Mormon Studies Review
Keywords
Oceania, migration, Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia
Abstract
Oceania describes the largely marine Pacific basin divided (on moot ethnographic grounds) between Polynesia in the east and Melanesia and Micronesia to the southwest and northwest respectively. The continent of Australia lies on Oceania’s southwestern border. T he first Oceanic settlers arrived in the western Pacific tens of thousands of years ago from Asia. Human settlement of the increasingly depauperate and largely noncontinental islands in eastern Melanesia to Polynesia and Micronesia was accomplished within the last five thousand years. The remote Eastern Polynesian islands were colonized largely if not entirely within the last millennium. These vastly different time scales of premodern settlement represent migrations of diverse peoples.1
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Barber, Ian
(2019)
"Faith Across Cultures: Research on Mormonism in Oceania,"
Mormon Studies Review: Vol. 6:
No.
1, Article 7.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr2/vol6/iss1/7