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Biogeographically and geologically, Papua and West Papua provinces are parts of Oceania. Likewise, there is also no clearly defined boundary between Latin America and Oceania; the mostly uninhabited oceanic Pacific islands near Latin America have been considered by some as part of Oceania, both historically and in present-day times.
At 462,840 km 2 (178,704 sq mi), Papua New Guinea is the world's 54th-largest country and the third-largest island country. [14] Papua New Guinea is part of the Australasian realm, which also includes Australia, New Zealand, eastern Indonesia, and several Pacific island groups, including the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.
Given the island is alternatively named Papua, the region is also called West Papua (Indonesian: Papua Barat). [6] It is one of the seven geographical units of Indonesia in ISO 3166-2:ID . Lying to the west of Papua New Guinea and geographically a part of the Australian continent , the territory is almost entirely in the Southern Hemisphere and ...
1851 map of Pacific listing colonial names of individual islands. Since the beginning of the 19th century, Australia and the islands of the Pacific have been grouped by geographers into a region called Oceania. [17] [18] It is often used as a quasi-continent, with the Pacific Ocean being the defining characteristic. [19]
[109] [110] The book The World and Its Peoples: Australia, New Zealand, Oceania (1966) asserts that, "Japan, Taiwan, the Aleutian Islands, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia [and] the Pacific archipelagos bordering upon the Far East Asian mainland are excluded from Oceania", and that "all the islands lying between Australia and the ...
A 1644 map of New Guinea and the surrounding area. The island has been known by various names: The name Papua was used to refer to parts of the island before contact with the West. [3] Its etymology is unclear; [3] one theory states that it derived from Tidore, the language used by the Sultanate of Tidore. [1]
Although it has been suggested that Arafura derives from the Portuguese word "Alfours", meaning "free men", it seems more likely that sea is named after the Harrafora, the indigenous name for "the people of mountains" in the Moluccas (part of Indonesia), which was the explanation recorded by Lieutenants Kolff and Modera in the 1830s.
Location of Oceania. The following outline is provided as an overview and topical guide to Oceania. Oceania is a geographical, and geopolitical, region consisting of numerous lands—mostly islands in the Pacific Ocean and vicinity. The term is also sometimes used to denote a continent comprising Australia and proximate Pacific islands.