page_title: Oceania
section_title: Micronesia
hierarchical_section_title: Oceania / History / Micronesia
caption_attribution_description: English: Map outlining migratory paths of Austronesian speaking populations, including estimated dates. Adapted from Benton et al., (2012)
context_page_description: Oceania is a geographic region that includes Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. Spanning the eastern and western hemispheres, Oceania has a land area of 8,525,989 square kilometres and a population of over 41 million. When compared to continents, the region of Oceania is the smallest in land area and the second smallest in population after Antarctica.
  Oceania has a diverse mix of economies from the highly developed and globally competitive financial markets of Australia and New Zealand, which rank high in quality of life and human development index, to the much less developed economies that belong to countries such as Kiribati and Tuvalu, while also including medium-sized economies of Pacific islands such as Palau, Fiji and Tonga. The largest and most populous country in Oceania is Australia, with Sydney being the largest city of both Oceania and Australia.
  The first settlers of Australia, New Guinea, and the large islands just to the east arrived more than 60,000 years ago. Oceania was first explored by Europeans from the 16th century onward.
context_section_description: 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 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 BC 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 centered on Yap and Pohnpei. The prehistories of many Micronesian islands such as Yap are not known very well.
  The first people of the Northern Mariana Islands navigated to the islands and discovered it at some period between 4000 BC to 2000 BC from South-East 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 the Marshall Islands during the 2nd millennium BC, with inter-island navigation made possible using traditional stick charts.
caption: Chronological dispersal of Austronesian people across the Pacific (per Bellwood in Chambers, 2008)
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