APPENDIX &
The Socio-cultural Perspective
A.
The Physical Environment
The Pacific Ocean contains some 10,000
islands.
a fraction of which is
inhabited by approximately five million people speaking some 1,200 languages,
which is 25% of all languages on earth.
As Ron Crocombe points out,
The "model" islanders is brown-skinned, darker today
than a decade ago, and even the few black ones
(especially from the Solomons) are becoming regarded
as more "Pacific" rather than less. In other words,
the physical image of Pacific people. which has been
predominantly Polynesian and female for the last two
hundred years, has become increasingly Melanesian and
male during the last decade. (p. 5)
t
The islands of the vast Pacific are divided into three major divisions:
Melanesia, which has 60,500 square miles of land; Polynesia, with 10,000 square
miles; and Micronesia, with only 1,200 square miles of land.
When land area and
water are compared, the ratio of water to land in the great Pacific is 371:1.
In 1788, Captains Gilbert and Marshall made the first voyage from Australia
to China. They happened on a group of islands that straddled the equator about 5°
west of the international date line.
himself.
Captain Gilbert named the islands after
Another group of islands 10° west of the international date line, and
about 10° north of the equator acquired, naturally, Captain Ma shall's name.
The Marshall Islands consist of two parallel chains of atolls and islands.
Ratak (Sunrise) is the eastern chain and has 15 atolls and islands, and Ralik
(Sunset) has 16 atolls and islands.
The total islets of these atolls, however,
number 1,152 and are dispersed over more than one half a million square miles,
yet the aggregate land area of these hundreds of islets is a mere 69.7 square
miles.
These
Marshallese.
are
inhabited
by a total
population of approximately 30,000