Micronesia
Micronesia is a scatter of roughly 2,000 small islands in the Northwestern Pacific, and almost none of it is land. The ocean inside the perimeter of the islands covers 7,400,000 square kilometres, while all the dry ground together adds up to about 2,700. Guam, the largest island in the region, covers only 582 square kilometres.
Picture a map where every island is a speck and the water between the specks is the real territory. This documentary asks how people crossed such emptiness thousands of years ago, and how the specks later ended up divided among so many flags. It also asks whether the single name Micronesia describes a real unity, or only a label that outsiders found convenient.
Pohnpei, in the Federated States of Micronesia, keeps something most of its neighbours have lost: a central volcano that still stands above the water, surrounded by coral reefs. That exception explains the rule. Most islands in the region are coral atolls, and an atoll begins as a reef growing on the slopes of a volcano. When the volcano sinks back into the sea, the coral keeps growing, so the reef stays at or above the waterline.
Yap tells a different story. Its islands are not young volcanic sediment but uplifted volcanic and metamorphic rocks, deformed and thrust upward by tectonic movement involving the Yap Trench. The islands also shelter wildlife found nowhere else, including the Yap monarch and the Olive white-eye, along with four other restricted-range bird species. The endangered Yap flying-fox is endemic too, although it is often treated as a subspecies of the Pelew flying fox or the Mariana fruit bat.
The Mariana Islands are the summits of fifteen volcanic mountains strung out in an arc. They rose because the western edge of the Pacific Plate moves westward and plunges beneath the Mariana plate. That boundary is the most volcanically active convergent plate boundary on Earth.
The climate is tropical marine, tempered by seasonal northeast trade winds, with little change in temperature through the year. The dry season runs from December or January to June. The rainy season follows from July to November or December, and on some islands it can bring typhoons.
Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands shows how low an island can sit. It holds 23 islands of coral limestone and sand, with an average elevation of only about 7 ft above low tide. Nauru, 42 km south of the Equator, covers just 21 km2 and is ringed by a reef that is exposed at low tide and dotted with pinnacles. That reef has prevented anyone from building a seaport, though channels let small boats reach the shore. Of Bikini's 23 islands, Bokonijien, Aerokojlol and part of Nam were destroyed during nuclear tests.
Around 1500 BCE, voyagers sailing east from the Philippines reached the Northern Mariana Islands, the first islands in Oceania that Austronesian peoples colonized. They belonged to a seaborne migration that the current scientific consensus traces to pre-Han Formosa, at around 3000 to 1500 BCE. Austronesians had already reached the Batanes Islands in the northernmost Philippines by around 2200 BCE. They were the first people to invent oceangoing sailing technologies, notably catamarans, outrigger boats, lashed-lug boat building and the crab claw sail.
By 1300 BCE, descendants of those settlers had moved gradually southward to the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands. There they reconnected with the Lapita culture, the south-eastern branch of the Austronesians, who were moving through coastal New Guinea and Island Melanesia. By 1200 BCE they were crossing open sea beyond sight of other islands and reached Vanuatu, Fiji and New Caledonia. Some continued eastward and became the ancestors of the Polynesian people.
Other Austronesians followed, likely from Sulawesi, and settled Palau and Yap by around 1000 BCE. The details of that colonization are not well known. In 200 BCE a loosely connected group of Lapita colonists from Island Melanesia travelled back north and settled the islands of eastern Micronesia almost simultaneously. That region became the centre of another wave of migrations, which radiated outward and reconnected with the settled islands of western Micronesia.
Around 800 CE, a second wave of migrants from Southeast Asia arrived in the Marianas and began what is now called the Latte period. The newcomers built large structures on distinctive capped stone pillars known as haligi. They also reintroduced rice, which had not survived the earlier voyages. That made the Northern Marianas the only islands in Oceania where rice was grown before European contact. Rice was a high-status crop used only in rituals, and it did not become a staple until after Spanish colonization.
Construction of Nan Madol began around 1180 CE on Pohnpei, using basalt lava logs to raise a megalithic complex often described as a floating city. Work was still going on when European explorers began arriving around 1600. The city declined by around 1800 along with the Saudeleur dynasty, and it was completely abandoned by the 1820s. On Kosrae, the Leluh complex followed around 1200.
In Palau, according to the book Prehistoric Architecture in Micronesia, the most prolific pre-colonial building was monumental. It included sculpted hills, megalithic stone carvings and elaborately decorated wooden structures set on piers above elevated stone platforms. The archaeological traditions of the Yapese people stayed relatively unchanged even after Magellan's voyage in the 1520s.
Wood-carving, particularly by men, flourished through the 19th century even as colonial powers divided the region. It produced richly decorated ceremonial houses in Belau, stylized bowls, canoe ornaments, ceremonial vessels and sometimes sculptured figures. Women made textiles and ornaments such as bracelets and headbands. The style is streamlined and practical, but it is typically finished to a high standard, shaped by the few natural materials available. The first half of the 20th century brought a downturn under western and Japanese imperial influence, and sculpture in particular stopped being practiced. Independence in the second half of the century revived interest, and a notable contemporary art movement appeared toward its end.
At the time of Western contact, Palau had no dogs, but it did have fowls and possibly pigs, which are not native to Micronesia. Mollusks and fish were an important food source. People in Palau, the Marianas and Yap often chew betel nuts seasoned with lime and pepper leaf. The ceremonial drink called sakau on Pohnpei and saka on Kosrae was unknown in western Micronesia. Marshallese cooking uses breadfruit, taro root, pandanus and seafood, while Palauan cooking adds cassava, yam, fish and pork. In the Marianas, dishes such as kelaguen are a local favourite.
In the Marshall Islands, the roro is a traditional chant about ancient legends, performed to give guidance during navigation and strength to mothers in labour. Traditional belief holds that music can be presented to people in dreams and trances rather than written by composers. Drums are generally uncommon, yet one-sided hourglass-shaped drums are a major part of Marshallese music. A dance called beet, influenced by Spanish folk dances, has men and women side-stepping in parallel lines. The Jobwa perform a stick dance, nowadays only on very special occasions.
The art of navigation itself has survived into the modern era. Weriyeng is one of the last two schools of traditional navigation in the central Caroline Islands, and the other is Fanur.
In 1521, a Spanish expedition under Ferdinand Magellan landed in the Marianas, the earliest known European contact with Micronesia. Antonio Pigafetta's chronicle of the voyage recounts that the Chamorro people had no apparent knowledge of anyone outside their island group. A Portuguese account of the same voyage says the Chamorro who greeted the travellers did so "without any shyness as if they were good acquaintances".
The 1525 voyage of Diogo da Rocha is documented in papers suggesting that he made the first European contact with people of the Caroline Islands. He possibly stayed four months on Ulithi atoll and also encountered Yap. The Spanish navigator Álvaro de Saavedra Cerón met Marshall Islanders in 1529, and further contact with the Yap islands followed in 1625. Most of these early encounters were very brief.
In the early 17th century, Spain colonized Guam, the Northern Marianas and the Caroline Islands. This created the Spanish East Indies, which was governed from the Spanish Philippines. When the Russian explorer Otto von Kotzebue visited the Marshall Islands in 1817, he noted that Marshallese families practiced infanticide after the birth of a third child. He described it as a form of population planning in a land of frequent famines.
In 1819, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, a Protestant group, brought its Puritan ways to Polynesia. The Hawaiian Missionary Society was founded soon after and sent missionaries into Micronesia. Conversion met less opposition here than elsewhere, because Western ethnographic accounts judged the local religions to be less developed. Melanesia took until the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th. Malaria belongs in that comparison, since Melanesia has always had deadly strains, while Micronesia seems never to have had malarial mosquitoes or pathogens.
Jules Dumont d'Urville is usually credited with coining the term Micronesia in 1832. In fact, he had used the word a year earlier.
The Treaty of Paris of 1898 ended the Spanish-American War, and under it the United States took possession of Guam and the Spanish Philippines. Spain was left with the rest of the Spanish East Indies, about 6,000 tiny islands that were sparsely populated and not very productive. After the loss of Manila as an administrative centre and the loss of two fleets, the islands were ungovernable and indefensible. Spain therefore decided to sell them to a new colonial power, the German Empire.
On the 17th of January 1899, the United States also took possession of Wake Island, which no one had claimed. Spanish Prime Minister Francisco Silvela signed the sale treaty on the 12th of February 1899. It transferred the Caroline Islands, from Kosrae in the east to Palau in the west, and the remaining northerly Mariana Islands to Germany. Under German control the islands became a protectorate administered from German New Guinea. Germany had already annexed Nauru in 1888.
By the early 20th century, the islands answered to three foreign powers. The United States held Guam and Wake Island, Germany held Nauru and the islands it had bought, and the British Empire took the Gilbert Islands, now Kiribati. During World War I, Germany's Pacific island territories were seized, and they became League of Nations mandates in 1923. Nauru became an Australian mandate. Germany's other territories in Micronesia were given to Japan as the South Seas Mandate.
In World War II, Japanese troops occupied Nauru and Ocean Island and some of the Gilbert Islands, and the Allied advance across the Pacific bypassed them. After Japan's defeat, its mandate became a United Nations Trusteeship administered by the United States as the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. Nauru became independent in 1968. In 1976, the Northern Mariana Islands entered a covenant of political union with the United States, gaining commonwealth status and United States citizenship for its residents.
The Federated States of Micronesia became self-governing in 1979. Its new Congress adopted many provisions of the Trust Territory Code, which had borrowed heavily from United States law during the Law and Development movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The book Understanding Law in Micronesia notes that the country's laws and institutions are "uninterestingly similar" to those of Western countries. It adds, though, that law in Micronesia is "an extraordinary flux and flow of contrasting thought and meaning, inside and outside the legal system".
Selling fishing rights to foreign nations is the main national income across Micronesia. Their fleets harvest tuna with huge purse seiners, and a few Japanese long liners still work the waters. The crews contribute little to local economies, because their ships sail loaded with stores and provisions cheaper than local goods. Government grants add more, mostly from the United States, as does the $150 million that the United States paid into a trust fund for the residents of Bikini Atoll who had to move after nuclear testing. Few mineral deposits are worth exploiting, apart from some high-grade phosphate, especially on Nauru.
Most residents of Micronesia can move freely to the United States and work there. Money sent home by relatives working abroad is the primary source of individual income. Government jobs and work in shops and restaurants supply most of the rest.
Scuba divers make up most of the tourist industry. They come to see the coral reefs, do wall dives and visit sunken ships from World War II. The major stops, in approximate order, are Palau, Chuuk, Yap and Pohnpei. Some private yacht owners stay for months or years, but they tend to remain at ports of entry and are too few to count as a major source of income.
Copra production used to bring in far more money. World prices have since dropped, in part because of large palm plantations planted in places like Borneo.
In the Federated States of Micronesia, education is required for citizens aged 6 to 13, and the literacy rate for citizens aged 15 to 24 is 98.8%. The College of Micronesia-FSM has a campus in each of the four states, with its national campus in the capital city of Palikir, Pohnpei.
The Micronesian Games are a quadrennial multi-sport event involving all of the region's countries and territories except Wake Island. Nauru has two national sports, weightlifting and Australian rules football. According to 2007 Australian Football League International Census figures, about 180 players compete in its senior competition and 500 in the junior competition. That represents a participation rate of over 30% for the whole country.
Political control of Micronesia is distributed among six sovereign nations: Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, the United States, Nauru and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Wake Island is contested, claimed by both the United States and the Marshall Islands. The United States has actual possession, and the United States Air Force administers it directly, with access restricted. Wake is not considered ethnoculturally part of Micronesia because it was historically uninhabited, though Micronesians may have visited it in prehistoric times to harvest fish.
Even the name causes confusion, because the Federated States of Micronesia is often shortened to FSM or simply Micronesia. Scholars point out that the idea of Micronesia has been well established since 1832, yet it matches no geomorphological, archaeological, linguistic, ethnic or cultural unity. They describe it as a disparate ensemble with no real deep unity. A "Micronesian people" does not exist as a distinct subset of the sea-migrating Austronesian people.
The Chuukese people make up 48% of the population of the Federated States of Micronesia. Their home atoll, Chuuk, was formerly known as Truk. The Chamorro are the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands, commonly believed to have come from Southeast Asia at around 2000 BC. Because Spain colonized Guam for over 300 years, many Chamorro words derive from Spanish, and Spanish numbers replaced the traditional number system.
Carolinian people, whose ancestors may have arrived about 2,000 years ago, speak Carolinian, called Refaluwasch by native speakers, which has about 5,700 speakers. Their society is matriarchal, with great respect shown toward the matriarchs. They began immigrating to Saipan in the early 19th century, after the Spanish had reduced the local Chamorro population to just 3,700. The origin of the Nauruan people has not been settled. They are most likely a blend of other Pacific peoples, possibly reflecting the last Malayo-Pacific migration, around 1200.
The roughly 3000 residents of Kapingamarangi, nicknamed Kapings, live almost 200 mi from the nearest point of immigration. There are no regular flights, and the only reliable way to visit is by high-speed sailboat. From the 1970s, children had to travel to Pohnpei to attend high school, bringing their parents with them and creating communities of Kapings on that island.
The largest group of languages spoken in the region is the Micronesian family, part of the Oceanic languages. It includes Marshallese, Gilbertese, Kosraean, Nauruan and the Chuukic-Pohnpeic languages, a sub-family of 11 languages. Nukuoro and Kapingamarangi, on the eastern edge of the Federated States of Micronesia, are an extreme westward extension of the Polynesian branch. Chamorro and Palauan are Malayo-Polynesian languages that do not belong to the Oceanic group at all.
In the 2010 census, the Northern Mariana Islands were 50% Asian, of which 35.3% were Filipino, and Guam was 26.3% Filipino. Japanese rule also brought settlers who married native spouses. Kessai Note, a former president of the Marshall Islands, has partial Japanese ancestry through his paternal grandfather. Emanuel Mori, a former president of the Federated States of Micronesia, descends from Koben Mori, one of the first settlers from Japan. Genetic testing found that 9.5% of males from Micronesia carry Haplogroup D-M55, believed to reflect recent admixture from Japan.
A 2011 survey found that 93.1% of people in Micronesia were Christians. Yet there is no single belief system in the islands, and each island region has its own mythological beings. Shinto shrines dating from during or after World War II still exist in some Micronesian countries.
Updated
Common questions
Where is Micronesia and how many islands does it have?
Micronesia is a subregion of Oceania in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean, made up of roughly 2,000 small islands. Their land area totals about 2,700 km2 inside an ocean area of 7,400,000 km2.
What are the main island groups of Micronesia?
The four main island groups are the Caroline Islands, the Gilbert Islands, the Mariana Islands and the Marshall Islands. Nauru and several smaller islands lie outside these groups.
Who first settled Micronesia?
Austronesian voyagers sailing east from the Philippines reached the Northern Mariana Islands around 1500 BCE. Palau and Yap were settled by around 1000 BCE, and eastern Micronesia around 200 BCE.
When did Europeans first reach Micronesia?
The Magellan expedition landed in the Marianas in 1521, the earliest known European contact. Diogo da Rocha reached the Caroline Islands in 1525, and Álvaro de Saavedra Cerón met Marshall Islanders in 1529.
Who coined the term Micronesia?
Jules Dumont d'Urville is usually credited with coining the term in 1832. He had in fact used it a year earlier.
How did Germany come to control parts of Micronesia?
Spain lost the Philippines and Guam in the Spanish-American War and sold its remaining islands to Germany. Prime Minister Francisco Silvela signed the treaty on the 12th of February 1899, transferring the Caroline Islands and the remaining northern Mariana Islands.
What is the economy of Micronesia based on?
The primary national income is the sale of fishing rights to foreign nations that harvest tuna. Government grants, mostly from the United States, and money sent home by relatives working abroad also support the islands.
What is Nan Madol in Micronesia?
Nan Madol is a megalithic complex on Pohnpei built from basalt lava logs, with construction beginning around 1180 CE. It was abandoned by the 1820s after declining with the Saudeleur dynasty.
All sources
80 references cited across the entry
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