CIA World FactBook

Humans arrived in the Marshall Islands in the first millennium B.C. and gradually created permanent...

Kiribati is made up of three distinct island groups -- the Gilbert Islands, the Line...

Guam was settled by Austronesian people around 1500 B.C. These people became the indigenous Chamorro...

French Polynesia consists of five archipelagos -- the Austral Islands, the Gambier Islands, the Marquesas...

Austronesians settled Fiji around 1000 B.C., followed by successive waves of Melanesians starting around the...

The widely scattered Coral Sea Islands were first charted in 1803, but they were too...

Polynesians from Tahiti were probably the first people to settle Rarotonga -- the largest of...

British sea captain William KEELING discovered the Cocos (Keeling) Islands in 1609, and they were...

Although Europeans sighted Christmas Island in 1615, it was named for the day of its...

Aboriginal Australians arrived on the continent at least 60,000 years ago and developed complex hunter-gatherer...

Indonesian fishermen have long fished in the area around Ashmore Reef and Cartier Island. British...