Dumont d’Urville’s “Black Islands” still name a Pacific arc
Melanesia spans the southwestern Pacific from New Guinea to Fiji, including the Arafura Sea, between Southeast Asia, Polynesia, Micronesia, and Australia. Jules Dumont d’Urville coined Melanesia and Micronesia in 1832 to sit beside older Polynesia as three ethnic-geographic Pacific zones, and the region now holds the densest cluster of languages anywhere.
Four independent states, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Fiji and Solomon Islands, share the region with Indonesian New Guinea, French New Caledonia and Australia’s Torres Strait Islands. Nearly everything lies south of the equator, except a few islets off Western New Guinea. Geologically, New Guinea belongs to the Australian continent, while New Caledonia and Norfolk Island sit on Zealandia. Island Melanesia, the outer ring around the Coral Sea, covers the Louisiades, the Bismarcks, the Santa Cruz group, Vanuatu’s New Hebrides chain and Fiji’s Viti Levu and Vanua Levu.
The Greek roots mean black islands, a reference to the islanders’ dark skin. Charles de Brosses imagined an ancient dark-skinned Pacific race in 1756, and Bory de Saint-Vincent and d’Urville treated Melanesians as a separate race. Missionary Robert Codrington shifted the emphasis to culture in works of 1885 and 1891, leaving out New Guinea and Australia and introducing Europe to the idea of mana. Ann Chowning in 1977 and Paul Sillitoe in 1998 both admitted the borders cannot be fixed cleanly.
Humans crossed into Sahul, the joined landmass of Australia and New Guinea, more than 40,000 years ago. Austronesian voyagers whose roots trace to Taiwan followed between 4000 and 3000 BC, settling New Guinea’s north coast and nearby islands beside long-established Papuan speakers. A 2008 Temple University study found Polynesians and Micronesians carry little Melanesian ancestry, and Austronesian genes stay under 20 percent even in groups speaking Austronesian tongues.
One tally puts the region’s languages at 1,319, about one per 716 square kilometres of New Guinea, nearly triple Nigeria’s density. Vanuatu has 138 languages for roughly 300,000 people. Tok Pisin and Hiri Motu grew into creoles, alongside Bislama and Solomon Islands Pijin. Once a label of denigration, Melanesia has become a badge of shared identity, notes Stephanie Lawson.
Source: Melanesia
