Description: The Island Melanesians is the first book to focus on the inhabitants of the chain of archipelagoes stretching east and southeast of the large island of New Guinea -- the Bismarcks, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia (Kanaky). The story of these people begins with the first settlement of the region over 30,000 years ago and continues with their mixed hunter-horticultural economy, developed over the next 25,000 years. Then came the sudden irruption of new colonists bringing a fully agricultural economy and domestic animals some 3500 years ago. These colonists, ancestors too of the Fijians and the Polynesians, were almost certainly the first humans to settle the previously empty islands in the southern archipelagoes of Vanuatu and New Caledonia.

It describes how the Austronesian languages of the colonists were adopted throughout Island Melanesia, while their genes became submerged through inter-marriage. Island Melanesia is the product both of these two social and economic systems and of the most recent colonists, the Europeans.

This book is a pioneering interpretation of the cultural evolution of this broad region. It analyzes current social, political and environmental trends, highlights continuities and transformations, and it describes the daunting challenges facing these varied and vibrant peoples as they enter the twenty-first century.

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