ABSTRACT
Melanesia (from Greek, meaning 'black islands') encompasses an area of the Pacific Ocean roughly west of the International Dateline, south of the equator, and east of New Guinea. The French explorer Dumont d'Urville used the term to describe the skin of the people he encountered. Their physical traits, however, are as varied as their cultural traits, which include classic "Melanesian" societies, Polynesian outliers, and Micronesian outliers. Melanesian societies range from those where power lies in the ability to create a following, to those where power comes from the inheritance of chieftainship. Though the term Melanesia is really not helpful, no term has satisfactorily replaced it.
