ptaki: Oceania

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

Oceania is a geographical region – or, in certain classifications, one of the world’s continents – including Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Spanning the Eastern and Western hemispheres, at the centre of the water hemisphere, Oceania is estimated to have a land area of about 9,000,000 square kilometres (3,500,000 sq mi) and a population of around 46.3 million as of 2024, including Australia but excluding the Malay Archipelago. When compared against other continental land areas, Oceania is the smallest and the second-least populated after Antarctica. It is home to Earth's third-largest remaining area of tropical rainforest, which covers much of the island of New Guinea. Oc…

Evidence: 63 • authority: 72

The prehistory of Papua New Guinea can be traced to about 50,000–60,000 years ago, when people first migrated towards the Australian continent. Agriculture was established at least 7000 years ago in the New Guinea Highlands. Extensive trade networks operated throughout the region, and successive waves of migration included the spread of Austronesian languages around 3000 years ago, and the rise of the Lapita culture. In 1545 the Spanish explorer Yñigo Ortiz de Retez was the first person to give the name "New Guinea" to the main island. European colonisation began in the 1880s when the eastern portion of New Guinea was divided between the German Empire and the British Empire. In WWI, the All…

Evidence: 45 • authority: 72

Aboriginal Australians are the various indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, excluding the ethnically distinct people of the Torres Strait Islands. Humans first migrated to Australia 50,000 to 65,000 years ago, and over time formed as many as 500 linguistic and territorial groups. Aboriginal people once lived across large areas of the continental shelf that were later inundated by postglacial sea-level rise at the start of the Holocene inter-glacial period, reshaping coastal landscapes and separating Tasmania from the mainland. Aboriginal people maintained extensive networks within the continent and certain groups maintained relationships with Torres Strait…

Evidence: 45 • authority: 72

Solomon Islands is an archipelagic country consisting of six major islands and over 1,000 smaller islands in Melanesia, Oceania, to the north-east of Australia. It is adjacent to Bougainville to the west, New Caledonia and Vanuatu to the south-east, Fiji, Tuvalu, and Wallis and Futuna to the east, and the Federated States of Micronesia and Nauru to the north. It has a total area of 28,896 square kilometres (11,157 sq mi), and a population of 828,857 according to official estimates from 2025. Its capital and largest city, Honiara, is located on the largest island, Guadalcanal. The country takes its name from the wider area of the Solomon Islands archipelago, which is a collection of Melanesi…

Evidence: 45 • authority: 72

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It has a land area of 7,688,287 km2 (2,968,464 sq mi), making it the sixth-largest country in the world, and is the world's flattest and driest inhabited continent. It is a megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, including large deserts centrally and tropical rainforests along the coast. The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from Southeast Asia 50,000 to 65,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Period. By the time of British settlement, Aboriginal Australians…

Evidence: 45 • authority: 92

Genomic evidence supports the "long chronology" for the peopling of Sahul.. The timing of the settlement of Sahul-the Pleistocene landmass formed by present-day New Guinea, Australia, and Tasmania that existed until ~9000 years ago (~9 ka)-remains highly contentious. The so-called "long chronology" posits the first main arrivals at ~60 to 65 ka, whereas a "short chronology" proposes 47 to 51 ka. Here, we exhaustively analyze an unprecedentedly large mitogenome dataset ( n = 2456) encompassing the full range of diversity from the indigenous populations of Australia, New Guinea, and Oceania, including a lineage related to those of New Guinea in an archaeological sample from Wallacea. We asses…

Evidence: 45 • authority: 72

Papua New Guinea (PNG), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island nation in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean north of Australia. It has a land border with Indonesia to the west and maritime borders with Australia to the south and the Solomon Islands to the east. Its capital is Port Moresby. The country's 462,840 km2 (178,700 mi2) includes a large mainland and hundreds of islands. The eastern half of New Guinea was divided in 1884 between German New Guinea in the north and British New Guinea in the south, with the latter ceded to Australia in 1902 and reor…

Evidence: 38 • authority: 80

Large Earthquake in Papua New Guinea re-ruptures major fault in just 19 years: More to follow?

Evidence: 38 • authority: 72

New Guinea (Tok Pisin: Niugini; Hiri Motu: Niu Gini; Indonesian: Papua, fossilized Nugini, also known as Papua or historically Irian) is the world's second-largest island, with an area of 785,753 km2 (303,381 sq mi). It has the third-largest remaining rainforest globally, and the highest plant biodiversity of any island. Located in Melanesia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the 150-kilometre (81-nautical-mile; 93-mile) wide Torres Strait. Both landmasses lie on the same continental shelf, and were united during episodes of low sea level in the Pleistocene glaciations as the combined landmass of Sahul. Numerous smaller islands are located to the we…

Evidence: 38 • authority: 92

Papuan admixture predated the settlement of Palau.. The first people reached Remote Oceania 3,000 years before present (BP), arriving roughly simultaneously in the southwest Pacific, the Marianas Archipelago, and Palau. However, no genome-wide ancient DNA data have been available from Palau, a gap we address by reporting 21 individuals from four archaeological sites dating between 2,900 and 500 BP. All had approximately 60% ancestry related to East Asians and 40% to Papuans, similar to present-day Palauans, the longest stretch of population continuity anywhere in Remote Oceania. The lengths of contiguous Papuan ancestry segments in the oldest individuals show that major admixture between Pa…

Evidence: 38 • authority: 92

Leveraging known Pacific colonisation times to test models for the ancestry of Southeast Asians.. The most widely accepted model for the colonization of Remote Oceania by Austronesian-speaking bearers of the Lapita complex ~ 3 ka (3000 years ago) links it to a broader Neolithic expansion from China, via Taiwan, ~ 4.5-6 ka. However, analyses of mitochondrial DNA haplogroup B4a1a1a, prevalent among Remote Oceanians today, have both supported and challenged this scenario. Here, we analyze 1364 B4a1a1 mitogenomes (234 novel) from 68 islands and compare age estimates with radiocarbon dates for colonization. We estimate the settlement of Remote Oceania ~ 3.2 [2.7; 3.75] ka, matching radiocarbon a…

Evidence: 38 • authority: 72

This is a list of Australia-New Guinea species extinct in the Holocene that covers extinctions from the Holocene epoch, a geologic epoch that began about 11,650 years before present (about 9700 BCE) and continues to the present day. The Australian continent is also called Australia-New Guinea or Sahul to avoid confusion with the country of Australia. The continent includes mainland Australia, Tasmania, the island of New Guinea, the Aru Islands, and other nearby islands. Australia-New Guinea is divided between three countries: Australia (mainland Australia and Tasmania), Papua New Guinea (eastern New Guinea), and Indonesia (Western New Guinea and the Aru Islands). Extinct species from the re…