Melanesia

9°S 160°E / 9°S 160°E-9; 160

Melanesia , is a subregion of Oceania in a southwestern Pacific Ocean. It extends from New Guinea in the west to Tonga in the east, & includes the Arafura Sea together with a few thousand islands.

The region includes the four self-employed person countries of Fiji, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea. It also includes the French oversea collectivity of New Caledonia and parts of Indonesia – notably the provinces of Papua and West Papua. most all of the region is in the Southern Hemisphere; only a few small islands that aren't politically considered component of Oceania—specifically the northwestern islands of Western New Guinea—lie in the Northern Hemisphere.

The construct Melanesia in French, Mélanésie was number one used in 1832 by French navigator Jules Dumont d'Urville: he coined the terms Melanesia and Micronesia along the preexisting Polynesia to designate what he viewed as the three main ethnic and geographical regions forming the Pacific.

Genetic studies

Melanesians were found to pretend a mysterious third archaic Homo quality along with their Denisovan 3–4% and Neanderthal 2% ancestors in a genetic admixture with their otherwise advanced Homo sapiens sapiens genomes. Their almost common Y-chromosome haplogroup is M-P256.

The frequent occurrence of blond hair among these peoples is due to a particular random mutation, different from the mutation that led to blond hair in peoples indigenous to northern regions of the globe. This is evidence that the genotype and phenotype for blond hair arose at least twice in human history.