Page 32 - THE MELANESIA DIASPORA FILE CETAK ISI 10022017

CHAPTER 1 Truman Simanjuntak

The Prehistory of Melanesia in the Indonesian Archipelago

Introduction
Melanesia, Melanesoid and Melanesid are three names or terms with the same prefix, and
questions are often asked about similarities and differences in meaning. Melanesia is the
most widely used name and it refers to the population and area they reside in. It originates
from Greek: melas which means black and nesoi which means islands. It was Jules Dumont
d’Urville (1790-1842), a French explorer and botanist who in 1832 coined the name to
refer to the population with dark skin residing in the archipelagic area starting from the
western edge of the Pacific Oceans through the Arafura Sea to Fiji. Melanesoid is a bio-
anthropological term referring to the taxonomy of the indigenous population residing in
the Melanesian region.
Together with the peoples of Micronesia and Polynesia, the Melanesians inhabit the
vast Pacific archipelagic region. To the west of this region, there is the vast neighboring
archipelago–Indonesia.
All four of these regions, Indonesia, Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia, have the
word ending –nesia, and are surrounded by the continents of Asia, America and Australia.
The indonesian archipelago is composed of many islands of widely varying size. The
region is considered to be a part of Southeast Asia, and has a number of big islands
such as Sumatra, Java, and Kalimantan, and also Papua which is shared with Papua new
Guinea (PNG), while the other –nesia regions do not have such big islands. Micronesia
and Polynesia are comprised of small islands which are mostly just dots on the world
map. In the past, when the choice of settlement areas was really available, the balance
between the group of people and the environment of small islands, especially the isolated
ones was extremely fragile. The limitation of resources which were found on the islands
often became resources for exploitation only, not for inhabitation. It was different if the
resources were promising, where people were interested in settling down and with a
limited community had the tendency to possess strong group ties, developing languages,
and binding social regulations.

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