The History Book Club discussion

This is the folder for the part of the world which includes the countries of Australia/Oceania and all countries/territories/islands, etc which belong to this region of the world.

Countries of Australia and all other countries termed Oceania

The "continent" of Australia/Oceania is a somewhat artifical construct, designed to link together the continental landmass of Australia with the huge number of widely scattered islands across the Pacific Ocean.

Area:
8 600,000 km2 (3 300,000 mi2)

Population:
37 million

Highest Point:
Puncak Jaya (Carstensz Pyramid 4884 m/16 023 ft), Papua Province, Indonesia

Largest Lake:
Lake Eyre, Australia (if there is some water)

Longest River:
Murray-Darling river system 3750 km (2300 mi)

Map of Australia/Oceania


Official and Spoken Languages of Australia and the Pacifics
Link: List of official, national and spoken languages of the Pacifics
http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld...

Languages of Oceania:
Melanesian pidgin, Melanesian-Polynesian Languages, English, French.

Flags of Australia and Oceania
http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld...

States of Australia and Oceania

Australia/New Zealand

1. Australia - Population = 22,400,000 - Capital City = Canberra -
Largest City = Sydney



2. New Zealand - Population = 4,400,000 - Capital City = Wellington -
Largest City = Auckland



3. Tasmania - Island State - part of the Commonwealth of Australia
Population = 514,700 - Capital City = Hobart - Largest City = Hobart

Melanesia - the islands in the southwestern part of Oceania



1. Fiji - Population = 900,000 - Capital City = Suva -

2. New Caledonia - Population = 300,000 - Capital City = Nouméa

3. Papua, New Guinea - Population = 6,800,000 - Capital City = Port Moresby

4. Solomon Islands - Population = 500,000 - Capital City = Honiara

5. Vanuatu - Population = 200,000 - Capital City = Port-Vila

6. Western New Guinea (PAPUA AND WEST PAPUA) (Indonesian Region)

Map of Papua, New Guinea

Micronesia, the islands in the northwestern part of Oceania

Polynesia, the islands in the eastern part of Oceania

Archaeology of Pacific Oceania: Inhabiting a Sea of Islands

by Mike T Carson (no photo)

Synopsis:

This book integrates a region-wide chronological narrative of the archaeology of Pacific Oceania. How and why did this vast sea of islands, covering nearly one-third of the world's surface, come to be inhabited over the last several millennia, transcending significant change in ecology, demography, and society? What can any or all of the thousands of islands offer as ideal model systems toward comprehending globally significant issues of human-environment relations and coping with changing circumstances of natural and cultural history? A new synthesis of Pacific Oceanic archaeology addresses these questions, based largely on the author's investigations throughout the diverse region.

The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific

by Paul Theroux

Synopsis:

"Possibly his best travel book...an observant and frequently hilarious account of a trip that took him to 51 Pacific Islands."
TIME

Renowned travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux has been many places in his life and tried almost everything. But this trip in and around the lands of the Pacific may be his boldest, most fascinating yet.

From New Zealand's rain forests, to crocodile-infested New Guinea, over isolated atolls, through dirty harbors, daring weather and coastlines, he travels by Kayak wherever the winds take him--and what he discovers is the world to explore and try to understand.

A Submerged 7,000-Year-Old Discovery Shows the Great Potential of Underwater Archaeology

Stone tools scattered on the seafloor mark the oldest underwater site ever found on the continent.



Australia has a deep human history stretching back 65,000 years, but many of its oldest archaeological sites are now underwater. In an encouraging sign that Aboriginal artifacts and landscapes may actually be preserved offshore, archaeologists have discovered a 7,000-year-old site submerged along Australia's continental shelf, the first of its kind. Their discovery is outlined today in the journal PLoS One.

At the end of the last ice age, about 12,000 years ago, when glaciers melted and sea level rose, waters inundated one-third of Australia’s habitable land. As part of a project called Deep History of Sea Country, Jonathan Benjamin, a professor of maritime archaeology at Flinders University in Adelaide, led a team that searched for submerged sites off Murujuga (also known as the Dampier Archipelago), a dry and rocky coastal region in northwestern Australia.

This area has a wealth of inland archaeological sites, including more than one million examples of rock art. About 18,000 years ago, the shoreline of Murujuga would have extended another 100 miles further than the current coast. But Benjamin and his colleagues had little to go on when they began to search the offshore territory.

Remainder of article:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scienc...

Source: Smithsonian

More:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/scienc...
https://phys.org/news/2020-07-aborigi...
https://phys.org/news/2020-07-aborigi...
https://theconversation.com/in-a-firs...

by Sarah Colley (no photo)