The area of Sundaland encompasses the Sunda Shelf, a tectonically stable extension of Southeast Asia's continental shelf that was exposed during glacial periods of the last 2 million years.
The extent of the Sunda Shelf is approximately equal to the 120-meter isobath. In addition to the Malay Peninsula and the islands of Borneo, Java, and Sumatra, it includes the Java Sea, the Gulf of Thailand, and portions of the South China Sea. In total, the area of Sundaland is approximately 1,800,000 km2. The area of exposed land in Sundaland has fluctuated considerably
during the past recent 2 million years; the modern land area is
approximately half of the maximum extent.
The western and southern borders of Sundaland are clearly marked by the deeper waters of the Sunda Trench - some of the deepest in the world - and the Indian Ocean. The eastern boundary of Sundaland is the Wallace Line, identified by Alfred Russel Wallace as the eastern boundary of the range of Asia's land mammal fauna, and thus the boundary of the Indomalayan and Australasian realms. The islands east of the Wallace line are known as Wallacea,
a separate biogeographical region that is considered part of
Australasia. The Wallace Line corresponds to a deep-water channel that
has never been crossed by any land bridges. The northern border of Sundaland is more difficult to define in bathymetric terms; a phytogeographic transition at approximately 9ºN is considered to be the northern boundary.
Greater portions of Sundaland were most recently exposed during the last glacial period from approximately 110,000 to 12,000 years ago.
When sea level was decreased by 30–40 meters or more, land bridges
connected the islands of Borneo, Java, and Sumatra to the Malay
Peninsula and mainland Asia.
Because sea level has been 30 meters or more lower throughout much of
the last 800,000 years, the current state of Borneo, Java, and Sumatra
as islands has been a relatively rare occurrence throughout the
Pleistocene. In contrast, sea level was higher during the late Pliocene, and the exposed area of Sundaland was smaller than what is observed at present. Sundaland was partially submerged starting around 18,000 years ago and continuing till about 5000 BC. During the Last Glacial Maximum sea level fell by approximately 120 meters, and the entire Sunda Shelf was exposed.
Modern climate
All of Sundaland is within the tropics; the equator
runs through central Sumatra and Borneo. Like elsewhere in the tropics,
rainfall, rather than temperature, is the major determinant of regional
variation. Most of Sundaland is classified as perhumid, or everwet,
with over 2,000 millimeters of rain annually; rainfall exceeds evapotranspiration throughout the year and there are no predictable dry seasons like elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
The high rainfall supports closed canopy evergreen forests throughout the islands of Sundaland, transitioning to deciduous forest and savanna woodland with increasing latitude. Remaining primary (unlogged) lowland forest is known for giant dipterocarp trees and orangutans; after logging, forest structure and community composition change to be dominated by shade intolerant trees and shrubs. Dipterocarps are notable for mast fruiting events, where tree fruiting is synchronized at unpredictable intervals resulting in predator satiation. Higher elevation forests are shorter and dominated by trees in the oak family. Botanists often include Sundaland, the adjacent Philippines, Wallacea and New Guinea in a single floristic province of Malesia, based on similarities in their flora, which is predominantly of Asian origin.
During the last glacial period,
sea levels were lower and all of Sundaland was an extension of the
Asian continent. As a result, the modern islands of Sundaland are home
to many Asian mammals including elephants, monkeys, apes, tigers, tapirs, and rhinoceros. The flooding of Sundaland separated species that had once shared the same environment. One example is the river threadfin (Polydactylus macrophthalmus, Bleeker 1858), which once thrived in a river system now called "North Sunda River" or "Molengraaff river". The fish is now found in the Kapuas River on the island of Borneo, and in the Musi and Batanghari rivers in Sumatra. Selective pressure (in some cases resulting in extinction)
has operated differently on each of the islands of Sundaland, and as a
consequence, a different assemblage of mammals is found on each island.
However, the current species assemblage on each island is not simply a
subset of a universal Sundaland or Asian fauna, as the species that
inhabited Sundaland before flooding did not all have ranges encompassing
the entire Sunda Shelf.
Island area and number of terrestrial mammal species are positively
correlated, with the largest islands of Sundaland (Borneo and Sumatra)
having the highest diversity.
The name "Sunda" goes back to antiquity, appearing in Ptolemy's Geography, written around 150 AD. In an 1852 publication, English navigator George Windsor Earl advanced the idea of a "Great Asiatic Bank", based in part on common features of mammals found in Java, Borneo and Sumatra.
Explorers and scientists began measuring and mapping the seas of Southeast Asia in the 1870s, primarily using depth sounding. In 1921 Gustaaf Molengraaff, a Dutch geologist, postulated that the nearly uniform sea depths of the shelf indicated an ancient peneplain
that was the result of repeated flooding events as ice caps melted,
with the peneplain becoming more perfect with each successive flooding
event. Molengraaff also identified ancient, now submerged, drainage systems that drained the area during periods of lower sea level.
The name "Sundaland" for the peninsular shelf was first proposed by Reinout Willem van Bemmelen in his Geography of Indonesia in 1949, based on his research during World War II. The ancient drainage systems described by Molengraaff were verified and mapped by Tjia in 1980 and described in greater detail by Emmel and Curray in 1982 complete with river deltas, floodplains and backswamps.
Data types
The climate and ecology of Sundaland throughout the Quaternary has been investigated by analyzing foraminiferal δ18O and pollen from cores drilled into the ocean bed, δ18O in speleothems from caves, and δ13C and δ15N
in bat guano from caves, as well as species distribution models,
phylogenetic analysis, and community structure and species richness
analysis.
Climate
Perhumid climate has existed in Sundaland since the early Miocene; though there is evidence for several periods of drier conditions, a perhumid core persisted in Borneo. The presence of fossil coral reefs dating to the late Miocene and early Pliocene
suggests that, as the Indian monsoon grew more intense, seasonality
increased in some portions of Sundaland during these epochs. Palynological
evidence from Sumatra suggests that temperatures were cooler during the
late Pleistocene; mean annual temperatures at high elevation sites may
have been as much as 5 °C cooler than present.
Most recent research agrees that Indo-Pacific sea surface temperatures were at most 2-3 °C lower during the Last Glacial Maximum.
Snow was found much lower than at present (approximately 1,000 meters
lower) and there is evidence that glaciers existed on Borneo and Sumatra
around 10,000 years before present.
However, debate continues on how precipitation regimes changed
throughout the Quaternary. Some authors argue that rainfall decreased
with the area of ocean available for evaporation as sea levels fell with
ice sheet expansion. Others posit that changes in precipitation have been minimal
and an increase in land area in the Sunda Shelf alone (due to lowered
sea level) is not enough to decrease precipitation in the region.
One possible explanation for the lack of agreement on hydrologic
change throughout the Quaternary is that there was significant
heterogeneity in climate during the Last Glacial Maximum throughout
Indonesia. Alternatively, the physical and chemical processes that underlie the method of inferring precipitation from δ18O records may have operated differently in the past.
Some authors working primarily with pollen records have also noted the
difficulties of using vegetation records to detect changes in
precipitation regimes in such a humid environment, as water is not a
limiting factor in community assemblage.
Ecology
Sundaland, and in particular Borneo, has been an evolutionary hotspot for biodiversity since the early Miocene due to repeated immigration and vicariance events.
The modern islands of Borneo, Java, and Sumatra have served as refugia
for the flora and fauna of Sundaland during multiple glacial periods in
the last million years, and are serving the same role at present.
Savanna corridor theory
Dipterocarp trees characteristic of modern Southeast Asian tropical rainforest have been present in Sundaland since before the Last Glacial Maximum. There is also evidence for savanna vegetation, particularly in now submerged areas of Sundaland, throughout the last glacial period.
However, researchers disagree on the spatial extent of savanna that was
present in Sundaland. There are two opposing theories about the
vegetation of Sundaland, particularly during the last glacial period:
(1) that there was a continuous savanna corridor connecting modern
mainland Asia to the islands of Java and Borneo, and (2) that the
vegetation of Sundaland was instead dominated by tropical rainforest,
with only small, discontinuous patches of savanna vegetation.
The presence of a savanna corridor—even if fragmented—would have
allowed for savanna-dwelling fauna (as well as early humans) to disperse
between Sundaland and the Indochinese
biogeographic region; emergence of a savanna corridor during glacial
periods and subsequent disappearance during interglacial periods would
have facilitated speciation through both vicariance (allopatric speciation) and geodispersal. Morley and Flenley (1987) and Heaney (1991) were the first to postulate the existence of a continuous corridor of savanna vegetation through the center of Sundaland (from the modern Malaysian Peninsula to Borneo) during the last glacial period, based on palynological evidence. Using the modern distribution of primates, termites, rodents, and other
species, other researchers infer that the extent of tropical forest
contracted—replaced by savanna and open forest —during the last glacial
period.
Vegetation models using data from climate simulations show varying
degrees of forest contraction; Bird et al. (2005) noted that although no
single model predicts a continuous savanna corridor through Sundaland,
many do predict open vegetation between modern Java and southern Borneo.
Combined with other evidence, they suggest that a 50–150 kilometer wide
savanna corridor ran down the Malaysian Peninsula, through Sumatra and
Java, and across to Borneo.
Additionally, Wurster et al. (2010) analyzed stable carbon isotope
composition in bat guano deposits in Sundaland and found strong evidence
for the expansion of savanna in Sundaland. Similarly, stable isotope composition of fossil mammal teeth supports the existence of the savanna corridor.
In contrast, other authors argue that Sundaland was primarily covered by tropical rainforest.
Using species distribution models, Raes et al. (2014) suggest that
Dipterocarp rainforest persisted throughout the last glacial period.
Others have observed that the submerged rivers of the Sunda Shelf have
obvious, incised meanders, which would have been maintained by trees on
river banks.
Pollen records from sediment cores around Sundaland are contradictory;
for example, cores from highland sites suggest that forest cover
persisted throughout the last glacial period, but other cores from the
region show pollen from savanna-woodland species increasing through
glacial periods.
And in contrast to previous findings, Wurster et al. (2017) again used
stable carbon isotope analysis of bat guano, but found that at some
sites rainforest cover was maintained through much of the last glacial
period.
Soil type, rather than long-term existence of a savanna corridor, has
also been posited as an explanation for species distribution differences
within Sundaland; Slik et al. (2011) suggest that the sandy soils of
the now submerged seabed are a more likely dispersal barrier.
Paleofauna
Before
Sundaland emerged during the late Pliocene and early Pleistocene (~2.4
million years ago), there were no mammals on Java. As sea level lowered,
species such as the dwarf elephantoid Sinomastodon bumiajuensis colonized Sundaland from mainland Asia.
Later fauna included tigers, Sumatran rhinoceros, and Indian elephant,
which were found throughout Sundaland; smaller animals were also able to
disperse across the region.
Human migrations
According to the most widely accepted theory, the ancestors of the modern-day Austronesian
populations of the Maritime Southeast Asia and adjacent regions are
believed to have migrated southward, from the East Asia mainland to Taiwan, and then to the rest of Maritime Southeast Asia. An alternative theory points to the now-submerged Sundaland as the possible cradle of Austronesian languages: thus the "Out of Sundaland" theory. However, this view is an extreme minority view among professional archaeologists, linguists, and geneticists. The Out of Taiwan model (though not necessarily the Express Train Out of Taiwan model) is accepted by the vast majority of professional researchers.
A study from Leeds University and published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, examining mitochondrial DNA
lineages, suggested that shared ancestry between Taiwan and Southeast
Asian resulted from earlier migrations. Population dispersals seem to
have occurred at the same time as sea levels rose, which may have
resulted in migrations from the Philippine Islands to as far north as Taiwan within the last 10,000 years.
The population migrations were most likely to have been driven by
climate change — the effects of the drowning of an ancient continent.
Rising sea levels in three massive pulses may have caused flooding and
the submerging of the Sunda continent, creating the Java and South China Seas and the thousands of islands that make up Indonesia and the Philippines
today. The changing sea levels would have caused these humans to move
away from their coastal homes and culture, and farther inland throughout
southeast Asia. This forced migration would have caused these humans to
adapt to the new forest and mountainous environments, developing farms
and domestication, and becoming the predecessors to future human
populations in these regions.
Genetic similarities were found between populations throughout
Asia and an increase in genetic diversity from northern to southern
latitudes. Although the Chinese population is very large, it has less
variation than the smaller number of individuals living in Southeast
Asia, because the Chinese expansion occurred very recently, within only
the last 2,000 to 3,000 years.
The continent includes a continental shelf overlain by shallow seas which divide it into several landmasses—the Arafura Sea and Torres Strait between mainland Australia and New Guinea, and Bass Strait between mainland Australia and Tasmania. When sea levels were lower during the Pleistocene ice age, including the Last Glacial Maximum
about 18,000 BC, they were connected by dry land. During the past
18,000 to 10,000 years, rising sea levels overflowed the lowlands and
separated the continent into today's low-lying arid to semi-arid mainland and the two mountainous islands of New Guinea and Tasmania.
With a total land area of 8.56 million square kilometres
(3,310,000 sq mi), the Australian continent is the smallest, lowest,
flattest, and second-driest continent (after Antarctica) on Earth.
As the country of Australia is mostly on a single landmass, and
comprises most of the continent, it is sometimes informally referred to
as an island continent, surrounded by oceans.
Mainland Australia showing the continental Sahul Shelf
(light blue) extending to the islands of New Guinea in the north, the
island of Timor in the northwest, and Tasmania in the south
The continent of Australia is sometimes known by the names Sahul,
Australinea, or Meganesia to distinguish it from the country of
Australia, and consists of the landmasses which sit on Australia's
continental plate. This includes mainland Australia, Tasmania, and the island of New Guinea, which comprises Papua New Guinea and Western New Guinea (Papua and West Papua, provinces of Indonesia). The name "Sahul" takes its name from the Sahul Shelf, which is part of the continental shelf of the Australian continent.
The term Oceania, originally a "great division" of the world in the 1810s, was replaced in English language countries by the concept of Australia as one of the world's continents in the 1950s. Prior to the 1950s, before the popularization of the theory of plate tectonics, Antarctica, Australia and Greenland
were sometimes described as island continents, but none were usually
taught as one of the world's continents in English-speaking countries. Scottish cartographerJohn Bartholomew wrote in 1873 that, "the New World consists of North America, and the peninsula of South America
attached to it. These divisions [are] generally themselves spoken as
continents, and to them has been added another, embracing the large
island of Australia and numerous others in the [Pacific] Ocean, under
the name of Oceania. There are thus six great divisions of the earth — Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America and Oceania."merican author Samuel Griswold Goodrich wrote in his 1854 book History of All Nations
that, "geographers have agreed to consider the island world of the
Pacific Ocean as a third continent, under the name Oceania." In this
book the other two continents were categorized as being the New World
(consisting of North America and South America) and the Old World (consisting of Africa, Asia and Europe). In his 1879 book Australasia, British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace
commented that, "Oceania is the word often used by continental
geographers to describe the great world of islands we are now entering
upon" and that "Australia forms its central and most important feature."
He did not explicitly label Oceania a continent in the book, but did
note that it was one of the six major divisions of the world. He considered it to encompass the insular Pacific area between Asia and the Americas, and claimed it extended up to the Aleutian Islands, which are among the northernmost islands in the Pacific Ocean.
However, definitions of Oceania varied during the 19th century. In the
19th century, many geographers divided up Oceania into mostly
racially-based subdivisions; Australasia, Malaysia (encompassing the Malay Archipelago), Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. Today, the Malay Archipelago is typically considered part of Southeast Asia, and the term Oceania is often used to denote the region encompassing the Australian continent, Zealandia and various islands in the Pacific Ocean that are not included in the seven-continent model. It has been recognized by the United Nations as one of the world's five major continental divisions since its foundation in 1947, along with Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.
The UN's definition of Oceania utilizes four of the five subregions
from the 19th century; Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia.
They include American Samoa, Australia and their external territories, the Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, French Polynesia, Fiji, Guam, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Niue, the Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Pitcairn Islands, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Wallis and Futuna and the United States Minor Outlying Islands (Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Midway Atoll, Palmyra Atoll and Wake Island).
The original UN definition of Oceania from 1947 included these same
countries and semi-independent territories, which were mostly still colonies at that point. The island states of Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan, all located within the bounds of the Pacific or associated marginal seas, are excluded from the UN definition. The states of Hong Kong and Malaysia, located in both mainland Asia and marginal seas of the Pacific, are also excluded, as is the nation of Brunei, which shares the island of Borneo with Indonesia and Malaysia. Further excluded are East Timor and Indonesian New Guinea/Western New Guinea, areas which are biogeographically or geologically associated with the Australian landmass. This definition of Oceania is used in statistical reports, by the International Olympic Committee, and by many atlases. The CIA World Factbook
also categorize Oceania or the Pacific area as one of the world's major
continental divisions, but use the term "Australia and Oceania" to
refer to the area. Their definition does not include Australia's subantarctic external territory Heard Island and McDonald Islands, but is otherwise the same as the UN definition, and it is also used for statistical purposes.
In countries such as Argentina, Brazil, China, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, France, Greece, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Peru, Spain, Switzerland or Venezuela,
Oceania is treated as a continent in the sense that it is "one of the
parts of the world", and Australia is only seen as an island nation. In
other countries, including Kazakhstan, Norway, Poland and Russia, Australia and Eurasia are thought of as continents, while Asia, Europe and Oceania are regarded as "parts of the world". In the Pacific Ocean Handbook
(1945), author Eliot Grinnell Mears wrote that he categorized
Australia, New Zealand and Pacific islands under the label of Oceania
for "scientific reasons; Australia's fauna is largely continental in
character, New Zealand's are clearly insular; and neither Commonwealth realm has close ties with Asia." He further added that, "the term Australasia is not relished by New Zealanders and this name is too often confused with Australia."
Some 19th century definitions of Oceania grouped Australia, New Zealand
and the islands of Melanesia together under the label of Australasia,
in other 19th century definitions of Oceania, the term was only used to
refer to Australia itself, with New Zealand being categorized with the
islands of Polynesia in such definitions.
Archaeological terminology for this region has changed repeatedly. Before the 1970s, the single Pleistocene landmass was called Australasia, derived from the Latinaustralis,
meaning "southern", although this word is most often used for a wider
region that includes lands like New Zealand that are not on the same
continental shelf. In the early 1970s, the term Greater Australia was introduced for the Pleistocene continent. Then at a 1975 conference and consequent publication, the name Sahul was extended from its previous use for just the Sahul Shelf to cover the continent.
In 1984 W. Filewood suggested the name Meganesia, meaning "great island" or "great island-group", for both the Pleistocene continent and the present-day lands, and this name has been widely accepted by biologists. Others have used Meganesia with different meanings: travel writer Paul Theroux included New Zealand in his definition and others have used it for Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii. Another biologist, Richard Dawkins, coined the name Australinea in 2004. Australia–New Guinea has also been used.
The Australian continent, being part of the Indo-Australian Plate (more specifically, the Australian Plate), is the lowest, flattest, and oldest landmass on Earth and it has had a relatively stable geological history. New Zealand is not part of the continent of Australia, but of the separate, submerged continent of Zealandia. New Zealand and Australia are both part of the Oceanian sub-region known as Australasia, with New Guinea being in Melanesia.
The continent includes a continental shelf overlain by shallow seas which divide it into several landmasses—the Arafura Sea and Torres Strait between mainland Australia and New Guinea, and Bass Strait between mainland Australia and Tasmania. When sea levels were lower during the Pleistocene ice age, including the Last Glacial Maximum about 18,000 BC, they were connected by dry land. During the past 18,000 to 10,000 years, rising sea levels overflowed the lowlands and separated the continent into today's low-lying arid to semi-arid mainland and the two mountainous islands of New Guinea and Tasmania. The continental shelf
connecting the islands, half of which is less than 50 metres (160 ft)
deep, covers some 2.5 million square kilometres (970,000 sq mi),
including the Sahul Shelf and Bass Strait.
Geological forces such as tectonic uplift
of mountain ranges or clashes between tectonic plates occurred mainly
in Australia's early history, when it was still a part of Gondwana. Australia is situated in the middle of the tectonic plate, and therefore currently has no active volcanism.
The continent primarily sits on the Indo-Australian Plate. Because of
its central location on its tectonic plate, Australia doesn't have any
active volcanic regions, the only continent with this distinction. The lands were joined with Antarctica as part of the southern supercontinent Gondwana
until the plate began to drift north about 96 million years ago. For
most of the time since then, Australia–New Guinea remained a continuous
landmass. When the last glacial period ended in about 10,000 BC, rising sea levels formed Bass Strait,
separating Tasmania from the mainland. Then between about 8,000 and
6,500 BC, the lowlands in the north were flooded by the sea, separating
New Guinea, the Aru Islands, and the Australian mainland.
The Australian continent and Sunda were points of early human migrations after leaving Africa.
Recent research points to a planned migration of hundreds of people using bamboo rafts, which eventually landed on Sahul.
Indigenous Australians, that is Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander
people, are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and
nearby islands. They migrated from Africa to Asia around 70,000 years
ago and arrived in Australia at least 50,000 years ago, based on archaeological evidence. More recent research points to earlier arrival, possibly 65,000 years ago.
They are believed to be among the earliest human migrations out of Africa.
There is evidence of genetic and linguistic interchange between
Australians in the far north and the Austronesian peoples of modern-day New Guinea and the islands, but this may be the result of recent trade and intermarriage. The earliest known human remains were found at Lake Mungo, a dry lake in the southwest of New South Wales. Remains found at Mungo suggest one of the world's oldest known cremations, thus indicating early evidence for religious ritual among humans. Dreamtime remains a prominent feature of Australian Aboriginal art, the oldest continuing tradition of art in the world.
Papuan habitation is estimated to have begun between 42,000 and 48,000 years ago in New Guinea.
Trade between New Guinea and neighboring Indonesian islands was
documented as early as the seventh century, and archipelagic rule of New
Guinea by the 13th. At the beginning of the seventh century, the Sumatra-based empire of Srivijaya (7th century–13th century) engaged in trade relations with western New Guinea, initially taking items like sandalwood and birds-of-paradise in tribute to China, but later making slaves out of the natives. The rule of the Java-based empire of Majapahit (1293–1527) extended to the western fringes of New Guinea.
Recent archaeological research suggests that 50,000 years ago people
may have occupied sites in the highlands at New Guinean altitudes of up
to 2,000 m (6,600 ft), rather than being restricted to warmer coastal
areas.
Pre-colonial history
Terra Australis, as it appears on a map by Rumold Mercator, 1587
Legends of Terra Australis Incognita—an "unknown land of the
South"—date back to Roman times and before, and were commonplace in
medieval geography, although not based on any documented knowledge of
the continent. Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle
speculated of a large landmass in the southern hemisphere, saying, "Now
since there must be a region bearing the same relation to the southern
pole as the place we live in bears to our pole...". His ideas were later expanded by Ptolemy (2nd century AD), who believed that the lands of the Northern Hemisphere should be balanced by land in the south. The theory of balancing land has been documented as early as the 5th century on maps by Macrobius, who uses the term Australis on his maps.
Terra Australis, a hypothetical continent first posited in antiquity, appeared on maps between the 15th and 18th centuries. Scientists, such as Gerardus Mercator (1569) and Alexander Dalrymple as late as 1767 argued for its existence, with such arguments as that there should be a large landmass in the south as a counterweight to the known landmasses in the Northern Hemisphere.
The cartographic depictions of the southern continent in the 16th and
early 17th centuries, as might be expected for a concept based on such
abundant conjecture and minimal data, varied wildly from map to map; in
general, the continent shrank as potential locations were reinterpreted.
At its largest, the continent included Tierra del Fuego, separated from South America by a small strait; New Guinea; and what would come to be called Australia.
In the quest for Terra Australis, Spanish explorations in the 17th century, such as the expedition led by the Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, discovered the Pitcairn and Vanuatu archipelagos, and sailed the Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea, named after navigator Luís Vaz de Torres, who was the first European to explore the Strait. When Europeans
first arrived, inhabitants of New Guinea and nearby islands, whose
technologies included bone, wood, and stone tools, had a productive
agricultural system. In 1660, the Dutch recognised the Sultan of Tidore's sovereignty over New Guinea. The first known Europeans to sight New Guinea were probably the Portuguese and Spanish navigators sailing in the South Pacific in the early part of the 16th century.
On 23 April 1770 British explorer James Cook made his first recorded direct observation of indigenous Australians at Brush Island near Bawley Point. On 29 April, Cook and crew made their first landfall on the mainland of the continent at a place now known as the Kurnell Peninsula. It is here that James Cook made first contact with an Aboriginal tribe known as the Gweagal, who he fired upon, injuring one. His expedition became the first recorded Europeans to have encountered the eastern coastline of Australia. Captain Arthur Phillip led the First Fleet of 11 ships and about 850 convicts into Sydney on 26 January 1788. This was to be the location for the new colony. Phillip described Sydney Cove as being "without exception the finest harbour in the world".
In 1883, the Colony of Queensland tried to annex the southern half of eastern New Guinea, but the British government did not approve. The Commonwealth of Australia came into being when the Federal Constitution was proclaimed by the Governor-General, Lord Hopetoun, on 1 January 1901. From that point a system of federalism in Australia
came into operation, entailing the establishment of an entirely new
national government (the Commonwealth government) and an ongoing
division of powers between that government and the States. With the
encouragement of Queensland, in 1884, a British protectorate had been proclaimed over the southern coast of New Guinea and its adjacent islands. British New Guinea
was annexed outright in 1888. The possession was placed under the
authority of the newly federated Commonwealth of Australia in 1902 and
with passage of the Papua Act of 1905, British New Guinea became the
Australian Territory of Papua, with formal Australian administration beginning in 1906.
An Australian light machine gun team in action near Wewak, Papua New Guinea, in June 1945
The bombing of Darwin on 19 February 1942 was the largest single attack ever mounted by a foreign power on Australia. In an effort to isolate Australia, the Japanese planned a seaborne invasion of Port Moresby, in the Australian Territory of New Guinea. Between July and November 1942, Australian forces repulsed Japanese attempts on the city by way of the Kokoda Track, in the highlands of New Guinea. The Battle of Buna–Gona, between November 1942 and January 1943, set the tone for the bitter final stages of the New Guinea campaign,
which persisted into 1945. The offensives in Papua and New Guinea of
1943–44 were the single largest series of connected operations ever
mounted by the Australian armed forces.
Following the 1998 commencement of reforms across Indonesia,
Papua and other Indonesian provinces received greater regional
autonomy. In 2001, "Special Autonomy" status was granted to Papua
province, although to date, implementation has been partial and often
criticised. The region was administered as a single province until 2003, when it was split into the provinces of Papua and West Papua. Elections in 1972 resulted in the formation of a ministry headed by Chief Minister Michael Somare,
who pledged to lead the country to self-government and then to
independence. Papua New Guinea became self-governing on 1 December 1973
and achieved independence on 16 September 1975. The country joined the United Nations (UN) on 10 October 1975.
Migration brought large numbers of southern and central Europeans
to Australia for the first time. A 1958 government leaflet assured
readers that unskilled non-British migrants were needed for "labour on
rugged projects ...work which is not generally acceptable to Australians
or British workers". Australia fought on the side of Britain in the two world wars and became a long-standing ally of the United States when threatened by Imperial Japan during World War II.
Trade with Asia increased and a post-war immigration program received
more than 6.5 million migrants from every continent. Supported by
immigration of people from more than 200 countries since the end of
World War II, the population increased to more than 23 million by 2014.
For about 40 million years Australia–New Guinea was almost completely
isolated. During this time, the continent experienced numerous changes
in climate, but the overall trend was towards greater aridity. When South America eventually separated from Antarctica, the development of the cold Antarctic Circumpolar Current
changed weather patterns across the world. For Australia–New Guinea, it
brought a marked intensification of the drying trend. The great inland
seas and lakes dried out. Much of the long-established broad-leaf deciduous forest began to give way to the distinctive hard-leaved sclerophyllous plants that characterise the modern Australian landscape.
For many species, the primary refuge was the relatively cool and well-watered Great Dividing Range.
Even today, pockets of remnant vegetation remain in the cool uplands,
some species not much changed from the Gondwanan forms of 60 or 90
million years ago. Eventually, the Australia–New Guinea tectonic plate
collided with the Eurasian plate
to the north. The collision caused the northern part of the continent
to buckle upwards, forming the high and rugged mountains of New Guinea
and, by reverse (downwards) buckling, the Torres Strait that now separates the two main landmasses. The collision also pushed up the islands of Wallacea, which served as island 'stepping-stones' that allowed plants from Southeast Asia's
rainforests to colonise New Guinea, and some plants from Australia–New
Guinea to move into Southeast Asia. The ocean straits between the
islands were narrow enough to allow plant dispersal, but served as an
effective barrier to exchange of land mammals between Australia–New
Guinea and Asia.
Among the fungi, the remarkable association between Cyttariagunnii (one of the "golf-ball" fungi) and its associated trees in the genus Nothofagus is evidence of that drift: the only other places where this association is known are New Zealand and southern Argentina and Chile.
The king bird-of-paradise is one of over 300 bird species in West Papua.
Due to the spread of animals, fungi and plants across the single Pleistocene landmass the separate lands have a related biota. There are over 300 bird species in West Papua, of which at least 20 are unique to the ecoregion, and some live only in very restricted areas. These include the grey-banded munia, Vogelkop bowerbird, and the king bird-of-paradise.
Australia has a huge variety of animals; some 83% of mammals, 89% of reptiles, 24% of fish and insects and 93% of amphibians that inhabit the continent are endemic to Australia. This high level of endemism can be attributed to the continent's long geographic isolation, tectonic stability, and the effects of an unusual pattern of climate change on the soil and flora over geological time. Australia and its territories are home to around 800 species of bird; 45% of these are endemic to Australia. Predominant bird species in Australia include the Australian magpie, Australian raven, the pied currawong, crested pigeons and the laughing kookaburra. The koala, emu, platypus and kangaroo are national animals of Australia, and the Tasmanian devil is also one of the well-known animals in the country. The goanna is a predatory lizard native to the Australian mainland.
Natural history illustrator John Gould popularised the koala with his 1863 work The Mammals of Australia.
As the continent drifted north from Antarctica, a unique fauna, flora and mycobiota developed. Marsupials and monotremes also existed on other continents, but only in Australia–New Guinea did they out-compete the placentalmammals and come to dominate. New Guinea has 284 species and six orders of mammals: monotremes, three orders of marsupials, rodents and bats; 195 of the mammal species (69%) are endemic. New Guinea has a rich diversity of coral life and 1,200 species of fish
have been found. Also about 600 species of reef-building coral—the
latter equal to 75 percent of the world's known total. New Guinea has
578 species of breeding birds, of which 324 species are endemic. Bird life also flourished—in particular, the songbirds (order Passeriformes, suborder Passeri) are thought to have evolved 50 million years ago in the part of Gondwana that later became Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and Antarctica, before radiating into a great number of different forms and then spreading around the globe.
Animal groups such as macropods, monotremes, and cassowaries
are endemic to Australia. There were three main reasons for the
enormous diversity that developed in animal, fungal and plant life.
While much of the rest of the world underwent significant
cooling and thus loss of species diversity, Australia–New Guinea was
drifting north at such a pace that the overall global cooling effect was
roughly equalled by its gradual movement toward the equator. Temperatures
in Australia–New Guinea, in other words, remained reasonably constant
for a very long time, and a vast number of different animal, fungal and
plant species were able to evolve to fit particular ecological niches.
Because the continent was more isolated than any other, very few
outside species arrived to colonise, and unique native forms developed
unimpeded.
Finally, despite the fact that the continent was already very old
and thus relatively infertile, there are dispersed areas of high
fertility. Where other continents had volcanic activity and/or massive glaciation events to turn over fresh, unleached rocks rich in minerals, the rocks and soils of Australia–New Guinea were left largely untouched except by gradual erosion and deep weathering.
In general, fertile soils produce a profusion of life, and a relatively
large number of species/level of biodiversity. This is because where nutrients are plentiful, competition is largely a matter of outcompeting rival species, leaving great scope for innovative co-evolution
as is witnessed in tropical, fertile ecosystems. In contrast, infertile
soils tend to induce competition on an abiotic basis meaning
individuals all face constant environmental pressures, leaving less
scope for divergent evolution, a process instrumental in creating new
species.
Although New Guinea is the most northerly part of the continent, and could be expected to be the most tropical
in climate, the altitude of the New Guinea highlands is such that a
great many animals and plants that were once common across Australia–New
Guinea now survive only in the tropical highlands where they are
severely threatened by population growth.
In New Guinea, the climate is mostly monsoonal (December to March), southeast monsoon (May to October), and tropical rainforest
with slight seasonal temperature variation. In lower altitudes, the
temperature is around 27 °C (81 °F) year round. But the higher
altitudes, such as Mendi, are constantly around 21 °C (70 °F) with cool lows nearing 11 °C (52 °F), with abundant rainfall and high humidity. The New Guinea Highlands are one of the few regions close to the equator that experience snowfall,
which occurs in the most elevated parts of the mainland. Some areas in
the island experience an extraordinary amount of precipitation,
averaging roughly 4,500 millimetres (180 in) of rainfall annually.
Since 1945, more than 7 million people have settled in Australia.
From the late 1970s, there was a significant increase in immigration
from Asian and other non-European countries, making Australia a multicultural country. Sydney is the most multicultural city in Oceania, having more than 250 different languages spoken, with about 40 percent of residents speaking a language other than English at home. Furthermore, 36 percent of the population reported having been born overseas, with top countries being Italy, Lebanon, Vietnam and Iraq, among others. Melbourne is also fairly multicultural, having the largest Greek-speaking population outside of Europe, and the second largest Asian population in Australia after Sydney.
Melbourne has been placed alongside New York City and Berlin as one of the world's great street art spots, ranked the world's most liveable city for several years running and designated a "City of Literature" by UNESCO in its Creative Cities Network.
Papua New Guinea is rich in natural resources, which account for
two-thirds of their export earnings. Though PNG is filled with
resources, the lack of country's development led foreign countries to
take over few sites and continued foreign demand for PNG's resources and
as a result, the United States constructed an oil company and began to
export in 2004 and this was the largest project in PNG's history. Papua New Guinea is classified as a developing economy by the International Monetary Fund. Strong growth in Papua New Guinea's mining and resource sector led to the country becoming the sixth fastest-growing economy in the world in 2011.
Papua New Guinea is a Commonwealth realm. As such, King Charles III
is its sovereign and head of state. The constitutional convention,
which prepared the draft constitution, and Australia, the outgoing
metropolitan power, had thought that Papua New Guinea would not remain a
monarchy. The founders, however, considered that imperial honours had a
cachet. The monarch is represented by the Governor-General of Papua New Guinea, currently Bob Dadae. Papua New Guinea (along with the Solomon Islands)
is unusual among Commonwealth realms in that governors-general are
elected by the legislature, rather than chosen by the executive branch.
Since 1788, the primary influence behind Australian culture has been Anglo-CelticWestern culture, with some Indigenous influences. The divergence and evolution that has occurred in the ensuing centuries has resulted in a distinctive Australian culture. Since the mid-20th century, American popular culture has strongly influenced Australia, particularly through television and cinema.
Other cultural influences come from neighbouring Asian countries, and
through large-scale immigration from non-English-speaking nations. The Australian Museum in Sydney and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne are the oldest and largestmuseums in the continent, as well as in Oceania. Sydney's New Year's Eve celebrations are the largest in the continent.
It is estimated that more than 7000 different cultural groups exist
in Papua New Guinea, and most groups have their own language. Because of
this diversity, in which they take pride, many different styles of
cultural expression have emerged; each group has created its own
expressive forms in art, performance art, weaponry, costumes and architecture. Papua New Guinea is one of the few cultures in Oceania to practice the tradition of bride price. In particular, Papua New Guinea is world-famous for carved wooden sculpture: masks, canoes, story-boards.
Australia has a tradition of Aboriginal art which is thousands of years old, the best known forms being rock art and bark painting. Evidence of Aboriginal art in Australia can be traced back at least 30,000 years.
Examples of ancient Aboriginal rock artworks can be found throughout
the continent – notably in national parks such as those of the UNESCO listed sites at Uluru and Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory, but also within protected parks in urban areas such as at Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park in Sydney. Aboriginal culture includes a number of practices and ceremonies centered on a belief in the Dreamtime. Reverence for the land and oral traditions are emphasised.
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