the Pacific. Starting in 1519, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed the Pacific East to West on a Castilian ( Spanish ) expedition, which concluded later with the first world circumnavigation by the Basque sailor Juan Sebastián Elcano . Magellan called

1936-506: 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". Hutton Webster's 1919 book Medieval and Modern History also considered Oceania to encompass all islands in the Pacific, stating that, "the term Oceania, or Oceanica, in its widest sense applies to all the Pacific Islands." Webster broke Oceania up into two subdivisions;

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2112-416: A population of around 44.4 million as of 2022. 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

2288-645: A possession of Britain; Macquarie Island, to the south of Tasmania , is a subantarctic island in the Pacific. It was politically associated with Australia and Tasmania by 1870. Alfred Russel Wallace believed in 1879 that Oceania extended to the Aleutian Islands , which are among the northernmost islands of the Pacific. The islands, now politically associated with Alaska , have historically had inhabitants that were related to Indigenous Americans , in addition to having non-tropical biogeography similar to that of Alaska and Siberia . Wallace insisted while

2464-579: A province of New Guinea) in the west to Galápagos Islands (Equador) and Easter Island (Chile) in the east." In a 1980 report on venereal diseases in the South Pacific, the British Journal of Venereal Diseases categorized the Desventuradas Islands, Easter Island, the Galápagos Islands and the Juan Fernández Islands as being in an eastern region of the South Pacific, along with areas such as Pitcairn Islands and French Polynesia, but noted that

2640-548: A recent study which included radiocarbon dates from what is thought to be very early material suggests that the island was discovered and settled as recently as 1200. Oceania was first explored by Europeans from the 16th century onwards. Portuguese navigators, between 1512 and 1526, reached the Maluku Islands (by António de Abreu and Francisco Serrão in 1512), Timor , the Aru Islands (Martim A. Melo Coutinho),

2816-574: A result, much evidence is based on linguistic analysis. The earliest archaeological traces of civilization have been found on the island of Saipan , dated to 1500 BCE or slightly before. The ancestors of the Micronesians settled there over 4,000 years ago. A decentralized chieftain-based system eventually evolved into a more centralized economic and religious culture centred on Yap and Pohnpei . The prehistories of many Micronesian islands such as Yap are not known very well. The first people of

2992-547: A significant non-indigenous European population, numbering around 71,000. Conversely, New Caledonia has still had a similar history to the rest of Melanesia, and their French -speaking Europeans make up only 27% of the total population. As such, it is not also culturally considered a part of the predominantly English-speaking Australasia. Some cultural and political definitions of Australasia include most or all of Melanesia, due to its geographical proximity to Australia and New Zealand, but these are rare. Australia, New Zealand and

3168-421: A trading voyage. The first to do this was James Hanna from Macao in 1785. Robert Gray in 1787 was the first American. This Maritime fur trade reached its peak about 1810, drew many ships into the Pacific and drew Canadians and Americans to the coast. The first Pacific whaling ship left London in 1788 and by the nineteenth century there were hundreds of whaleships in the Pacific each year. Clipper ships cut

3344-580: 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 9,000,000 square kilometres (3,500,000 sq mi) and

3520-524: Is certainly not necessary to consider the Hawaiian Islands and Australia as being in the same part of the world, it is however permissible to unite in one group all the islands which are scattered over the great ocean. It should be remarked that if we take the Malay Archipelago away from Oceania, as do generally the German geographers, the insular world contained in the great ocean is cut in two, and

3696-672: 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. The original inhabitants of the group of islands now named Melanesia were likely the ancestors of the present-day Papuan -speaking people. Migrating from Southeast Asia, they appear to have occupied these islands as far east as

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3872-497: Is evidence of genetic and linguistic interchange between Australians in the far north and the Austronesian peoples of modern-day New Guinea and the islands, but this may be the result of recent trade and intermarriage . They reached Tasmania c. 40,000 years ago by migrating across a land bridge from the mainland that existed during the last ice age . It is believed that the first early human migration to Australia

4048-846: Is geologically a partially submerged volcanic extension of the Aleutian Range on the Alaskan mainland. He did not include the volcanic Kuril Islands and Ryukyu Islands, which similarly border both the Eurasian Plate and the Pacific Plate, nor did he include the neighbouring Kodiak archipelago in the North Pacific Ocean, which is firmly situated on the North American Plate. The Stockholm Journal of East Asian Studies stated in 1996 that Oceania

4224-577: Is geologically part of the Japanese Archipelago , but that has been administered by Russia since World War II . Hong Kong, partly located in another marginal sea of the Pacific (the South China Sea ) was also included in his definition. Australia and New Zealand were grouped together by Flick as Australasia, and categorized as being in the same area of the world as the islands of Oceania. Flick estimated this definition of Oceania had

4400-709: Is high, but certain parts are rare, such as the rear luggage rack, exhaust heat shield, cylinder heads and valve guides and headlights. However, the MD21E engine is known to run to over 100,000km without major overhaul. Part of this is due to an extremely durable Nikasil-coated cylinder bore. Nikasil is a chemically deposited layer of silicon carbide, which is typically twice as hard (on the Mohs scale ) as iron/steel liners. The rear cush drive rubbers are not available and owners have made their own by modifying Honda Civic suspension bushes of similar dimensions, although they rarely fail during

4576-636: Is in spite of the geographical distance separating these areas from Hawaiʻi, which technically lies in the North Pacific. The 1985 edition of the South Pacific Handbook also groups the Galápagos Islands as being in Polynesia, while noting that they are not culturally a part of the subregion. The islands are typically grouped with others in the southeastern Pacific that were never inhabited by Polynesians. The Bonin Islands are in

4752-573: Is largely continental in character, New Zealand's are clearly insular; and neither Commonwealth realm has close ties with Asia." In his 2002 book Oceania: An Introduction to the Cultures and Identities of Pacific Islanders , Andrew Strathern excluded Okinawa and the rest of the Ryukyu Islands from his definition of Oceania, but noted that the islands and their indigenous inhabitants "show many parallels with Pacific island societies." In

4928-712: The Admiralty Islands and the Pitcairn . In 1722, the Dutchman Jacob Roggeveen sailed from Cape Horn to Batavia and discovered Easter Island and Samoa. Six years after Magellan, in 1526, one of the ships of the Loaísa expedition sailed through the Strait of Magellan and followed the coast north to Mexico. In 1578, Francis Drake passed through the Strait, sailed north raiding Spanish ships during his successful circumnavigation . On 5 June 1579,

5104-609: The Bismarck Archipelago and abandoned his search because his ship had become rotten. Until Captain Cook the east coast was completely unknown and New Zealand had only been seen once. Europeans had long believed in a Strait of Anian somewhere near Bering Strait. A large and distorted Hokkaido was called ' Ezo ', 'Jesso' and many other spellings. One of the Kuril Islands named "Companies Landt" by Vries grew into

5280-544: The Bonin Islands , a politically integral part of Japan; Hawaii , a state of the United States ; Clipperton Island, a possession of France ; the Juan Fernández Islands , belonging to Chile; and Macquarie Island , belonging to Australia. The United Nations (UN) has used its own geopolitical definition of Oceania since its foundation in 1947, which utilizes four of the five subregions from

5456-609: The Cook Islands , the Solomon Islands , and the Admiralty Islands , and later the Pitcairn and Vanuatu archipelagos. Europeans knew that there was a vast ocean to the west, and the Chinese knew that there was one to the east. Learned Europeans thought that the world was round and that the two oceans were one. In 1492, Columbus sailed west to what he thought was Asia. When Pedro Álvares Cabral , en route to Asia via

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5632-721: The Farallones off California, and the Chinchas off Peru are—to all intents and purposes, only detached bits of the adjoining shores. But in the case of the Galápagos, at least, this is different." The Juan Fernández Islands and the neighbouring Desventuradas Islands are today seen as the easternmost extension of the Indo-West Pacific biogeographic region. The islands lie on the Nazca Plate with Easter Island and

5808-555: The French expression Terres océaniques (Oceanic lands) c. 1804. In 1814 another French cartographer, Adrien-Hubert Brué, coined from this expression the shorter "Océanie", which derives from the Latin word oceanus , and this from the Greek word ὠκεανός ( ōkeanós ), "ocean". The term Oceania is used because, unlike the other continental groupings, it is the ocean that links

5984-602: The Islands of Don Jorge de Menezes , in the northwest coast of New Guinea (now part of Indonesia ), and named the region Ilhas dos Papuas and is thus credited with the European discovery of Papua . In 1542 Fernão Mendes Pinto reached Japan. From about 1543 until 1614, the Portuguese monopolize the trade between China and Japan, through the nanban trade . In 1589, João da Gama reached Hokkaido and possibly sighted

6160-699: The Juan Fernandez islands and explored the Chilean coast down to the Strait of Magellan. Several Spanish expeditions were sent from South America across the Pacific Ocean in the 16th and early 17th centuries. They all used the southern trade winds . In 1567/68, Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira sailed from Peru to the Solomon Islands . In 1595, he tried again and reached the Santa Cruz Islands (eastern Solomons toward Fiji). He died there and

6336-570: The Kuril Islands . In 1653 Hendrick Hamel was shipwrecked in Korea. At about this time the Russians reached the Pacific overland via Siberia (see below). It is significant that the Russian and Dutch trades were never linked since Siberian furs might easily have been exported to China at great profit. In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan sailed down the east coast of South America, found and sailed through

6512-712: The Kuril islands , crossing the Pacific further north of the routes usually taken until then. The land that he eventually discovered northeast of Japan, has since become a matter of legend and controversy. One hundred years after the Spanish and Portuguese the Dutch Republic began its remarkable expansion. The Dutch reached the East Indies in 1596, the Spice Islands in 1602 and in 1619 founded Batavia . In 1600

6688-600: The Malay Archipelago . Direct European contact with the Pacific began in 1512, with the Portuguese encountering its western edges, soon followed by the Spanish arriving from the American coast. In 1513, Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and encountered the Pacific Ocean, calling it the South Sea. In 1521, a Spanish expedition led by the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan

6864-630: The Marquesas Islands and 300-800 AD in Tahiti (Tahiti is west of the Marquesas.) 300-800 AD is also given for their arrival at Easter Island , their easternmost point and the same date range for Hawaii , which is far to the north and distant from other islands. Far to the southwest, New Zealand was reached about 1250 AD. The Chatham Islands , about 500 miles east of New Zealand were reached about 1500. The fact that some Polynesians possessed

7040-457: The Pacific. The route was purely commercial and there was no exploration of the areas to the north and south. In 1668, the Spanish founded a colony on Guam as a resting place for west-bound galleons. For a long time this was the only non-coastal European settlement in the Pacific. In 1513, six years before Magellan, Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and saw

7216-637: The Tanimbar Islands , some of the Caroline Islands (by Gomes de Sequeira in 1525), and west Papua New Guinea (by Jorge de Menezes in 1526). In 1519, a Spanish expedition led by Ferdinand Magellan sailed down the east coast of South America, found and sailed through the strait that bears his name and on 28 November 1520 entered the ocean which he named "Pacific". The three remaining ships, led by Magellan and his captains Duarte Barbosa and João Serrão , then sailed north and caught

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7392-422: The U.S. military ). This is due to their location in the centre of the Pacific, their biogeography and their oceanic geology. Less isolated oceanic islands that were once uninhabited, such as the Bonin Islands, the Galápagos Islands and the Juan Fernández Islands, have since been sparsely populated by citizens of their political administrators. Archaeological evidence suggests that Micronesians may have lived on

7568-479: The east coast of Australia for the first time. The arrival of European settlers in subsequent centuries resulted in a significant alteration in the social and political landscape of Oceania. The Pacific theatre saw major action during the First and Second World Wars . The rock art of Aboriginal Australians is the longest continuously practiced artistic tradition in the world. Most Oceanian countries are parliamentary democracies , with tourism serving as

7744-500: The equator , such as Chiloé Island, Macquarie Island, Tasmania, and the southern portions of mainland Australia and New Zealand, were not included in this category. According to the 1998 book Encyclopedia of Earth and Physical Sciences , Oceania refers to Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, and more than 10,000 islands scattered across the Pacific Ocean. It notes that, "the term [has] also come under scrutiny by many geographers. Some experts insist that Oceania encompasses even

7920-417: The strait that bears his name . On 28 November 1520, he entered the Pacific. Magellan then sailed north and caught the trade winds which carried him across the Pacific to the Philippines where he was killed. One surviving ship returned west across the Indian Ocean and the other went north in the hope of finding the westerlies and reaching Mexico. Unable to find the right winds, it was forced to return to

8096-427: The trade winds which carried them across the Pacific to the Philippines where Magellan was killed. One surviving ship led by Juan Sebastián Elcano returned west across the Indian Ocean and the other went north in the hope of finding the westerlies and reaching Mexico. Unable to find the right winds, it was forced to return to the East Indies. The Magellan-Elcano expedition achieved the first circumnavigation of

8272-475: The westerlies to the coast of California, but immediately turned south, making only a few attempts to explore the coast. For more see History of the West Coast of North America and Early knowledge of the Pacific Northwest . Australia is remarkable for the number of explorers who missed it. Some think that the Portuguese reached Australia before 1600 but these theories are difficult to prove. The 1567–1606 Spanish voyages from South America stopped at islands to

8448-438: The 17th and 18th centuries, other European powers sent expeditions to the Pacific, namely the Dutch Republic , England, France, and Russia. Humans reached Australia by at least 55,000 BC which implies some degree of water crossing. People were in the Americas before 10,000 BC. One theory holds that the Indigenous Americans travelled along the coast by canoe. About 3000 BC speakers of the Austronesian languages , probably on

8624-426: The 19th century: Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. This definition consists of discrete political entities, and so excludes the Bonin Islands, Hawaii, Clipperton Island and the Juan Fernández Islands, along with Easter Island — which was annexed by Chile in 1888. It is used in statistical reports, by the International Olympic Committee , and by many atlases. The UN categorizes Oceania, and by extension

8800-422: 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." Steadman viewed Oceania as encompassing Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia (including Easter Island and Hawaii). He excluded from his definition the larger islands of New Guinea and New Zealand, and argued that Cocos Island,

8976-529: The 2013 book The Environments of the Poor in Southeast Asia, East Asia and the Pacific , Paul Bullen critiqued the definition of Oceania in Encyclopedia of Islands , and wrote that since Koppers included areas such as Vancouver Island, it is "not clear what the referents of 'Pacific Region', 'Oceania' or 'Pacific Islands' are." Bullen added that, "Asia, Europe and the Maritime Continent are not literal geographic continents. The ' Asia–Pacific region' would comprise two quasi-continents. 'The Pacific' would not refer to

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9152-495: The Alaska coast. In 1792 Dionisio Alcalá Galiano circumnavigated Vancouver Island. In 1792-93 George Vancouver also mapped the complex coast of British Columbia. Vancouver Island was originally named Quadra's and Vancouver's Island in commemoration of the friendly negotiations held by the Spanish commander of the Nootka Sound settlement , Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra and British naval captain George Vancouver in Nootka Sound in 1792. In 1793 Alexander Mackenzie reached

9328-481: The Alaska panhandle. Peter Kuzmich Krenitzin mapped the Aleutians before 1769. The myth of a land mass north of the Aleutians took a long time to dispel. Russians fur hunters island-hopped along the Aleutians and then along the south coast of Alaska looking mainly for sea otter ( Attu at the west end of the Aleutians in 1745, Unalaska Island at the east end in 1759, Kodiak Island 1784, Kenai Peninsula 1785, Yakutat , 1795, Sitka 1799, Fort Ross 1812). North of

9504-418: The Aleutian Islands, Japan's Izu Islands , the Kuril Islands, the Ryukyu Islands and most of the Solomon Islands, were also excluded from his definition. 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

9680-501: The Aleutian Islands, the Bonin Islands, the Japanese archipelago, the Juan Fernández Islands, the Kuril Islands, the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, California 's Channel Islands and Farallon Islands , Canada 's Vancouver Island and Queen Charlotte Islands (now known as Haida Gwaii), Chile's Chiloé Island , Ecuador's Galápagos Islands, Mexico's Guadalupe Island , Revillagigedo Islands , San Benito Islands and Tres Marías Islands , and Peru's Chincha Islands . Islands in marginal seas of

9856-517: The Aleutians posts appeared on the west coast after 1819. Spaniards from Mexico met the Russians in 1788. (see below). Russian America was sold to the United States in 1867. On his first voyage (1768–1771) James Cook went to Tahiti from Cape Horn, circumnavigated New Zealand, followed the east coast of Australia for the first time and returned via the Torres Strait and the Cape of Good Hope. On his second voyage (1772–1775) he sailed from west to east keeping as far south as possible and showed that there

10032-460: The American coast from Chile to Alaska, crossed to China, explored northern Japan and Kamchatka, went south to Australia and lost his life in the Santa Cruz Islands . The Malaspina Expedition (1789–1794) visited the American coast, Manila, New Zealand and Australia. In 1792-93 George Vancouver more thoroughly mapped the west coast of Canada. In 1803/6 Adam Johann von Krusenstern led the first Russian circumnavigation and investigated both sides of

10208-451: The Asian continent. They are now often referred to as Maritime Southeast Asia , with Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore being founding members of the ASEAN regional organization for Southeast Asia in 1967 (Brunei and East Timor did not exist as independent nations at that point). Brown also categorized Japan and Taiwan as being in the same part of the world as the islands of Oceania, and excluded them from The Countries of

10384-401: The Asian mainland, as well as the Aleutians and the small island groups situated near the Americas. Thus, Oceania most commonly refers to the land areas of the South and Central Pacific. Kennedy defined Oceania as including Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. The U.S. Government Publishing Office 's Area Handbook for Oceania from 1971 states that Australia and New Zealand are

10560-441: The Atlantic and the Indian oceans, reached Brazil, in 1500, the true extent of the Americas began to become known. The Martin Waldseemüller map of 1507 was the first to show the Americas separating two distinct oceans. This guess was confirmed in 1513, when Balboa crossed Panama and found salt water. The Magellan expedition of 1519-22 proved that there was one continuous ocean from the Americas to Asia. The Diogo Ribeiro map of 1529

10736-405: The Australian Plate and have been geographically associated with Southeast Asia, due to their proximity to western Indonesia. Both were uninhabited when discovered by Europeans during the 17th century. Approximately half of the population on these islands are European Australian mainlanders (with smaller numbers being European New Zealanders ), while the other half are immigrants from China or

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10912-447: The Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands, with the exception of the Santa Cruz Islands . They are designed to dispel the outdated categories of Melanesia , Micronesia , and Polynesia ; many scholars now replace those categories with Green's terms since the early 1990s, but the old categories are still used in science, popular culture and general usage. Islands at the geographic extremes of Oceania are generally considered to be

11088-445: The Bonin Islands c.  2,000 years ago, but they were uninhabited at the time of European discovery in the 16th century. Depending on the definition, New Zealand could be part of Polynesia, or part of Australasia with Australia. New Zealand was originally settled by the Polynesian Māori , and has long maintained a political influence over the subregion. Through immigration and high Māori birth rates, New Zealand has attained

11264-427: The California coast, one of his ships reaching Oregon. His was the last northward exploration for the next 150 years. The Portolà expedition of 1769 began the land exploration of Alta California , following the coast as far north as San Francisco Bay and using the reports of Cermeño and Vizcaíno for guidance. After conquering Mexico the Spanish occupied the southern two thirds of Mexico, all of Central America and

11440-422: The Desventuradas Islands and the Juan Fernández Islands as being part of a region titled Insular Chile . They further include in this region Salas y Gómez, a small uninhabited island to the east of Easter Island. PLOS One describe Insular Chile as having "cultural and ecological connections to the broader insular Pacific." In her 1997 book Australia and Oceania , Australian historian Kate Darian-Smith defined

11616-399: The East Indies. In 1565 (44 years later), Andrés de Urdaneta found a wind system that would reliably blow a ship eastward back to the Americas. From then until 1815 the annual Manila Galleons crossed the Pacific from Mexico to the Philippines and back, exchanging Mexican silver for spices and porcelain. Until the time of Captain James Cook these were the only large ships to regularly cross

11792-441: The Galápagos Islands were not a member of the South Pacific Commission , like other islands in the South Pacific. The South Pacific Commission is a developmental organization formed in 1947 and is currently known as the Pacific Community; its members include Australia and other Pacific Islands Forum members. In a 1947 article on the formation of the South Pacific Commission for the Pacific Affairs journal, author Roy E. James stated

11968-422: The Galápagos Islands, and have a significant south central Pacific component to their marine fauna. According to scientific journal PLOS One , the Humboldt Current helps create a biogeographic barrier between the marine fauna of these islands and South America. Chile's government have occasionally considered them to be within Oceania along with Easter Island. Chile's government also categorize Easter Island,

12144-415: The Galápagos Islands, the Juan Fernández Islands, Costa Rica 's Cocos Island and Colombia 's Malpelo Island (all oceanic) as making up a Spanish language segment of Oceania. Cocos Island and Malpelo Island are the only landmasses located on the Cocos Plate , which is to the north of the Nazca Plate. The book observed that a native Polynesian language was still understood on Easter Island, unlike with

12320-446: The Galápagos Islands, the Revillagigedo Islands and other oceanic islands nearing the Americas were not part of Oceania, due to their biogeographical affinities with that area and lack of prehistoric indigenous populations. In his 2018 book Regionalism in South Pacific , Chinese author Yu Changsen wrote that some "stress a narrow vision of the Pacific as those Pacific Islands excluding Australia and even sometimes New Zealand", adding that

12496-522: The Hawaiian and Galápagos ." 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. In the Galápagos group also more than half of the species are of local origin." Rand McNally & Company , an American publisher of maps and atlases, claimed in 1892 that, "Oceania comprises

12672-565: The Malay Archipelago, not the modern country of Malaysia ) and Polynesia (which included both the Polynesian and Micronesian islands in her definition). 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. American geographer Jesse Olney 's 1845 book A Practical System of Modern Geography stated that it "comprises

12848-595: The Manila galleon San Agustín , attempted an exploration of the California coast. He reached the continent between Point St. George and Trinidad Head in California, but the galleon was later wrecked in a storm off Drake's Bay and the survivors had to sail the rest of the way back to Mexico in a small launch. The smaller vessel, however, allowed Cermeño to sail closer to the coast and to make useful observations of coastal features. In 1602, Sebastián Vizcaíno re-explored

13024-764: The Marshall Islands during the 2nd millennium BC E, with inter-island navigation made possible using traditional stick charts . The Polynesian people are considered to be by linguistic, archaeological and human genetic ancestry a subset of the sea-migrating Austronesian people and tracing Polynesian languages places their prehistoric origins in the Malay Archipelago , and ultimately, in Taiwan . Between c. 3000 and 1000 BCE, speakers of Austronesian languages began spreading from Taiwan into Island Southeast Asia , as tribes whose natives were thought to have arrived through South China c. 8,000 years ago to

13200-538: The Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian subdivisions, but not with the Indonesian or non-tropical subdivisions. The Pacific Islands Handbook (1945), by Robert William Robson, stated that, "Pacific Islands generally are regarded as Pacific islands lying within the tropics. There are a considerable number of Pacific Islands outside the tropics. Most of them have little economic or political importance." He noted

13376-661: The North Pacific. The modern period begins with Russian expeditions. They crossed Siberia and reached the Pacific in 1639 ( Ivan Moskvitin ). In 1644 Vassili Poyarkov found the Amur River . In 1648 Semyon Dezhnyov (probably) entered the Pacific from the Arctic Ocean. In 1652 Mikhail Stadukhin followed the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk . In 1697 Vladimir Atlasov entered the Kamchatka Peninsula overland from

13552-520: The North Pacific. In 1820 Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen saw Antarctica . A number of other voyages are listed in " European and American voyages of scientific exploration ." For Europeans in the Age of Exploration western North America was one of the most distant places on Earth (9 to 12 months of sailing). Spain had long claimed the entire west coast of the Americas. The area north of Mexico however

13728-627: The Northern Mariana Islands navigated to the islands and discovered it at some period between 4000 BCE to 2000 BCE from Southeast Asia . They became known as the Chamorros . Their language was named after them. The ancient Chamorro left a number of megalithic ruins, including Latte stone . The Refaluwasch or Carolinian people came to the Marianas in the 1800s from the Caroline Islands . Micronesian colonists gradually settled

13904-502: 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." Scottish geographer John Bartholomew wrote in 1873 that, "the New World consists of North America , and the peninsula of South America attached to it. These divisions [are] generally themselves spoken as continents, and to them has been added another, embracing

14080-622: The Pacific Ocean and everything in it e.g., the Philippines." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names (2017), by John Everett-Heath, states that Oceania is "a collective name for more than 10,000 islands in the Pacific Ocean" and that "it is generally accepted that Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and the islands north of Japan (the Kurils and Aleutians) are excluded." In his 1993 book A New Oceania: Rediscovering Our Sea of Islands , New Guinea-born Fijian scholar Epeli Hauʻofa wrote that, "Pacific Ocean islands from Japan, through

14256-495: The Pacific Ocean. In 1517–18, two ships were built on the Pacific coast. In 1522, Pascual de Andagoya sailed the coast as far as Ecuador. In 1532, Francisco Pizarro conquered Peru. A regular trade developed that carried Peruvian silver up the coast to Panama where it was carried overland to the Caribbean and part to Spain. Spanish settlement extended as far south as central Chile. In 1557–8, Juan Fernández Ladrillero discovered

14432-508: The Pacific Plate). Clipperton is not politically associated with the Americas, as is the case with other oceanic islands nearing the Americas, having had almost no interaction with the continent throughout its history. From the early 20th century to 2007, the island was administratively part of French Polynesia, which itself was known as French Oceania up until 1957. In terms of marine fauna, Clipperton shares similarities with areas of

14608-542: The Pacific area, as one of the major continental divisions of the world, along with Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Their definition includes American Samoa , Australia and their external territories , the Cook Islands , Federated States of Micronesia , French Polynesia , Fiji, Guam , Kiribati , the Marshall Islands, Nauru , New Caledonia, New Zealand, Niue , the Northern Mariana Islands , Palau , Papua New Guinea, Pitcairn Islands , Samoa ,

14784-641: The Pacific overland from Canada. By this time Spain was becoming involved in the French wars and increasingly unable to assert its claims on the Pacific coast. In 1804 the Lewis and Clark Expedition reached the Pacific overland from the Mississippi River. By the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819 Spain gave up its claims north of California. Canadian fur traders, and later a smaller number of Americans, crossed

14960-478: The Pacific such as those of Japan or the Channel Islands off the southern California coast are not typically considered Oceania as the indigenous populations of these places do not share a common ancestry with Oceanic groups, except for a time far before humans sailed Pacific waters." It has been theorized that the indigenous Jōmon people of the Japanese archipelago are related to Austronesians, along with

15136-698: The Pacific were also covered in the book, including Alaska's Pribilof Islands and China's Hainan . 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. The Anson archipelago included phantom islands such as Ganges Island and Los Jardines which were proven to not exist, as well as real islands such as Marcus Island and Wake Island. Tyler described Australia as "the leviathan of

15312-504: The Pacific which are much farther removed from the Americas. Scottish author Robert Hope Moncrieff considered Clipperton to be the easternmost point of Oceania in 1907, while Ian Todd also included it in his definition of Oceania in Island Realm: A Pacific Panorama . Other uninhabited Pacific Ocean landmasses have been explicitly associated with Oceania, including the highly remote Baker Island and Wake Island (now administered by

15488-515: The Philippines and Indonesia, which are adjacent to the Asian mainland, do not have oceanic cultures, and are therefore not part of Oceania." The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Oceania (2018) defined Oceania as only covering Austronesian-speaking islands in Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, with this definition including New Guinea and New Zealand. Other Austronesian areas such as Indonesia and

15664-501: The Philippines were not included, due to their closer cultural proximity to mainland Asia. Australia was also not included, as it was settled several thousands of years before the arrival of Austronesian-speaking peoples in Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. The book stated, "this definition of Oceania might seem too restrictive: Why not include Australia, for example, or even too broad, for what does Highland New Guinea have to do with Hawai'i?", further noting that, "a few other islands in

15840-518: The Portuguese and later the Dutch built a regular trade from the East Indies to Japan. On the American side Spanish power stretched thousands of miles from Mexico to Chile. The vast central Pacific was visited only by the Manila galleons and an occasional explorer. The south Pacific was first crossed by Spanish expeditions in the 16th century who discovered many islands including Tuvalu , the Marquesas ,

16016-495: The Portuguese expeditions of António de Abreu and Francisco Serrão , via the Lesser Sunda Islands , to the Maluku Islands , in 1512, and with Jorge Álvares 's expedition to southern China in 1513, both ordered by Afonso de Albuquerque from Malacca . The Spanish explorer Balboa was the first European to sight the Pacific from America in 1513 after his expedition crossed the Isthmus of Panama and reached

16192-625: The Revillagigedo Islands (both situated on the Pacific Plate) and the oceanic islands situated on the Cocos Plate and Nazca Plate. Todd defined the oceanic Bonin Islands as making up a Japanese language segment of Oceania, and excluded the main Japanese archipelago. Todd further included the Aleutian Islands in his definition of Oceania. The island chain borders both the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate , and

16368-528: The Russians for the first time (Unalaska and Kodiak Island) and heard that the Russians were planning to occupy Nootka Sound. In 1789 Martinez went north to build a fort at Nootka and found British and American merchant ships already there. He seized a British ship which led to the Nootka Crisis and Spanish recognition of non-Spanish trade on the northwest coast. In 1791 the Malaspina expedition mapped

16544-567: The Ryukyu Islands. He added that, "besides the proceeding, the Pacific contains many other islands, of which the most important are Hainan and Formosa, on the coast of China, the Japan isles, the Kuriles, the Aleutian Islands (stretching from the New World to the Old), Vancouver Island, the Galápagos, Juan Fernández and Chiloé." Scottish academic John Merry Ross in 1879 considered Polynesia to cover

16720-581: The Solomon Islands, Tokelau , Tonga , Tuvalu , Vanuatu , Wallis and Futuna , and the United States Minor Outlying Islands ( Baker Island , Howland Island , Jarvis Island , Midway Atoll , Palmyra Atoll , and Wake Island ). The original UN definition of Oceania from 1947 included these same countries and semi-independent territories, which were mostly still colonies at that point. Hawaii had not yet become

16896-471: The Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, and New Zealand and the oceanic islands of Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia." He went on to write that his preferred definition of Oceania emphasis islands with oceanic geology, stating that oceanic islands are, "islands with no past connections to a continental landmass" and that, "these boundaries encompass the Hawaiian and Bonin Islands in the north and Easter Island in

17072-503: The South American sweet potato implies that they may have reached the Americas or, conversely, that people from the Americas may have reached Polynesia. Thor Heyerdahl 's Kon-Tiki expedition successfully demonstrated that the trip from the Americas to Polynesia using only materials and technology available at the time was at least possible, even if highly improbable. On the Asian side long-distance trade developed all along

17248-594: The South American coast down to Chile. North of this the land was too dry to support a dense population that could be ruled and taxed. The only exception was the Pueblo peoples far to the north in New Mexico. People like Francisco Vásquez de Coronado penetrated far into the interior and found nothing that the Spanish valued. The Chichimeca country of northern Mexico was slowly absorbed and Baja California began to be settled in 1687. The returning Manila galleons followed

17424-526: The Strait as part of the Loaisa expedition, was blown south by a storm and saw what he thought was land's end. In 1578, Drake was blown south on the west side and saw what he thought was open water. In 1616, Willem Schouten sought a more southerly passage and rounded Cape Horn . In 1619, the Garcia de Nodal expedition followed the Dutch and proved that Tierra del Fuego was an island by circumnavigating it. Since

17600-494: The Strait of Magellan is narrow and hard to navigate Cape Horn became the standard route until the opening of the Panama Canal. It is a measure of the difficulty of these seas that it was not until 1820 that anyone went as far south as Antarctica. When the Spanish conquered Mexico in 1521, they gained a stretch of Pacific coast. In 1533, Fortún Ximénez reached Baja California and in 1539 Francisco de Ulloa showed that it

17776-504: The World: Volume 5 , which covered mainland Asia and Hong Kong. However, Brown did not explicitly associate Japan or Taiwan with the term Oceania. He divided Oceania into two subregions: Eastern Oceania, which included the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, and Southwestern Oceania, which included Australia and New Zealand. The Galápagos Islands, the Juan Fernández Islands and the Revillagigedo Islands were identified as

17952-537: The [Malay] archipelago." In a 1972 article for the Music Educators Journal titled Musics of Oceania , author Raymond F. Kennedy wrote: many meanings have been given to the word Oceania. The most inclusive–but not always the most useful–embraces about 25,000 land areas between Asia and the Americas. A more popular and practical definition excludes Indonesia, East Malaysia (Borneo), the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan and other islands closely related to

18128-667: The area as covering Australia, New Zealand and the islands of the Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. She excluded Hawaii from her definition, but not Easter Island. The International Union for Conservation of Nature stated in a 1986 report that they include Easter Island in their definition of Oceania "on the basis of its Polynesian and biogeographic affinities even though it is politically apart", further noting that other oceanic islands administered by Latin American countries had been included in definitions of Oceania. In 1987, The Journal of Australasian Cave Research described Oceania as being "the region from Irian Jaya (Western New Guinea,

18304-424: The area, the sea shielded Australia and south central Pacific islands from cultural influences that spread through large continental landmasses and adjacent islands. 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 geographer Conrad Malte-Brun coined

18480-490: The book adds that Hawaii is still within Oceania, despite being politically integrated into the U.S., and that the Pacific Ocean "gives unity to the whole" since "all these varied lands emerge from or border upon the Pacific." The 1876 book The Countries of the World , by British scientist and explorer Robert Brown , labelled the Malay Archipelago as Northwestern Oceania, but Brown still noted that these islands belonged more to

18656-605: The book. Hainan, which neighbours Taiwan, also has Austronesian ethnolinguistic origins, although it was not included in the book. 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,

18832-540: The coast from Mozambique to Japan. Trade, and therefore knowledge, extended to Indonesia but apparently not Australia. By at the latest 878 when there was a significant Islamic settlement in Canton much of this trade was controlled by Arabs or Muslims. In 219 BC Xu Fu sailed out into the Pacific searching for the elixir of immortality. Zheng He (1371–1433) was China's greatest explorer, mariner, and navigator. Japanese fishing boats, if blown out to sea, could be carried by

19008-485: The coast of Sakhalin. During the Crimean War a British fleet failed to capture Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky . In 1860 Russia annexed the southeast corner of Siberia from China. After Captain Cook large numbers of European merchant vessels began to enter the Pacific. The reasons for this are not completely clear. On Cook's third voyage furs bought at Nootka were sold in China at a 1,800 percent profit - enough to pay for

19184-538: The cold Aleutian Islands and the islands of Japan. Disagreement also exists over whether or not Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan should be included in Oceania." The Japanese Archipelago, the Malay Archipelago and Taiwan and other islands near China are often deemed as a geological extension of Asia, since they do not have oceanic geology , instead being detached fragments of the Eurasian continent that were once physiologically connected. Certain Japanese islands off

19360-518: The continental group, which included Australia, the Japanese archipelago, the Malay Archipelago and Taiwan, and the oceanic group, which included New Zealand and the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. Charles Marion Tyler's 1885 book The Island World of the Pacific Ocean considered Oceania to ethnographically encompass Australia, New Zealand, the Malay Archipelago, and the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. However, Tyler included other Pacific islands in his book as well, such as

19536-520: The current all the way to North America. Japanese boats reached Acapulco in 1617, the Aleutians in 1782, Alaska in 1805, the mouth of the Columbia River in 1820, and Cape Flattery in 1833. Such trips may have taken place before Europeans were present in those areas to make detailed records of them. The first contact of European navigators with the western edge of the Pacific Ocean was made by

19712-671: The east before reaching Australia. The first European to definitely see Australia was Willem Janszoon who in February 1606 reached the Cape York Peninsula and thought it was part of New Guinea. Also in 1606 (June to October) Luis Váez de Torres of the Quiros expedition from South America followed the south coast of New Guinea and passed through the Torres Strait without recognizing Australia. His voyage, and therefore

19888-466: The easternmost areas of Oceania in the book. 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." Brown went on to add, "the small islands lying off the continent, like the Queen Charlotte's in the North Pacific,

20064-407: The edges of western Micronesia and on into Melanesia. In the archaeological record there are well-defined traces of this expansion which allow the path it took to be followed and dated with some certainty. It is thought that by roughly 1400 BCE, " Lapita Peoples", so-named after their pottery tradition, appeared in the Bismarck Archipelago of north-west Melanesia. Easter Islanders claimed that

20240-625: The entire 25,000 islands of the Pacific Ocean. In this book, he included the Aleutian Islands, the Galápagos Islands, the Japanese archipelago, the Kuril Islands and continental islands off the coast of the Americas such as the Channel Islands, the Farallon Islands and Vancouver Island; all of these islands lie in or close to the Pacific Ring of Fire , as is the case with New Guinea and New Zealand, which were also included. In

20416-494: The entire South and Central Pacific area, not just islands ethnographically within Polynesia. He wrote in The Globe Encyclopedia of Universal Information that, "literally interpreted, the name would include all the groups from Sumatra to the Galápagos, together with Australia." Ross further wrote, "and to this vast region the term Oceania has been applied. It is more usual at the present time, however, to exclude

20592-416: The great ocean itself." Conrad Malte-Brun in 1824 defined Oceania as covering Australia, New Zealand, the islands of Polynesia (which then included all the Pacific islands) and the Malay Archipelago. 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

20768-572: The homeland of the Austronesian language family whose speakers colonized significant parts of the region about 6,000 years ago." For political reasons, Taiwan was a member of the Oceania Football Confederation during the 1970s and 1980s, rather than the Asian Football Confederation . Ian Todd's 1974 book Island Realm: A Pacific Panorama also defines oceanic Latin American islands as making up

20944-554: The indigenous inhabitants of the Ryukyu Islands. Some also theorize that Indigenous Australians are related to the Ainu people , who are the original inhabitants of Japan's Hokkaido , the Kuril Islands and the southern part of Sakhalin. 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

21120-471: The island groups of the world". 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." Fogg defined Polynesia as covering the combined islands of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, as well as

21296-485: The island of Formosa (nowadays Taiwan ), mastered the art of long-distance canoe travel and spread themselves, or their languages, south to the Philippines and Malesia and east to the islands of Micronesia and Melanesia . The Polynesians branched off and occupied Polynesian Triangle to the east. Dates and routes are uncertain, but they seem to have started from the Bismarck Archipelago , went east past Fiji to Samoa and Tonga about 1500 BC. By 100 AD they were in

21472-430: The islands in the [Malay] archipelago, to which certain writers have given the name of Malesia ." It added there was controversy over the exact limits of Oceania, saying that, "scarcely any two geographers appear to be quite agreed upon the subject". British physician and ethnologist James Cowles Prichard claimed in 1847 that the Aleutian Islands and the Kuril Islands form "the northern boundary of this fifth region of

21648-469: The islands of Melanesia are more commonly grouped together as part of the Australasian biogeographical realm . Papua New Guinea is geographically the closest country to Australia, and is often geologically associated with Australia as it was once physiologically connected. Australia's Indian Ocean external territories of Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands are situated within the bounds of

21824-399: The islands of the Malay Archipelago, while the non-tropical islands were categorized as being North Pacific islands such as Alaska's Kodiak archipelago , the Aleutian Islands, Japan, the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin. Japan's Bonin and Ryukyu Islands are also considered to be subtropical islands , with the main Japanese archipelago being non-tropical. The journal associated the term Oceania with

22000-420: The large island of Australia and numerous others in the [Pacific] Ocean, under the name of Oceania. There are thus six great divisions of the earth — Europe , Asia, Africa , North America, South America and Oceania." 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

22176-426: The large island of Australia and the innumerable islands of the Pacific Ocean" and also that the islands of the Malay Archipelago "should be grouped in with Asia." British linguist Robert Needham Cust argued in 1887 that the Malay Archipelago should be excluded since it had participated in Asian civilization. Cust considered Oceania's four subregions to be Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. New Zealand

22352-470: The largest population of Polynesians in the world, while Australia has the third largest Polynesian population (consisting entirely of immigrants). Modern-day Indigenous Australians are loosely related to Melanesians, and Australia maintains political influence over Melanesia, which is mostly located on the same tectonic plate. Despite this, Australia is rarely seen as a part of the subregion. As with Australia and New Zealand, Melanesia's New Caledonia has

22528-441: The last gaps in European knowledge of the Pacific coasts. On his second voyage, Cook was accompanied by Johann Reinhold Forster and Forster's son Georg , who influenced significantly Alexander von Humboldt and his understanding of the Pacific, which Humboldt encountered in 1802–3. Several German-speaking navigators and explorers followed, most of them in the service of expeditions launched by Imperial Russia. After Cook everything

22704-468: The late 20th century, some scholars theorized a long period of interaction, which resulted in many complex changes in genetics, languages, and culture among the peoples. Micronesia began to be settled several millennia ago, although there are competing theories about the origin and arrival of the first settlers. There are numerous difficulties with conducting archaeological excavations in the islands, due to their size, settlement patterns and storm damage. As

22880-403: The least populated of the five parts of the world is diminished in order to increase the number of inhabitants of the most densely populated continent. 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

23056-784: The life of the vehicle. There is a small but dedicated online community for the NX250 and AX-1. With the rise of popularity of adventure bikes, there is renewed interest in the Honda AX-1 primarily for its light weight and power exceeding modern contemporaries such as the Honda CRF250L. This motorcycle, scooter or moped-related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Oceania Oceania ( UK : / ˌ oʊ s i ˈ ɑː n i ə , ˌ oʊ ʃ i -, - ˈ eɪ n -/ OH -s(h)ee- AH -nee-ə, -⁠ AY - , US : / ˌ oʊ ʃ i ˈ æ n i ə , - ˈ ɑː n -/ OH -shee- A(H)N -ee-ə )

23232-526: The main archipelago are not geologically associated with Asia. The book The World and Its Peoples: Australia, New Zealand, Oceania (1966) asserts that, "Japan, Taiwan, the Aleutian Islands, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia [and] the Pacific archipelagos bordering upon the Far East Asian mainland are excluded from Oceania", and that "all the islands lying between Australia and the Americas, including Australia, are part of Oceania." Furthermore,

23408-467: The main islands in the Solomon Islands archipelago , including Makira and possibly the smaller islands farther to the east. Particularly along the north coast of New Guinea and in the islands north and east of New Guinea, the Austronesian people , who had migrated into the area somewhat more than 3,000 years ago, came into contact with these pre-existing populations of Papuan-speaking peoples. In

23584-546: The major continental divisions of the world, but the name "Australia and Oceania" is used. Their definition does not include all of Australia's external territories, but is otherwise the same as the UN's definition, and is also used for statistical purposes. The Pacific Islands Forum expanded during the early 2010s, and areas that were already included in the UN definition of Oceania, such as French Polynesia, gained membership. French writer Gustave d'Eichthal remarked in 1844 that, "the boundaries of Oceania are in reality those of

23760-658: The mountains and built posts on the coast. In 1846 the Oregon Treaty divided the Oregon country between Britain and the United States. The United States conquered California in 1848 and purchased Alaska in 1867. The Russians moved south and the Japanese moved north and explored the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin . About 1805 Adam Johann von Krusenstern was apparently the first Russian to reach eastern Siberia by sea from European Russia. In 1808 Mamiya Rinzo explored

23936-500: The much less developed economies of Kiribati , Papua New Guinea , Tuvalu , Vanuatu , and Western New Guinea . The largest and most populous country in Oceania is Australia, and the largest city is Sydney . Puncak Jaya in Indonesia is the highest peak in Oceania at 4,884 m (16,024 ft). The first settlers of Australia, New Guinea, and the large islands just to the east arrived more than 60,000 years ago. Oceania

24112-582: The name Oceania." In this book, the other two continents were categorized as being the New World (the Americas) and the Old World ( Afro-Eurasia ). 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." He did not explicitly label Oceania

24288-614: The nearby Malay Archipelago. Australia's Indian Ocean external territory Heard Island and McDonald Islands lie on the Antarctic Plate and are also thought of as being in Antarctica or no region at all, due to their extreme geographical isolation. The World Factbook define Heard Island and McDonald Islands as part of Antarctica, while placing Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands as the westernmost extent of Oceania. Norfolk Island , an external territory of Australia,

24464-468: The north. In 1716 the first seagoing boats were built to reach Kamchatka from the mainland. In 1728 Vitus Bering sailed from Kamchatka through the strait that bears his name without seeing America. In 1732 Mikhail Gvozdev and Ivan Fedorov (navigator) saw the tip of Alaska from the Bering Strait. In 1741 Vitus Bering and Alexei Chirikov sailed just south of the Aleutian Islands and reached

24640-623: The numerous isles of the Pacific, lying south east of Asia." Olney divided up Oceania into three groups; Australasia (which included Australia, New Guinea, and New Zealand), Malesia and Polynesia (which included the combined islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia in his definition). Publication Missionary Review of the World claimed in 1895 that Oceania was divided up into five groups; Australasia, Malesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. It did not consider Hawaii to be part of Polynesia, due to its geographic isolation, commenting that Oceania also included, "isolated groups and islands, such as

24816-454: The ocean Pacífico (or "Pacific" meaning, "peaceful") because, after sailing through the stormy seas off Patagonia, the expedition found calm waters. The ocean was often called the Sea of Magellan in his honor until the eighteenth century. From 1565 to 1815, a Spanish transpacific route known as the Manila galleons regularly crossed from Mexico to the Philippines and back. On the Asian side

24992-572: The organization's scope encompassed all non-self governing islands below the equator to the east of Papua New Guinea (which itself was included in the scope and then known as Dutch New Guinea ). Easter Island and the Galápagos Islands were defined by James as falling within the organization's geographical parameters. The 2007 book Asia in the Pacific Islands: Replacing the West , by New Zealand Pacific scholar Ron Crocombe , defined

25168-426: The other islands, which were uninhabited when discovered by Europeans and mostly being used as prisons for convicts. Additionally, the book includes Taiwan and the entire Malay Archipelago as part of Oceania. 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

25344-475: The parts of the region together. John Eperjesi's 2005 book The Imperialist Imaginary says that it has "been used by Western cartographers since the mid-19th century to give order to the complexities of the Pacific area." In the 19th century, many geographers divided Oceania into mostly racially based subdivisions: Australasia , Malesia (encompassing the Malay Archipelago ), Melanesia , Micronesia and Polynesia . The 2011 book Maritime Adaptations of

25520-572: The political significance of the Aleutian Islands, which were invaded by the Japanese military in World War II, and categorized New Zealand's Antipodes Islands , Auckland Islands , Bounty Islands , Campbell Islands , Chatham Island and Kermadec Islands as being non-tropical islands of the South Pacific, along with Australia's Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island. The Kermadec Islands, Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island are also considered to be subtropical islands. Other non-tropical areas below

25696-403: The principal large sovereignties of the area. It further states: In its broadest definition Oceania embraces all islands and island groups of the Pacific Ocean that lie between Asia and the two American continents. In popular usage, however, the designation has a more restricted application. The islands of the North Pacific, such as the Aleutians and the Kuriles, usually are excluded. In addition,

25872-531: The region of Oceania as it is understood today. These regions are usually considered to be part of Maritime Southeast Asia. Although these regions, as well as the large East Asian islands of Taiwan, Hainan and the Japanese archipelago, have varying degrees of cultural connections. In Reptiles and Amphibians of the Pacific Islands: A Comprehensive Guide (2013), George R. Zug claimed that "a standard definition of Oceania includes Australia, Papua New Guinea,

26048-533: The sailing time from Europe to the Pacific. England founded a colony in Australia in 1788 and New Zealand in 1840. After about 1800 England began to replace the Dutch Republic along the Asian coast. Hong Kong became a colony in 1839 during the First Opium War , which was also the first time that a large European military and naval force appeared in the Pacific. European ships and sailors disrupted life on

26224-641: The same biogeographical realm as the geographically adjacent Micronesia, and are often grouped in with the subregion because of this. Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands who migrated from Africa to Asia c. 70,000 years ago and arrived in Australia c. 50,000 years ago. They are believed to be among the earliest human migrations out of Africa . Although they likely migrated to Australia through Southeast Asia they are not demonstrably related to any known Asian or Polynesian population. There

26400-430: The same in 1619. In 1623 Jan Carstenszoon followed the south coast of New Guinea, missed Torres Strait and went along the north coast of Australia. In 1643, Abel Tasman left Mauritius , missed Australia, found Tasmania , continued east and found New Zealand, missed the strait between the north and south islands, turned northwest, missed Australia again and sailed along the north coast of New Guinea. In 1644, he followed

26576-780: The sea. The Spanish settlement of San Francisco remained the northern limit of land occupation. By sea, from 1774 to 1793 the Spanish expeditions to the Pacific Northwest tried to assert Spanish claims against the Russians and British. In 1774 Juan José Pérez Hernández reached what is now the south end of the Alaska panhandle. In 1778 Captain Cook sailed the west coast and spent a month at Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island. An expedition led by Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra sailed north to Nootka and reached Prince William Sound . In 1788 Esteban José Martínez went north and met

26752-452: The separation between Australia and New Guinea, was not generally known until 1765. From about 1611, the standard Dutch route to the East Indies was to follow the roaring forties as far east as possible and then turn sharply north to Batavia . Since it was difficult to know longitude some ships would reach the west coast or be wrecked on it . In 1616, Dirk Hartog bumped into the west coast and did some exploring. Frederick de Houtman did

26928-418: 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. In 1948, American military journal Armed Forces Talk broke the islands of the Pacific up into five major subdivisions; Indonesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia and the non-tropical Islands. The Indonesia subdivision consisted of

27104-450: The ship briefly made first landfall at South Cove, Cape Arago, just south of Coos Bay, Oregon, and then sailed south while searching for a suitable harbour to repair his ailing ship. On 17 June, Drake and his crew found a protected cove when they landed on the Pacific coast of what is now Northern California. While ashore, he claimed the area for Queen Elizabeth I as Nova Albion or New Albion . In 1580, Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa , who

27280-416: The south coast of New Guinea, missed the Torres Strait, turned south and mapped the north coast of Australia. In 1688, the English buccaneer William Dampier beached a ship on the northwest coast. In 1696, Willem de Vlamingh explored the southwest coast. In 1699, Dampier was sent to find the east coast of Australia. He sailed along the west coast, went north to Timor, followed the north coast of New Guinea to

27456-433: The south, and the Palau Islands in the west to the Galápagos Islands in the east." Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand and New Caledonia (which is geologically associated with New Zealand) were all excluded, as these areas are descendants of the ancient Pangaea supercontinent, along with landmasses such as the Americas and Afro-Eurasia . Volcanic islands which are geologically associated with continental landmasses, such as

27632-460: The surface area of this wide definition was greater than that of Asia and Europe combined, the land area was only a little greater than that of Europe. American geographer Sophia S. Cornell claimed that the Aleutian Islands were not part of Oceania in 1857. She stated that Oceania was divided up into three groups; Australasia (which included Australia, New Zealand, and the Melanesian islands), Malesia (which included all present-day countries within

27808-418: The survivors reached the Philippines. In 1606, Pedro Fernandes de Queirós reached Vanuatu south of the Solomons. He continued exploring and eventually sailed back to Mexico. One of his separated ships under Luis Vaz de Torres sailed west and discovered the strait that bears his name sighting the northern tip of Australia . Other Spanish expeditions discovered Tuvalu , the Marquesas , the Cook Islands ,

27984-554: The term "Pacific Islands" as being islands in the South Pacific Commission, and stated that such a definition "does not include Galápagos and other [oceanic] islands off the Pacific coast of the Americas; these were uninhabited when Europeans arrived, then integrated with a South American country and have almost no contact with other Pacific Islands." He adds, "Easter Island still participates in some Pacific Island affairs because its people are Polynesian." Thomas Sebeok 's two volume 1971 book Linguistics in Oceania defines Easter Island,

28160-513: The term Oceania "promotes a broader concept that has room for Australia and New Zealand." American marine geologist Anthony A. P. Koppers wrote in the 2009 book Encyclopedia of Islands that, "as a whole, the islands of the Pacific Region are referred to as Oceania, the tenth continent on earth. Inherent to their remoteness and because of the wide variety of island types, the Pacific Islands have developed unique social, biological and geological characteristics." Koppers considered Oceania to encompass

28336-430: The world and reached the Philippines , the Mariana Islands , and other islands of Oceania. Exploration of the Pacific Early Polynesian explorers reached nearly all Pacific islands by 1200 CE, followed by Asian navigation in Southeast Asia and the West Pacific . During the Middle Ages, Muslim traders linked the Middle East and East Africa to the Asian Pacific coasts, reaching southern China and much of

28512-408: The world, and with the coasts of Asia and America completing its literal termination." However, he wrote that these islands "are not usually reckoned as belonging to it, because they are known to be inhabited by races of people who came immediately from the adjacent continents and are unconnected with those tribes of the human race who peopled the remote islands of this great ocean." He added that Hawaii

28688-404: Was first explored by Europeans from the 16th century onward. Portuguese explorers, between 1512 and 1526, reached the Tanimbar Islands , some of the Caroline Islands and west New Guinea . Spanish and Dutch explorers followed, then British and French. On his first voyage in the 18th century, James Cook , who later arrived at the highly developed Hawaiian Islands , went to Tahiti and followed

28864-437: Was a peninsula, but the myth of an Island of California continued for many years. In 1542 Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo reached a point north of San Francisco. In 1578 Drake landed somewhere on the coast. In 1587 Pedro de Unamuno, coming from the Philippines, stopped at Morro Bay, California . In 1592, Juan de Fuca may have reached Puget Sound . In 1595, Sebastian Rodriguez Cermeño (Sebastião Rodrigues Soromenho) , commander of

29040-416: Was achieved when this landmass formed part of the Sahul continent , connected to the island of New Guinea via a land bridge. The Torres Strait Islanders are indigenous to the Torres Strait Islands, which are at the northernmost tip of Queensland near Papua New Guinea . The earliest definite human remains found in Australia are that of Mungo Man , which have been dated at c. 40,000 years old. It

29216-432: Was categorized by him as being in Polynesia; and the only country in his definition of Australasia was Australia. His definition of Polynesia included both Easter Island and Hawaii, which had not yet been annexed by either Chile or the United States. The Journal of the Royal Statistical Society stated in 1892 that Australia was a large island within Oceania rather than a small continent. It additionally commented: it

29392-502: Was defined as Australia and an ensemble of various Pacific Islands, "particularly those in the central and south Pacific [but] never those in the extreme north, for example the Aleutian chain." In the Pacific Ocean Handbook (1945), author Eliot Grinnell Mears claimed, "it is customary to exclude the Aleutians of the North Pacific, the American coastal islands and the Netherlands East Indies ", and that he included Australia and New Zealand in Oceania for "scientific reasons; Australia's fauna

29568-472: Was detail. Several governments sponsored Pacific expeditions, often in rivalry or emulation of Captain Cook. At the time of Cook's first voyage, in 1766-1769 Louis Antoine de Bougainville crossed the Pacific and publicized Tahiti, in 1767 Samuel Wallis and Philip Carteret separately crossed the Pacific, and in 1769 Jean-François-Marie de Surville visited the Solomon Islands and New Zealand. In 1785-1788 Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse followed

29744-407: Was given little attention in the early years. This changed when the Russians appeared in Alaska. The Spanish moved north to California and built a series of missions along the Pacific coast including: San Diego in 1767, Monterey, California in 1770 and San Francisco in 1776. San Francisco Bay was discovered in 1769 by Gaspar de Portolà from the landward side because its mouth is not obvious from

29920-456: Was hunting for Drake, was the first to sail from the Strait to Europe. In 1587, Thomas Cavendish followed Drake, captured a Manila galleon and returned via the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. In 1599, the first Dutch ships passed through the Strait of Magellan (Will Adams, the first Englishman to reach Japan, was on board). Olivier van Noort followed and became the first Dutch circumnavigator. In 1525, Francisco de Hoces , while trying to enter

30096-427: Was inhabited in prehistoric times by either Melanesians or Polynesians, and is geographically adjacent to the islands of Melanesia. The current inhabitants are mostly European Australians, and the UN categorize it as being in the Australasia subregion. The 1982 edition of the South Pacific Handbook , by David Stanley, groups Australia, New Zealand, Norfolk Island, and Hawaiʻi together under an "Anglonesia" category. This

30272-405: Was killed in Hawaii in 1779. The expedition made a second attempt at the Bering Strait, stopped at Kamchatka and China and reached England in 1780. Cook set a high standard of scientific exploration, showed that there was no large land mass in the southern ocean, mapped the two largest island groups in the Pacific, and by following the east coast of Australia and the west coast of North America closed

30448-431: Was probably no Terra Australis . On his third voyage (1776–1780), he found the Hawaiian Islands (possibly first seen by Spanish captain  Ruy López de Villalobos in 1542. The Spanish named these islands "Isla de Mesa, de los Monjes y Desgraciada") and followed the North American coast from Oregon to the Bering Strait, mapping this coast for the first time and showing that there was probably no Northwest Passage . Cook

30624-418: Was the first recorded crossing of the Pacific Ocean, Magellan then naming it the "peaceful sea." Starting in 1565 with the voyage of Andres de Urdaneta , the Spanish controlled transpacific trade for 250 years; Manila galleons would cross from Mexico to the Philippines, and vice versa, until 1815. Additional expeditions from Mexico and Peru encountered various archipelagos in the North and South Pacific . In

30800-432: Was the first to show the Pacific at about its proper size. The Portuguese reached India in 1498, conquered Malacca in 1511 and in 1512 António de Abreu and Francisco Serrão reached the Spice Islands . In May 1513 Jorge Álvares reached southern China and in the same year Balboa crossed Panama. In 1525 Diogo da Rocha and Gomes de Sequeira reached the Caroline Islands , and Jorge de Menezes in 1526-27 landed on

30976-472: Was the most northerly area to be inhabited by races associated with Oceania. The 1926 book Modern World History, 1776–1926 , by Alexander Clarence Flick, considered Oceania to include all islands in the Pacific, and associated the term with the Malay Archipelago, the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, the Aleutian Islands, Japan's Ryukyu Islands , Taiwan and the Kuril Islands. He further included in his definition Sakhalin , an island which

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