Austronesian peoples

East Asia is a geocultural region of Asia. It includes China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan, plus two special administrative regions of China, Hong Kong and Macau. The economies of China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are among the world's largest and most prosperous. East Asia borders North Asia to the north, Southeast Asia to the south, South Asia to the southwest, and Central Asia to the west. To its east is the Pacific Ocean.

East Asia, especially Chinese civilization, is regarded as one of the earliest cradles of civilization. Other ancient civilizations in East Asia that still exist as independent countries in the present day include the Japanese, Korean, and Mongolian civilizations. Various other civilizations existed as independent polities in East Asia in the past but have since been absorbed into neighbouring civilizations in the present day, such as Tibet, Manchuria, and Ryukyu (Okinawa), among many others. Taiwan has a relatively young history in the region after the prehistoric era; originally, it was a major site of Austronesian civilisation prior to colonisation by European colonial powers and China from the 17th century onward. For thousands of years, China was the leading civilization in the region, exerting influence on its neighbours. Historically, societies in East Asia have fallen within the Chinese sphere of influence, and East Asian vocabularies and scripts are often derived from Classical Chinese and Chinese script. The Chinese calendar serves as the root from which many other East Asian calendars are derived.

Madagascar, officially the Republic of Madagascar, is an island country in the Indian Ocean that includes the island of Madagascar and numerous smaller peripheral islands. Lying off the southeastern coast of Africa, it is the world's fourth-largest island, the second-largest island country, and the 46th-largest country overall. Its capital and largest city is Antananarivo.

Following the prehistoric breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana, Madagascar split from Africa during the Early Jurassic period, around 180 million years ago, and separated from the Indian subcontinent approximately 90 million years ago. This isolation allowed native plants and animals to evolve in relative seclusion; as a result, Madagascar is a biodiversity hotspot and one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries, with over 90% of its wildlife being endemic. The island has a subtropical to tropical maritime climate. Madagascar was first permanently settled during or before the mid-first millennium CE (roughly 500 to 700) by Austronesian peoples, presumably arriving on outrigger canoes from present-day Indonesia. These were joined around the ninth century by Bantu groups crossing the Mozambique Channel from East Africa. Other groups continued to settle on Madagascar over time, each one making lasting contributions to Malagasy cultural life. Consequently, there are 18 or more classified peoples of Madagascar, the most numerous being the Merina of the central highlands.

The barangay (/bɑːrɑːŋˈɡaɪ/; abbreviated as Brgy. or Bgy.), historically known as the barrio, is the smallest administrative division in the Philippines. Named after the precolonial polities of the same name, modern barangays are political subdivisions of cities and municipalities, and are analogous to villages, districts, neighborhoods, suburbs, or boroughs. The term barangay is derived from balangay, a type of boat used by Austronesian peoples when they migrated to the Philippines.

All cities, including independent cities, and municipalities in the Philippines are politically subdivided into barangays, with the exception of the municipalities of Adams in Ilocos Norte and Kalayaan in Palawan, each of which contains only one barangay. Barangays are sometimes informally subdivided into smaller areas called purok (English: "zone"), or barangay zones consisting of clusters of houses for organizational purposes, and sitios, which are territorial enclaves—usually rural—located far from the poblacion. As of January 2025, there are 42,011 barangays throughout the country.

The 2nd millennium BC spanned the years 2000 BC to 1001 BC. In the Ancient Near East, it marks the transition from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age.The Ancient Near Eastern cultures are well within the historical era:The first half of the millennium is dominated by the Middle Kingdom of Egypt and Babylonia. The alphabet develops. At the center of the millennium, a new order emerges with Mycenaean Greek dominance of the Aegean and the rise of the Hittite Empire. The end of the millennium sees the Bronze Age collapse and the transition to the Iron Age.

Other regions of the world are still in the prehistoric period. In Europe, the Beaker culture introduces the Bronze Age, presumably associated with Indo-European expansion. The Indo-Iranian expansion reaches the Iranian plateau and onto the Indian subcontinent (Vedic India), propagating the use of the chariot. Mesoamerica enters the Pre-Classic (Olmec) period. North America is in the late Archaic stage. In Maritime Southeast Asia, the Austronesian expansion reaches Micronesia. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the Bantu expansion begins.

Timor-Leste, also known as East Timor, officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is a country in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the coastal exclave of Oecusse in the island's northwest, and the islands of Atauro and Jaco, for a total land area of 14,950 square kilometres (5,770 sq mi). Timor-Leste shares a land border with Indonesia to the west; Australia is the country's southern neighbour, across the Timor Sea. Dili, on the north coast of Timor, is its capital and largest city.

Timor was settled over time by various Papuan and Austronesian peoples, which created a diverse mix of cultures and languages linked to Southeast Asia and Melanesia. East Timor came under Portuguese influence in the sixteenth century, remaining a Portuguese colony until 1975. Internal conflict preceded a unilateral declaration of independence and an Indonesian invasion and annexation. The subsequent Indonesian occupation was characterised by extreme abuses of human rights, including torture and massacres, a series of events named the East Timor genocide. Resistance continued throughout Indonesian rule and in 1999, a United Nations–sponsored act of self-determination led Indonesia to relinquish control of the territory. On 20 May 2002, Timor-Leste became the first new sovereign state of the 21st century. That same year, relations with Indonesia were established and normalised, with Indonesia also supporting Timor-Leste's accession into ASEAN.

A sailing ship is a sea-going vessel that uses sails mounted on masts to harness the power of wind and propel the vessel. There is a variety of sail plans that propel sailing ships, employing square-rigged or fore-and-aft sails. Some ships carry square sails on each mast—the brig and full-rigged ship, said to be "ship-rigged" when there are three or more masts. Others carry only fore-and-aft sails on each mast, for instance some schooners. Still others employ a combination of square and fore-and-aft sails, including the barque, barquentine, and brigantine.

Early sailing ships were used for river and coastal waters in ancient Egypt and the Mediterranean. The Austronesian peoples developed maritime technologies that included the fore-and-aft crab-claw sail and with catamaran and outrigger hull configurations, which enabled the Austronesian expansion into the islands of the Indo-Pacific. This expansion originated in Taiwan c. 3000 BC and propagated through Island Southeast Asia, reaching Near Oceania c. 1500 BC, Hawaii c. 900 AD, and New Zealand c. 1200 AD. The maritime trading network in the Indo-Pacific dates from at least 1500 BC. Later developments in Asia produced the junk and dhow—vessels that incorporated features unknown in Europe at the time.

The islands in the Pacific Ocean are categorized into three major island groups: Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Depending on the context, the term Pacific Islands may refer to one of several concepts: (1) those Pacific islands whose people have Austronesian origins, (2) the Pacific islands once or currently colonized after 1500 CE, (3) the geographical region of Oceania, or (4) any island located in the Pacific Ocean.

This list of islands in the Pacific Ocean is organized by archipelago or political boundary. In order to keep this list of moderate size, the more complete lists for countries with large numbers of small or uninhabited islands have been hyperlinked.

Micronesia (UK: /ˌmaɪkrəˈniːziə/, US: /-ˈniːʒə/ ) is a subregion of Oceania, consisting of approximately 2,000 small islands in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean. It has a close shared cultural history with three other island regions: Maritime Southeast Asia to the west, Polynesia to the east, and Melanesia to the south—as well as with the wider community of Austronesian peoples.

The region has a tropical marine climate and is part of the Oceanian realm. It includes four main archipelagos—the Caroline Islands, the Gilbert Islands, the Mariana Islands, and the Marshall Islands — as well as numerous islands that are not part of any archipelago.

The Javanese (Javanese: ꦮꦺꦴꦁꦗꦮ, romanized: Wong Jåwå (in the ngoko register), ꦠꦶꦪꦁꦗꦮꦶ, Tiyang Jawi (in the krama register); Indonesian: Orang Jawa) are an Austronesian ethnic group native to the central and eastern part of Java island, which covers most of the administrative areas of the provinces of Central Java, East Java, and Special Region of Yogyakarta. With more than 100 million people, Javanese people are the largest ethnic group in both Indonesia and in Southeast Asia as a whole. Their native language is Javanese, it is the largest of the Austronesian languages in number of native speakers and also the largest regional language in Southeast Asia. As the largest ethnic group in the region, the Javanese have historically dominated the social, political, and cultural landscape of both Indonesia and Southeast Asia.

There are significant numbers of Javanese diaspora outside of central and eastern Java regions, including the other provinces of Indonesia, as well as other countries such as Suriname, Singapore, Malaysia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Yemen and the Netherlands. The Javanese ethnic group has many sub-groups (based on native Javanese community on the island of Java) that can be distinguished based on their characteristics, customs, traditions, dialects, or even their respective ways of life. These include Banyumasan, Cirebonese, Mataram, Osing, and Tenggerese. The majority of the Javanese people identify themselves as Sunni Muslims, with a small minority identifying as Christians and Hindus. With a large global population, the Javanese are considered significant as they are the largest Muslim ethnic group in the Far East and the fifth largest in the world after the Arabs, Bengalis, Punjabis, and Turks.

Cape Malays (Afrikaans: Kaapse Maleiers, کاپز ملیس in Arabic script) also known as Cape Muslims or Malays, are an ethnic group in South Africa. They are the descendants of enslaved and free Muslims from different parts of the world, specifically modern-day Indonesia (at that time known as the Dutch East Indies) and other Southeast Asian countries, who lived at the Cape during Dutch and British rule.

Although the earliest members of the community came from the Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia, by the 19th century, the term "Malay" had come to include all practising Muslims at the Cape, regardless of their origins, most of whom were Austronesian. As the community used the Malay language as a lingua franca and for religious instruction, they collectively became known as Malays.

Polynesians are an ethnolinguistic group comprising closely related ethnic groups native to Polynesia, which encompasses the islands within the Polynesian Triangle in the Pacific Ocean. They trace their early prehistoric origins to Island Southeast Asia and are part of the larger Austronesian ethnolinguistic group, with an Urheimat in Taiwan. They speak the Polynesian languages, a branch of the Oceanic subfamily within the Austronesian language family. The Indigenous Māori people form the largest Polynesian population, followed by Samoans, Native Hawaiians, Tahitians, Tongans, and Cook Islands Māori.

As of 2012, there were an estimated 2 million ethnic Polynesians (both full and part) worldwide. The vast majority either inhabit independent Polynesian nation-states (Samoa, Niue, Cook Islands, Tonga, and Tuvalu) or form minorities in countries such as Australia, Chile (Easter Island), New Zealand, France (French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna), and the United States (Hawaii and American Samoa), as well as in the British Overseas Territory of the Pitcairn Islands. New Zealand had the highest population of Polynesians, estimated at 110,000 in the 18th century.

Indian Ocean trade has been a key factor in East–West exchanges throughout history. Long-distance maritime trade by Austronesian trade ships and South Asian and Middle Eastern dhows, made it a dynamic zone of interaction between peoples, cultures, and civilizations stretching from Southeast Asia to East and Southeast Africa, and the East Mediterranean in the West, in prehistoric and early historic periods. Cities and states on the Indian Ocean rim focused on both the sea and the land.

The spice trade involved historical civilizations in Asia, Northeast Africa and Europe. Spices, such as cinnamon, cassia, cardamom, ginger, pepper, nutmeg, star anise, clove, and turmeric, were known and used in antiquity and traded in the Eastern World. These spices found their way into the Near East before the beginning of the Christian era, with fantastic tales hiding their true sources.

The maritime aspect of the trade was dominated by the Austronesian peoples in Southeast Asia, namely the ancient Indonesian sailors who established routes from Southeast Asia to Sri Lanka and India (and later China) by 1500 BC. These goods were then transported by land toward the Mediterranean and the Greco-Roman world via the incense route and the Roman–India routes by Indian and Persian traders. The Austronesian maritime trade lanes later expanded into the Middle East and eastern Africa by the 1st millennium AD, resulting in the Austronesian colonization of Madagascar.

Guam (/ˈɡwɑːm/ GWAHM; Chamorro: Guåhan [ˈɡʷɑhɑn]) is an island that is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States in the Micronesia subregion of the western Pacific Ocean. Guam's capital is Hagåtña, and the most populous village is Dededo. It is the westernmost point and territory of the United States, as measured from the geographic center of the U.S. In Oceania, Guam is the largest and southernmost of the Mariana Islands and the largest island in Micronesia. In 2022, its population was 168,801. Chamorros are its largest ethnic group, but a minority on the multiethnic island. The territory spans 210 square miles (540 km; 130,000 acres) and has a population density of 775 per square mile (299/km).

Indigenous Guamanians are the Chamorro, who are related to the Austronesian peoples of the Malay Archipelago, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Polynesia. Unlike most of its neighbors, the Chamorro language is not classified as a Micronesian or Polynesian language. Like Palauan, it possibly constitutes an independent branch of the Malayo-Polynesian language family. The Chamorro people settled Guam and the Mariana islands approximately 3,500 years ago. Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, while in the service of Spain, was the first European to visit and claim the island in March 1521. Guam was fully colonized by Spain in 1668. Between the 17th and 19th centuries, Guam was an important stopover for Spanish Manila galleons. During the Spanish–American War, the United States captured Guam in June 1898. Under the 1898 Treaty of Paris, Spain ceded Guam to the U.S. effective April 11, 1899.

Filipinos (Filipino: Mga Pilipino) are citizens or people identified with the country of the Philippines. Filipinos come from various Austronesian peoples, all typically speaking Filipino, English, or other Philippine languages. Despite formerly being subject to Spanish administration, less than 1% of Filipinos are fluent in Spanish. Currently, there are more than 185 ethnolinguistic groups in the Philippines each with its own language, identity, culture, tradition, and history.

The Micronesians or Micronesian peoples are various closely related ethnic groups native to Micronesia, a region of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean. They are a part of the Austronesian ethnolinguistic group, which has an Urheimat in Taiwan.

Ethno-linguistic groups classified as Micronesian include the Carolinians (Northern Mariana Islands), Chamorros (Guam & Northern Mariana Islands), Chuukese, Mortlockese, Namonuito, Paafang, Puluwat and Pollapese (Chuuk), I-Kiribati (Kiribati), Kosraeans (Kosrae), Marshallese (Marshall Islands), Nauruans (Nauru), Palauan, Sonsorolese, and Hatohobei (Palau), Pohnpeians, Pingelapese, Ngatikese, Mwokilese (Pohnpei), and Yapese, Ulithian, Woleian, Satawalese (Yap).