Oceania is the collective name for the vast accumulation of
islands and atolls in the central and western parts of the Pacific
Ocean. The borders of Oceania are arbitrary. The island of New
Guinea is considered to be the western border, Easter Island is the
eastern border. As a rule, Oceania does not include Australia, as
well as the islands and archipelagos of Southeast Asia, the Far East
and North America. In the section of geography, country studies,
Oceania is studying an independent discipline - ocean studies.
Oceania is the world's largest cluster of islands located in the
southwestern and central parts of the Pacific Ocean, between the
subtropical latitudes of the Northern and temperate Southern
Hemispheres. When all land is divided into parts of the world,
Oceania is usually united with Australia into a single part of the
world, Australia and Oceania, although sometimes it stands out as an
independent part of the world.
Geographically, Oceania is
divided into several regions: Micronesia (in the north-west),
Melanesia (in the west), and Polynesia (in the east); New Zealand is
sometimes singled out.
The total area of the islands of
Oceania, the largest of which is New Guinea, is 1.26 million km²
(together with Australia 8.52 million km²), the population is about
10.7 million people. (together with Australia 32.6 million people).
Excluding Australia, Oceania in terms of total area and total
population is comparable to the African state of Chad.
The
islands of Oceania are washed by numerous Pacific seas (Coral Sea,
Tasman Sea, Fiji Sea, Koro Sea, Solomon Sea, New Guinea Sea,
Philippine Sea) and Indian Oceans (Arafura Sea).
Equator and
the international date line pass through Oceania. It is a broken
line, most of which runs along the 180 ° meridian.
Sea
currents
Across the whole of Oceania, along the equator, are the
warm Northern Passat and Southern Passat currents and the Passat
countercurrent. In the southwestern part of Oceania, a warm East
Australian Current passes. Characteristic of Oceania is the absence
of cold sea currents (with the exception of the Pacific Ocean region
southeast of New Zealand), which largely determines the climate of
this region.
Australia
New Zealand
Papua New Guinea
Palau
Federated States of
Micronesia
Kiribati
Marshall Islands
Nauru
Vanuatu
Fiji
Solomon islands
Tonga
Samoa
Tuvalu
Other
territories
American Samoa
Hawaii
Guam
Cook Islands
Niue
New Caledonia
Norfolk Island
Easter Island
Pitcairn Islands
Northern Mariana Islands
Tokelau
Wallis and Futuna
French Polynesia
Oceania in the broadest sense of the term includes all the islands between Asia and America. In most cases, however, the Japanese Islands, the Ryukyu Archipelago, the Kuril Islands and the Aleutian Islands are excluded from this list, and the most common interpretation of the term also excludes Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan, since the peoples and cultures of these islands are historically closely connected with continental Asia. Even in this limited sense, there are over 10,000 islands in Oceania, including New Guinea and New Zealand. Oceania in this sense of the term is traditionally divided into 4 regions - Australasia (Australia and New Zealand), Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia.
Australia
Australia is located entirely in the Southern and
Eastern Hemispheres. Almost in the middle of it crosses the Southern
Tropic. Australia is a separate continent, remote from other continents.
This is what determined the uniqueness of its nature. The main trade
routes pass away from the mainland, which makes it difficult to develop
economic ties.
The area of Australia is 7.6 million km². The
shores of the mainland are slightly indented. In the north, the Gulf of
Carpentaria protrudes into the land, in the south - the Great Australian
Gulf. The Cape York Peninsula forms the northern edge of the mainland.
Off the southeastern coast is the island of Tasmania, off the
northeastern coast is one of the largest islands in Oceania - the island
of New Guinea, separated from Australia by the Torres Strait.
Oceania
The island groups and archipelagos of the western and central
Pacific Ocean are united in a geographical area under the general name
of Oceania. The land area of the island part of Oceania, which
includes New Guinea and New Zealand, but not Australia, is 822,800 km².
Historically, the division of all the islands into four ethnographic and
geographical regions: Polynesia (Tonga, Samoa, Cook, Hawaiian, Easter
Island, etc.), Melanesia (New Guinea, Bismarck Archipelago, Solomon
Islands, etc.), Micronesia (Marshall, Mariana Islands, etc.), New
Zealand. Most of the islands of Oceania are concentrated in the
equatorial belt between 10 ° S. sh. and 20° N. sh.
A prominent
Russian scientist Nikolai Miklukho-Maclay made a great contribution to
the study of the nature and population of Oceania. He studied the life
of the peoples of the island of New Guinea, left descriptions of the
nature of coastal areas. His scientific research was connected with his
conviction of the need to protect the backward and oppressed peoples. At
the very end of the XIX century. lived and worked in the Hawaiian
Islands, Nikolai Konstantinovich Sudzilovsky, a native of the Mogilev
province, was the president of the Senate.
In 1804, the French geographer Conrad Malte-Brun (1775-1826), in his
treatise Géographie mathématique, physique et politique published with
Edme Mentelle, proposed the term "Oceanic" («Océanique» in French) to
bring together both the Australasia and Polynesia[10] by Charles de
Brosses. Malte-Brun resumed the name of «Terres océaniques» also in 1810
and 1812.
The term "Oceania" («Océanie» in French) was coined by
the cartographer Adrien-Hubert Brué for the map he published in 1814,
and of which the full title is «Océanie, ou cinquième partie du monde,
comprenant l'archipel d' Asie, l'Australasie et la Polynésie (ou le
continent de la Nouvelle-Hollande et les îles du Grand Océan)».
Ultimately "Oceania" derives from ocean, a term that Greek mythology
connected to that of the titan of the same name (in Greek
᾿Ωκεανός/Okeanós), son of Uranus (the sky) and Gea (the earth),
considered in the Greek world as a marine deity.
The indigenous populations of Oceania settled in very ancient times
in places that were reached by Europeans only from the sixteenth century
onwards: exploiting the fact that there was a land link between Asia and
Oceania, the first modern men (Homo sapiens) they arrived in New Guinea
and Australia at least 60,000 years ago, i.e. before the arrival of H.
sapiens in Europe.
The populations of Australia and those of New
Guinea would later separate between 25,000 and 40,000 years ago, thus
before the Sahul shelf submerged 10,000 years ago. Neighboring Oceania,
which did not require complex navigation, was thus fully populated.
In much more recent times, i.e. between 1500 B.C. and the beginning
of the common era, the civilization of Lapita, encouraged by the by now
consolidated knowledge of navigation, was the protagonist of the
population of the other islands of the Pacific: thousands of people
gradually moved from one island to another. This "expansion" therefore
concerned distant Oceania, starting initially from Formosa where there
are aboriginal peoples who speak the Formosan languages, progenitor of
the Austronesian languages which gave birth to the Oceanic languages of
the Lapita civilization.
Finally, from central Polynesia, with
its diffusion center starting from Fiji, during the first millennium of
the new era, while the Roman Empire ended in Europe and the Middle Ages
began, the population reached the most remote groups of islands, such as
Hawaii, New Zealand or Easter Island.
The first discoveries were accidental with one main target, the spice
islands. Portuguese navigators, between 1512 and 1526, reached the
Moluccas (with António de Abreu and Francisco Serrão in 1512), Timor,
the Aru Islands (Martim Afonso de Melo Coutinho), the Tanimbar Islands,
some of the Caroline Islands (with Gomes de Sequeira in 1525) and New
Guinea (with Jorge de Menezes in 1526). In 1519 a Spanish expedition led
by Ferdinand Magellan descended the east coast of South America, found
and passed through the strait that bears his name, and on November 28,
1520 entered the ocean which he dubbed the "Pacific". The three
remaining ships, led by Magellan and his captains Duarte Barbosa and
João Serrão, then sailed north catching the trade winds that carried
them across the Pacific to the Mariana Islands and the Philippines,
where Magellan was killed. One surviving vessel led by Juan Sebastián
Elcano returned west across the Indian Ocean and the other went north in
hopes of finding the westerly winds and reaching Mexico. Failing to find
the right winds, she was forced to return to the East Indies. The
Magellan-Elcano expedition made the first circumnavigation of the world
and reached the Philippines, the Mariana Islands and other islands of
Oceania.
From 1527 to 1595, often with Manila galleons, several
other large Spanish expeditions crossed the Pacific Ocean, resulting in
arrivals at the Marshall Islands and Palau in the North Pacific, as well
as Ellice Islands, the Marquesas Islands, the Solomon Islands
archipelago , the Cook Islands and the Admiralty Islands in the South
Pacific.
In search of Terra Australis, Spanish explorations in
the 17th century, such as the expedition led by Portuguese navigator
Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, sailed to the Pitcairn and Vanuatu
archipelagos and navigated the Torres Strait between Australia and New
Guinea, named by the navigator Luís Vaz de Torres. Willem Janszoon, made
the first fully documented European landing in Australia (1606), at Cape
York Peninsula. Abel Tasman circumnavigated and landed parts of the
Australian mainland coast and discovered Van Diemen's Land (now
Tasmania), New Zealand in 1642 and Fiji. He was the first known European
explorer to reach these islands.
In 1616, passing by Cape Horn, the Dutchman Jacob Le Maire discovered
part of Tonga (Niua Islands), the Hoorn Islands and the Schouten
Islands. Soon it was also the United Kingdom to take an interest in the
area from a scientific point of view. Between 1768 and 1779 Captain
James Cook made three voyages, in which he explored the eastern coast of
Australia, ascertaining that it was not part of the imaginary southern
continent already sought by the Spaniards: the same for New Zealand
which circumnavigated entirely, while it was the first to land in the
Hawaiian Islands and to travel the Torres Strait, realizing that New
Guinea and Australia were not united as everyone thought (but the strait
had already been crossed unknowingly by the Spaniard Luis Váez de
Torres, to whom it was named in following the rediscovery of his
diaries, within the wave of Spanish explorations of the sixteenth
century). On his second voyage Cook went as far as very cold latitudes,
putting an end to the myth of the southern continent: if it existed, it
was in areas so close to the south pole as to be uninhabitable
(Antarctica was later discovered in 1820); his explorations were
certainly the most important in the history of Oceania; however he was
not the first of the great navigators who "roamed" the Pacific in the
eighteenth century: in 1699 William Dampier had followed in the
footsteps of Tasman in Australia and discovered New Ireland and New
Britain; from 1766 to 1769 Louis Antoine de Bougainville had been the
first Frenchman to circumnavigate the globe; in 1766 Samuel Wallis had
rediscovered the Tuamotu (already visited by the Portuguese Pedro
Fernandes de Queirós in the sixteenth century), including the splendid
Tahiti and the Pitcairns; and in 1785 Jean-François de La Pérouse had
set out with the intention of emulating his predecessors, especially by
mapping the coasts of the northern Pacific. The last big geographical
doubts were clarified by Matthew Flinders who in 1801 defined once and
for all the coasts of Australia and ascertained that Tasmania was an
island, which not even Cook had understood.
In the meantime, the
Enlightenment myth of the "good savage" (created by Bougainville, still
continues today) who lived in harmony with nature began to spread: on
the other hand, these explorations had been wanted in the context of the
eighteenth-century European Enlightenment culture, according to which it
was the task of the evolved man to civilize the world, an ideal which
would then remain rooted in society throughout the colonial era, up to
the 20th century; the first example of this feeling is the famous novel
by Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, written in those years. The
colonization of these areas was initiated by the United Kingdom in
Australia, but in a very unusual way: so little was the interest in this
continent, which by now the Netherlands had given up, that it was used
as a penal colony; in 1788 the first load of convicts landed at Botany
Bay (where Sydney stands today). Shortly after, however, other people
also arrived, such as in New Zealand (from 1814) with the intention of
founding large farms: these tenacious men during the nineteenth century
will first come to terms (Treaty of Waitangi, 1840), then they will
defeat the Māori in New Zealand and will drive the Aboriginal people
into the most hostile areas of Australia, which they will explore far
and wide; memorable the feat of Robert O'Hara Burke and William John
Wills who in 1860 managed to reach the north coast from Melbourne,
through deserts and forests. These two great colonies will begin the
long process of emancipation from the United Kingdom from their
transformation into Dominion, Australia in 1901 and New Zealand in 1907,
to full independence after the Second World War.
As for the rest
of Oceania, it will be frequented by missionaries, mercenaries and
traders from the beginning of the 19th century, but the first colonies
will be the French ones: French Polynesia and New Caledonia from 1842,
to which is added the archipelago of Wallis and Futuna in 1853. The
other territories are quickly occupied by Germany (Micronesia and New
Guinea) and the United Kingdom (all other islands) from 1882 onwards,
until the First World War, when Germany loses its territories to the
United Kingdom and to the United States of America, which in the end
will be the only ones to maintain a certain influence on the Pacific due
to their proximity (while France and the United Kingdom will grant
independence to most of the islands, between the sixties and the
nineties century) especially in Micronesia where dangerous nuclear tests
were carried out for decades during the Cold War (Bikini atoll) of which
the local population has yet to stem the effects. However, it is
important to remember that even today these three states maintain a
certain number of colonies in Oceania.
Geologically, Oceania extends over two plates: the Australian plate
and the Pacific plate.
The Australian Plate includes the
Australian mainland and nearby islands such as Tasmania, New Guinea, New
Caledonia, the Aru Islands, the Raja Ampat Islands and most of New
Zealand: the North Island and the northern part of the South Island. The
Australian plate is also called Sahul.
When sea levels were
lowest, during the Pleistocene, including the last glacial maximum
(about 18,000 years BC), the territories of the Australian Plate formed
a single landmass. Subsequently, with the rise of the sea level, the
lower territories were submerged.
The Pacific Plate includes
almost all of distant Oceania and the southern part of New Zealand's
South Island; inside the plate is one of the most important hot spots on
the planet, which gave rise to the archipelago of Hawaii. The Pacific
plate is the only one of the planet's twelve major plates to be made up
almost entirely of oceanic crust: small flaps of continental crust are
only those of New Zealand and California.
Unlike all other continents, the highest mountain ranges of Oceania
are not found on the continental mainland, i.e. in Australia, but on the
three major islands: New Guinea, North Island and South Island. The
highest altitudes are reached in New Guinea, with the Sudirman Mountains
(or Dugunduguoo) and the Bismarck Mountains: the continent's highest
peak is Puncak Jaya, or Carsztens Pyramid, (4 884 m) in the Sudirman
Mountains; the second Oceanian peak is Mount Wilhelm (4 509 m), which
rises instead in the Bismarck Mountains. Due to the presence of the
Puncak Jaya, New Guinea is, of all the islands in the world, the one
that has the highest mountain.
In terms of altitude, then come
the New Zealand Alps, which run through the two major islands of the
homonymous archipelago. The highest peak of this range is Mount Cook (or
Aoraki) (3 764 m), in the South Island.
Lower than the mountains
of New Guinea and New Zealand are the Australian Alps, which line the
east coast of Australia; their highest peak is Mount Kosciuszko (or Tar
Gan Gil) (2228 m), in New South Wales. Even isolated mountains and
massifs present in the smaller islands can reach great heights; for
example, the Mauna Kea volcano on the Island of Hawaii reaches 4,205
meters.
Depending on the criteria adopted, the "Seven Peaks" of
mountaineering include either Puncak Jaya (the highest peak on the
continent), or Mount Kosciuszko (the highest peak on the continental
mainland); the two different criteria depend on the fact that Oceania is
the only continent to have the highest peak placed on an island and not
on the mainland.
Oceania is the second continent, after the American one, for wealth
of water resources in relation to the population. The most important
rivers are located in Australia; the Darling River and the Murray River,
merging, form a single river system which, at 3,750 km, is the longest
in all of Oceania; these two rivers are also notable for the vastness of
their combined basin, which occupies an area of 1 061 469 km².
The main lake is Lake Eyre, also located in Australia.
The US National Geographic Society website proposes a classification
of the islands that make up Oceania based on geological differences.
According to this principle, continental, high and low islands are
distinguished. The continental islands in this case include Australia,
New Zealand, and New Guinea, which were part of a larger continental
mass before tectonic changes and rising sea levels separated them.
Continental islands are characterized by a variety of relief, in all
three cases including mountain ranges of folded origin, resulting from
the extrusion of rocks upward during the collision of lithospheric
plates. The ongoing tectonic activity in New Zealand and New Guinea is
reflected in the presence of active volcanoes. At the same time, the
dominant processes that formed the continental islands differed
significantly, which led to significant differences in the relief. Such
a distinctive feature for Australia is Outback - a vast region of
deserts and semi-deserts on the plains in its central part; for New
Zealand - glaciers, the presence of which is due to high altitudes and
prevailing wet and cold winds; and for New Guinea, where a significant
altitude is combined with proximity to the equator and humid tropical
winds, high-mountain evergreen tropical forests.
The high, or
volcanic, islands of Oceania arose as a result of the eruptions of
underwater volcanoes, in which the erupted magma was cooled by ocean
water and solidified. Such activity, which continues for a long time,
leads to the formation of islands, in the center of which is a mountain
with steep slopes, from which ridges and gorges diverge towards the
coastline. A significant concentration of high islands is characteristic
of Melanesia in that part of it that coincides with the contour of the
Pacific Ring of Fire - a chain of underwater volcanoes - at the junction
of the Pacific and Australian plates. The important volcanoes of
Melanesia are Tomaniwi (Fiji), Lamington (New Guinea) and Yasur
(Vanuatu).
The basis of low, or coral, islands is the thickness
of coral skeletons. Due to their origin, these islands often barely rise
above sea level and often take the form of a discontinuous semicircular
chain of small islets (atolls) around a central lagoon. This form occurs
when a coral reef forms around an uplift of volcanic land, and then this
land is eroded, leaving a depression in its place, which is filled with
sea water. A typical example is the Kwajalein Atoll (Marshall Islands),
consisting of 97 islets of different sizes, surrounding one of the
world's largest lagoons; the total area of their land and the inner
lagoon is 2173 km². Low islands dominate Micronesia and Polynesia.
There are several mountain ranges in Australia, the most famous of
which is the Great Dividing Range, but there are also such ranges as the
Kimberley Mountains (the highest point of Ord (937 m)) and the Berkeley
Plateau. The highest point on the mainland is Mount Wilhelm in Papua New
Guinea.
The largest mountains in Oceania
Mount Wilhelm (4509 m)
Mount Mauna Kea (4205 m)
Mauna Loa volcano (4169 m)
Mount Cook
(3764 m)
volcano Ruapehu (2797 m)
Ulawun volcano (2300 m)
Mount Kosciuszko (2228 m)
Mount Liebig (1440 m)
Mount Meharri
(1251 m)
Mount Bluff Knoll (1096 m)
Mount Ord (937 m)
The fame of Oceania gives the deepest mark of the world - the
Mariana Trench (10,994 m). In addition to it, there are two other
equally deep trenches on the territory. These are the Tonga Trench
(10,882 m) and the Kermadec Trench (10,047 m). On land, the Eyre
North salt lake, up to −16 meters deep, became a deep mark.
The climate on different islands and in the states is diverse. In central Australia, precipitation is less than 250 mm per year, and the prevailing temperatures are + 7 ° С to + 47 ° С. In the northern part of Australia (city of Darwin), temperatures from +10°С to +41°С and precipitation from 2000 mm and more prevail. The highest precipitation rate is located in the north of Papua New Guinea and reaches more than 3000 mm, when temperatures here prevail from +18 to +24°C.
Many plants and animals of Oceania come from South Asia, from where
they came to the modern islands during the last ice age, when the lower
level of the oceans made it possible to cross over land. Plant seeds
were also carried by wind, sea currents and birds. After the sea level
rose again, organisms continued to evolve on individual islands or
groups of islands, forming endemic species far from a common ancestor.
The number of endemic species in Australia and Oceania is much higher
than in other parts of the world. Important flowering plants in
Australia and Oceania include jacaranda, hibiscus, pohutukawa, kowhai
(endemic species of Sophora), breadfruit, eucalyptus, and banyan tree.
In the animal world of Oceania, birds occupy a central place due to
their ability to fly between islands; in total, there are over 110
endemic bird species in Oceania. This number also includes the relic
flightless birds of Australia, New Guinea and New Zealand - cassowaries,
emu, kiwi, ueka shepherd and takahe. Among other animals, lizards and
bats are widely represented (in particular, more than 100 species of
fruit bats are known in Oceania). Australia and Oceania are the only
region of the world where representatives of monotremes, egg-laying
mammals, have survived. The surviving species of this order (four
species of echidnas and one species of platypus) live only in Australia
and New Guinea. Other wild mammals are mostly marsupials; of all known
modern marsupial species in the world, 70% are in Oceania, the rest are
concentrated in South America. Due to the absence of large predators,
the marsupials of Oceania grow to sizes inaccessible to their American
relatives - for example, a large red kangaroo reaches a height of 2 m
and weighs up to 100 kg.
Oceania lies in three different marine
ecoregions - Temperate Australasian (the seas washing the southern part
of Australia and New Zealand), Central Indo-Pacific (the northern coast
of Australia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New
Caledonia, Fiji and Tonga) and Eastern Indo-Pacific (the central region
of the Pacific Ocean from the Marshall Islands to central and
southeastern Polynesia). The temperate Australasian region is
characterized by cold, nutrient-rich waters that support large
populations of fish and seabirds ((several species of albatrosses and
petrels, as well as the Australian gannet and crested penguin). The
other two regions are home to corals that formed in the Central
Indo-Pacific region giant formations - the Great Barrier Reef and the
Barrier Reef of New Caledonia Barrier reefs are the basis for high
biodiversity.Thus, the Great Barrier Reef is home to about 30 species of
whales and dolphins, 6 species of sea turtles, 215 species of birds and
more than 1500 species of fish, and Barrier Reef of New Caledonia - at
least 1000 species of fish in addition to 600 species of sponges, 5500
species of molluscs and 5000 species of crustaceans.
Peoples
All of Western and Eastern Australia is occupied by
Anglo-Australians who settled during the colonization of the Australian
continent. The entire island of New Guinea, attached to Oceania, is
occupied by the Papuan peoples (including those on the Solomon Islands
and the Santa Cruz Islands). Central Australia is inhabited by
Indigenous Aboriginal Australians, for whom reservations have been
established. New Zealand is inhabited by the Anglo-New Zealanders, as
well as on such islands as Chatham and others.
Colonial lands
(for example, the island of New Caledonia) are occupied by the French,
and the Pitcairn Islands, in the south of the world, are inhabited by
the British mixed with indigenous tribes.
Most of the Australian population lives in the east and southwest of the continent, where the population density ranges from 1 to 10 people / km². Near the largest cities, the density varies from 10 to 50 people/km². On the contrary, in Papua New Guinea, despite the mountainous terrain, there is a population density of 10-50 people per square kilometer. The capital of the state, Port Moresby, does not have a large population and does not stand out from the general background. The situation is similar in New Zealand, where the largest city is not the capital Wellington, but Auckland. Of the island states of Oceania, the most densely populated is Fiji (10 - 40 people / km²).
Most of the islands in Oceania are poor in minerals. The exceptions
are New Caledonia, the world's fifth largest producer of nickel, whose
reserves account for about 10% of the world's reserves of this metal,
and Fiji, in whose exports gold occupies second place after cane sugar.
New Guinea has significant mineral resources. The mining industry is one
of Papua New Guinea's main employers, exporting gold, copper and oil. In
the territorial waters of the country, mining has begun from a depth of
more than a mile below the seabed. There are also a number of oil and
gas fields around Australia and New Zealand, but these countries consume
more oil than they produce themselves.
On the continental islands
of Oceania (including Australia), there are significant resources for
the logging and woodworking industries. For example, in Australia, these
areas of the economy in 2008 brought in revenue of $1.7 billion. In this
country, the main products are sawn wood, wood panels and paper. Logging
also plays an important role in the economy of Papua New Guinea, which
exports rosewood, eucalyptus and pine wood.