Oceania includes Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, and islands in Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. It has a population of 36 million, with most living in Australia or New Zealand. Oceania was settled by Europeans in the late 18th and early 19th century and is the most recent continent to be colonized. It can be divided into four regions: Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.
Oceania is a word for a large region that includes Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand and the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. The term was coined in 1831 by the French explorer Dumont d’Urville. Today, the term is occasionally used to describe a continental area, instead of focusing on just Australia. Overall, Oceania’s population is approximately 36 million, with all but 11 million living in Australia or New Zealand.
There are approximately 19 countries that exist entirely within or overlap with Oceania, not counting several territories of France, the United Kingdom, Chile, the United States and Australia. Spanning an area of ocean the size of South America, three main areas of Oceania are made up of nothing but small islands: Melanesia, which is directly north of Australia, Micronesia, which is north of that, and Polynesia, which is to the east.
Oceania is unusual in being the most recent continental area to have been opened to colonization by the rest of the world: while the Americas were settled by Europeans in the early 17th century, Oceania was not settled until the late 18th and early 19th century. Partly because of this, Oceania is unpopulated compared to other continents on the planet. Another reason is the large areas of uninhabitable desert in Australia.
The history of much of Oceania before European colonization is likewise relatively short, though still ancient. Some islands, such as Australia and New Guinea, have been inhabited for 50,000 years, producing some of the earliest fossil humans outside Africa. The rest of the region was settled only much more recently, in most cases not before 1000 BC. During the next 2,000 years, natives using outrigger canoes slowly spread to the rest of the area.
As mentioned, Oceania can be divided into four regions: Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. Australasia is made up of Australia and New Zealand. Melanesia consists of Fiji, part of Indonesia, New Caledonia (France), Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. Micronesia includes the Federated States of Micronesia, Guam (USA), Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, the Northern Marshall Islands (USA), Nauru, Palau and Wake Island (USA). Polynesia consists of American Samoa (USA), Chatham Islands (UK), Cook Islands (UK), Easter Island (Chile), French Polynesia (France), Hawaii (USA), Loyalty Islands (France), Niue (NZ), the Pitcairn Islands (UK), Samoa, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu and Wallis and Futuna (France).
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