On Sun, 15 May 2005 23:57, Ian Lynch wrote: > On Sun, 2005-05-15 at 21:08 +1200, Wesley Parish wrote: > > I take it you are referring to European migrants to New Zealand? Maori > > arrived roughly about 1000 years ago. > > In small numbers and they are not like native Australians who date back > far longer. Given the physical geographical size of Australia its easy > to see how the region got named Australasia at the time.
To be more specific, Australasia refers to the two settler-states Australia and New Zealand. The rest - which don't have either the (relatively) common cultural background - eg, New Caledonia has as many French as Kanaky, but that's the French cultural tradition, which hasn't properly integrated into the South Pacific "gestalt" - are the South Pacific Islands, or the Islands for short. > > > New Zealand is still the world's > > last-settled land of any significant size, (and Australia has one of the > > world's oldest sites of settlement by Homo Sapiens as opposed to Homo > > Erectus, a lot earlier than the first Americans, 65 000 versus 30 000) > > but NZ had a significant population size well before the European > > settlers turned up. > > Depends on what you mean by significant. They were all immigrants from > the South Sea Islands, a testimony to their great skill as sailors. Significant in much the same way as their presence in the rest of the South Pacific - ie, the land would've been uninhabited totally if they hadn't been there. "Significant" in the sense of head of population per square mile as in Central Europe at about the same time - h*(), Africa had a very insignificant population in those terms, at the time of the Great Colonial Land-Grab. (It's wonderful what (relatively) modern medical practices can do to population size and growth. ;) Ditto the eastern parts of the Russian Empire and the Northwestern parts of the Chinese Empire at the same time. Wesley Parish -- Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish ----- Mau e ki, he aha te mea nui? You ask, what is the most important thing? Maku e ki, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata. I reply, it is people, it is people, it is people.
