Benjamin Hennenkamp

History of Oceania From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigationJump to search See also: History of the Pacific Islands 1852 map of Oceania by J.G. Barbie du Bocage. Includes regions of Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia and Malaysia. Māori war dance, New Zealand, circa 1850 Contemporary political map of Oceania The History of Oceania includes the history of Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and other Pacific island nations. Contents 1 Prehistory 1.1 Polynesia theories 1.2 Micronesia theories 1.3 Melanesia theories 1.4 Australasia theories 2 European contact and exploration (1500s–1700s) 2.1 Iberian pioneers 2.1.1 Early Iberian exploration 2.1.2 Other large expeditions 2.2 Oceania during the Golden Age of Dutch exploration and discovery 2.2.1 Early Dutch exploration 2.2.2 Abel Tasman's exploratory voyages 2.3 British exploration and Captain James Cook's voyages 2.3.1 First voyage (1768–71) 2.3.2 Second voyage (1772–75) 2.3.3 Third voyage (1776–79) 3 Colonisation 3.1 British colonization 3.2 French colonization 3.3 Spanish colonization 3.4 Dutch colonization 3.5 German colonization 3.6 American colonization 3.7 Japanese colonization 4 Samoan Crisis 1887–1889 5 World War I 6 World War II 6.1 Solomon Islands campaign 6.2 Kokoda Track campaign 7 Nuclear testing in Oceania 8 Fijian coups 9 Bougainville Civil War 10 Modern age 11 See also 12 Notes 13 References 14 Bibliography Prehistory The prehistory of Oceania is divided into the prehistory of each of its major areas: Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, and Australasia, and these vary greatly as to when they were first inhabited by humans—from 70,000 years ago (Australasia) to 3,000 years ago (Polynesia). Polynesia theories See also: Polynesia § History of the Polynesian people, and Early history of Tonga 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 about 3000 and 1000 BCE speakers of Austronesian languages began spreading from Taiwan into Island South-East Asia,[1][2][3] as tribes whose natives were thought to have arrived through South China about 8,000 years ago to the edges of western Micronesia and on into Melanesia, although they are different from the Han Chinese who now form the majority of people in China and Taiwan. There are three theories regarding the spread of humans across the Pacific to Polynesia. These are outlined well by Kayser et al. (2000)[4] and are as follows: Express Train model: A recent (c. 3000–1000 BCE) expansion out of Taiwan, via the Philippines and eastern Indonesia and from the north-west ("Bird's Head") of New Guinea, on to Island Melanesia by roughly 1400 BCE, reaching western Polynesian islands right about 900 BCE. This theory is supported by the majority of current human genetic data, linguistic data, and archaeological data Entangled Bank model: Emphasizes the long history of Austronesian speakers' cultural and genetic interactions with indigenous Island South-East Asians and Melanesians along the way to becoming the first Polynesians. Slow Boat model: Similar to the express-train model but with a longer hiatus in Melanesia along with admixture, both genetically, culturally s having adapted and evolved through time and space since its emergence "Out of Taiwan". They had given up rice production, for instance, after encountering and a