Talk:Melanesia

message: Did re-write of article.
In future I would hope to see the article expanded into something like
: Intro
: Origins
: Culture
: Island List.
Daeron 20:54, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: It seems to me this article quite rightly criticises the term 'Melanesian' as being pretty meaningless, then goes on to use it in ways that don't make much sense. How can it be said that 'Lapita pottery is Melanesian...' when we don't know anything about the genetics of the Lapita potters? Lapita pottery is usually associated with the Austronesians, who may have acquired the H17 gene via contact with Papuan people, but the two things are separate.
It's a very broad generalisation to say that 'social status is generally based upon social skills and personal assets, whereas Polynesians use heredity to determine social status' as there are many Papuan groups who use heredity as a major determiner of social status.
Melanesians are not considered the oldest of the Pacific peoples (whatever that would mean) as 'Melanesian' refers to various Austronesian groups as well as Papuan, and the former have only been in the area for a few thousand years (tho no-one knows how long they've been in the Pacific, on Taiwan).
I'm not aware of any evidence that Indigenous Australians have a common ancestry with Papuans. They both seem to have arrived in their present areas tens of thousands of years ago and while it seems likely they were part of a single large wave of people moving through the archipelago they may well have been separate groups. Dougg 22:59, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Various genetic studies of the Pacific people in combination with earlier archaeological evidence have now clarified much of the confusion. The Melanesian people have a Y chromosome marker, H17, that is not found in Polynesians.   Lapita pottery is Melanesian in origin, and can be found on islands since occupied by other people. Also, social status is generally based upon social skills and personal assets, whereas Polynesians use heredity to determine social status. Melanesians are considered the oldest of the Pacific peoples. They, like the Indigenous Australians, with whom Papuan Melanesians share a common ancestry, arrived some thousands of years BC.
While it would be good to have some comments based on genetic research, I think there's still too much uncertainty about what it means for it to be useful. Dougg 23:11, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Papuans and Austronesians 

message: My understanding is that Austronesian is a non-specific generalization that includes Malays, Melanesians and Polynesians; the Melanesian being from a group who arrived tens of thousands of years ago, and Polynesian being from Asian migration into the Pacific during the pass two thousand years. The sentence that says "the Austronesians and the Papuans" seems to be complete nonsense refering to a super-group and a sub-group as if both were specific sub-groups which they are not.
No. I suggest you read the links: Austronesian and Papuans.  'Papuans' refers to the indigenous people of New Guinea who are not Austronesian (and for this reason also known as non-Austronesians). They are the ones who arrived in the New Guinea region tens of thousands of years ago. They are very diversified, so it is true that 'Papuans' is a super-group, but it's a convenient term, and it captures a major distinction, i.e. between them, the Austronesians and the Australians. The Austronesians are relative newcomers to the New Guinea region, their ancestors having left Taiwan around  four thousand years ago and spread through the south-east Asian archipelago (some into mainland Asia), and on into the Pacific (and one bunch even got to Madagascar). This does not mean they are 'Asian', which is anyway a pretty meaningless term to use as it includes Indo-European people (India, Pakistan, etc), Yupik (close relatives to Eskimos), and lots of other disparate groups. Melanesia refers primarily to a region, but has also been used as shorthand to refer to the Melanesian Austronesians, usually (I think) to contrast them with the Polynesian and Micronesian (and perhaps other) Austronesians. Dougg 01:18, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Austronesians 

message: I am currently transcribing some of the US Embassy telegrams from Jakarta 1969, and the Indonesian Ministers understanding of Irianese/Papua becomes much clearer in these:
Urban Irianese = someone who may be related to Malays ;
Tribal Irianese = primitive who is not related to Malays.
Austronesians are Irianese, but Papuans and Melanesians are Tribal. The concept seem to be a means by which to divide West Papua for the 'Act of Free Choice' between coastal communities whose leader's support the GOI hope to buy, and the highland and southern groups with whom the GOI assumed it would have better success avoiding the established leaders of the respective communities.
Unless somebody can find some credible kind of scientific justification for claiming New Guinea was settled by two separate populations; I suggest Wikipedia not be used to promote the claim/propaganda.58.107.10.239 06:23, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Kathleen, I'll answer on your talk page: User talk:Therandreedgroup --- Ngio 14:44, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Item 2

message: Does the Eastern part of Indonesia belong to Melanesia or not (lower image belongs to article UN geoscheme)? --Abdull 20:29, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Different definitions? 

message: The article should state where Papua New Guinea's first settlers came from before they got to Papua New Guinea.  Badagnani 11:16, 4 December 2006
The article should state where Papua New Guinea's first settlers came from before they got to Papua New Guinea. Badagnani (talk) 02:43, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origins 

message: I was thinking maybe there should be a separate article for the people of melanesia, and the same for the polynesian article. A lot is known about the polynesians and melanesians and i think they should each have separate articles from the areas they inhabit. The Melanesian people inparticular are extremely interesting as are the polynesians.
Just a proposal.
Randana 17:01, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree as well; this article is about geography mostly I suppose. Anyone up for creating the page? I don't know enough about the subject really to feel confident enough starting it. Night w (talk) 03:20, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Separate article for melanesian people? 

message: Re recent edits: 
The definition of Melanesia was extremely vague--yes there is more than one way to define it, but the article previously had not adequately addressed what the differences in definition were. It's still pretty vague, but there's less digression about irrelevances.
For example, I removed the paragraph referring to this genetics research, as it doesn't seem worthy of mention, especially if one follows up on the research here. The study only took in two populations in the Oceanic region, one in New Guinea and the other in New Britain, which hardly seems broadly encompassing the ethnology of Oceania as a whole.
Also removed the quote from Bernard Narokobi--it could be added to the People section, or even start a Culture section, but it's not worthy of being in an introduction, which should only be a couple of sentences long.
Also removed the thing about a children's book or something (????): Author Neil Gaiman has referred to the Queen of Melanesia in his children's book The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish, as having been to visit one of the characters for a visit and lauding the return of a rabbit named Galveston. I don't see the relevance, especially not in the Government section.
Revised the list of islands, which was incomplete.
Any objections? Night w (talk) 06:50, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Recent Edits

message: I am rather confused by the statement "Genome scans show Polynesians have little genetic relationship to Melanesians."  I'm hardly a geneticist, but as far as I know, there is relatively genetic difference between human populations (less than 0.2%), and our species has not been around long enough to have seperate, reproductively isolated sub-species. I believe that human populations geneticists tend to speak of population clusters and clines, not in terms of "genetic relationships" between groups, since we are talking about extremely minute differences to begin with.  The cited source also spoke of population clusters, not "genetic relationships."  Kemet 13:44, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Genetic relationships 

message: The Torres Strait Islanders have their own flag. It should be included in the "Associated Islands" section, but I can't find the icon, so someone else please add it. 
Also querying whether it should say "politically shared between Australia and Papua New Guinea" rather than "politically divided between Australia and Papua New Guinea".
The whole Torres Strait (except Daru Island) belongs to Australia but Papua New Guineans are allowed to access their traditional fishing grounds and trade routes (as long as they don't land on the mainland). This is a sharing agreement, not a division.122.107.15.145 (talk) 01:33, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed the latter. As for the flag, though, it's not used in PNG as far as I know (correct me if I'm wrong), so to attribute a national flag to a geographic area would be inaccurate. If you can find evidence to the contrary, however, I can add the icon. Night w (talk) 05:55, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Torres Strait 

message: The archaeology strongly supports settlement in prehistory from Polynesia, and contact with New Zealand and or East Polynesia. See:
*
*
*
The Polynesian settlers had left by the time of European discovery, but left behind adzes of Polynesian type, bananas, New Zealand flax, the Pacific Rat with close genetic ties to New Zealand and East Polynesia, etc. Melanesian artefacts have been found, but were most likely introduced when the island was the base of the Anglican Church's Melanesian Mission, as is mentioned by Anderson et al.  So what are the sources for including Norfolk in Melanesia? Kahuroa (talk) 05:19, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: As it says in the article, it's included in the geographic definition, but not the cultural definition. Nightw 14:51, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, but where do the definitions come from source-wise? Kahuroa (talk) 17:18, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure, since I haven't read any of the texts cites as references. But a simple Google search will bring up any number of sources citing its inclusion. Here's one from the Melanesian mission, which was headquartered on the island for most of its existence. And of course there are modern websites about Melanesia which reference it (e.g. Wow Melanesia). Nightw 17:47, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

text: Cheers. The reason I ask is that i am redrawing the map of Polynesia from a really good recent source and Norfolk Is is right on the border between Polynesia and Melanesia. I just had another look at the map and I can see that the tiny dot of Norfolk is just inside Melanesia which means there's no conflict with this article. Sweet. I might as well include Melanesia and Micronesia while I am at it rather than use just the Polynesian part of their map. Kahuroa (talk) 18:29, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

text: Geologically, Norfolk Island is a part of Zealandia. Geopolitically, Norfolk Island is a part of Australia. I reckon the most appropriate subregion for Norfolk Island should be Australasia. The United Nations geoscheme includes Norfolk Island in “Australia and New Zealand" (which is another word for Australasia). Of course, we can mention the island's connections with Polynesia and Melanesia in the article, but the geographical subregion for this tiny island should be Australasia instead.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.16.204.99 (talk) 16:14, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Norfolk Island - why does the article include it in Melanesia?

message: The word Melanesia does not represent a location on earth that existed thousands of years ago for explorers to travel from. This is a critical point because the word Melanesia has been used to re-write (and by extension – devalue) the travels of African people as they settle much of the South Pacific. By using the word ‘Melanesia’ or ‘Melanesian’ the link from the South Pacific to Africa is severed. The term (and therefore the considerable reference to global exploration – colonization) of European is identified with those people who are from Europe. Asian identifies the people from the Asiatic part of the world. However, when the term Melanesia or Melanesian is used, the word use to identify the people of dark skin who were present in the South Pacific when the colonist arrived, how can the word reference a people from the place that they travel to?  How can this be? There is no location of Melanesia for travelers to come from. Logically, dark skinned people in the South Pacific and dark skin people in Africa must have a common ancestor. This would mean that African explorers journeyed to the far reaches of the South Pacific from their land in Africa thousands of years ago. Again, since the term Melanesian is liberally applied to those who are of dark skin the only logical location for explorers who were represented in the South Pacific island to have originated from is Africa.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vulagaman (talk • contribs) 23:52, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: ...dafaq? --Xiaphias (talk) 21:08, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

text: It doesn't matter man, all humans originally come from Africa. 120.16.204.99 (talk) 03:36, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not a factually accurate description of a location 

message: This article doesn't cover this topic at all. If I understand it correctly, Papuans and island Melanesians are racially/genetically more or less the same. So the problem is, how did island Melanesians (non-Papuans) acquire Austronesian languages? It in reality means, that island Melanesians also acquired a little bit of Polynesian/Micronesian genetics, right? There must have been a contact. 2A00:1028:919E:BE42:D09F:2A79:ADD1:6B55 (talk) 15:23, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, you can find Austronesian languages in some areas of the north coast of New Guinea and also in some parts of the island Melanesia. The genetic impact of Micronesians/Polynesians was clearly small. Just the Austronesian languages persisted in some areas that were more prone to mixing, but generally those people are still Papuans/Melanesians, even if speaking an Austronesian language. Apparently, the Micronesians/Polynesians found an already populated and well-established region and so they moved on to Micronesia/Polynesia and here and there left a little something of them. 85.163.122.254 (talk) 18:57, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  How did island Melanesians acquire Austronesian languages? 

message: I'd like to note that today I copy-pasted much of the text in the "European encounter and definition" and "People" sections into the Melanesians article.  The material that I moved belongs there because it is really about the Melanesian people rather than the island groups.  I am now going to edit this article to reduce the overlap. Looie496 (talk) 16:29, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Exported material to [[Melanesians]] 

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thread_title:  External links modified (January 2018) 

message: The problem actually is not the location in Guangzhou, since the text describes them as people originating from "the islands beyond the sea", which could mean a lot of places from the Chinese viewpoint. This bigger problem is: does Irwin (1977) explicitly speculate about a Melanesian origin of these enslaved people? The book is entitled Africans Abroad: A Documentary History of the Black Diaspora in Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean During the Age of Slavery; I have no copy of it at hand, but judging from its title I wonder whether Irwin was the one who made this very specific interpretation of the Chinese primary source.  Can you give us more context from Irwin's book surrounding that quote? –Austronesier (talk) 12:34, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: hi Austronesier, I agree with you. While my main sentence focused on the geographical problem, note that I also changed the introductory formulation, to “has been interpreted as potentially a 12th-century description of Melanesians”; to this, I added a tag “interpreted”, so as to encourage Krisrich to be more specific about the author of the hypothesis: Irwin? someone cited by Irwin? or Krisrich herself? In the latter case, then we would be bordering on original research, and I'm not sure such speculation can be so easily added to the entry on Melanesia, especially with so little rhetorical precaution. Interpreting that mention of devil-slaves as Melanesians is doubtful, considering so many other possible candidates (Negritos in SEA, people of the Andamans, Dravidians, etc.). — Womtelo (talk) 13:17, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Devil-slaves" in Guangzhou 

message: Once again, as with FIJI, you don't seem to get that people want to see places in the context of the entire world. Where is the world map with Melanesia's location indicated? This shouldn't be that complicated.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.243.220.61 (talk) 05:22, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  MAP 

message: Nauru is included in the map in the upper right of the article, but not listed in the article itself. Mebden (talk) 13:50, 26 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nauru 

message: I added "few thousand" to the opening paragraph but it would be nice to see this rounded to the nearest thousand (probably 3,000). There are over 330 islands in Fiji, over 900 in the Solomon Islands, 83 in Vanuatu, and 600 in PNG. The tricky parts seem to be finding the three-figure number of islands for New Caledonia, and the three-figure number for Papua/West Papua. Anybody have good sources for those? Mebden (talk) 13:58, 26 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Island count 

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thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion