The Nukumanu Islands, formerly the Tasman Islands, is an
atoll
An atoll () is a ring-shaped island, including a coral rim that encircles a lagoon partially or completely. There may be coral islands or cays on the rim. Atolls are located in warm tropical or subtropical oceans and seas where corals can gr ...
of
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
, located in the south-western
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contin ...
,
4 degrees south of the
Equator.
Description
Comprising a ring of more than twenty islets on a reef surrounding a large lagoon, Nukumanu's sandy islands are located on a strip of coral rising no more than above sea level. The main inhabited islands of Nukumanu are located on the eastern end of the atoll.
Administratively Nukumanu is part of the
Autonomous Region of Bougainville
Bougainville ( ; ; Tok Pisin: ''Bogenvil''), officially the Autonomous Region of Bougainville (Tok Pisin: ''Otonomos Region bilong Bogenvil''), is an autonomous region in Papua New Guinea. The largest island is Bougainville Island, while the re ...
in
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
, but it lies quite far away from the closest territory of Papua New Guinea proper, which is the coast of
New Ireland island at to the west. The nearest land is
Ontong Java Atoll
Ontong Java Atoll or Luangiua, (formerly ''Lord Howe Atoll'', not to be confused with Lord Howe Island) is one of the largest atolls on earth.
Geographically it belongs to a scattered group of three atolls which includes nearby Nukumanu Atol ...
, located only to the south of Nukumanu. The border between Papua New Guinea and the
Solomon Islands
Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its capit ...
runs between these neighboring atolls, which form a small geographic group together with the wholly submerged
Roncador Reef
Roncador Reef is a reef in Solomon Islands, south of Ontong Java Atoll and north of Santa Isabel Island.
This submerged reef forms a small geographic group together with Nukumanu and Ontong Java, the two nearest atolls located further north.
Hi ...
at the southern end.
History
In
Polynesia
Polynesia () "many" and νῆσος () "island"), to, Polinisia; mi, Porinihia; haw, Polenekia; fj, Polinisia; sm, Polenisia; rar, Porinetia; ty, Pōrīnetia; tvl, Polenisia; tkl, Polenihia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania, made up of ...
n history, the main cultural and commercial exchanges took place with the inhabitants of neighboring Ontong Java Atoll, with whom Nukumanu people share many cultural affinities.
Towards the end of the 19th century Nukumanu became part of the
German colonial empire. It was captured by
Australia in 1914 and formally transferred to
Australian administration as a
League of Nations mandate in 1920 by the
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles (french: Traité de Versailles; german: Versailler Vertrag, ) was the most important of the peace treaties of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June ...
, after Germany's defeat in
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
.
Nukumanu's most recent claim to fame is that it was the last place on the path of
Amelia Earhart before she and her co-pilot
Fred Noonan
Frederick Joseph "Fred" Noonan (born April 4, 1893 – disappeared July 2, 1937, declared dead June 20, 1938) was an American flight navigator, sea captain and aviation pioneer, who first charted many commercial airline routes across the Pacif ...
disappeared forever into the vast
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contin ...
. Their last known position report was near the Nukumanu Islands, about 800 miles (1,300 km) into the flight.
The land resources of the Nukumanu people are quite few and they grow a kind of
taro
Taro () (''Colocasia esculenta)'' is a root vegetable. It is the most widely cultivated species of several plants in the family Araceae that are used as vegetables for their corms, leaves, and petioles. Taro corms are a food staple in Afri ...
and
bananas.
Coconuts are an integral part of the islanders' diet with the soft inside being a staple food and coconut flesh being consumed with
raw fish
Raw is an adjective usually describing:
* Raw materials, basic materials from which products are manufactured or made
* Raw food, uncooked food
Raw or RAW may also refer to:
Computing and electronics
* .RAW, a proprietary mass spectrometry dat ...
and clams. They are also competent fishermen, who dive for
bêche-de-mer in the lagoon. This is exported mainly to Asia, and along with
trochus
''Trochus'' is a genus of medium-sized to large, top-shaped sea snails with an operculum and a pearly inside to their shells, marine gastropod molluscs in the subfamily Trochinae of the family Trochidae, the top snails.Bouchet, P.; Gofas, S. ( ...
shells, used to make mother-of-pearl, they comprise the backbone of the Nukumanu economy.
Anthropological studies
This atoll has a
Polynesian population whose ancestors migrated westwards out of Polynesia. Their language is classified in the
Samoic–Outlier branch of Polynesian.
[ olynesian languages Ethnologue - Nukumanu Language/ref> The Nukumanu Islands, together with neighboring Ontong Java retain a Polynesian character despite their location in the Melanesian Archipelago of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands respectively.
The first serious research on Nukumanu's inhabitants was conducted by German ethnographers Ernst Sarfert and Hans Damm, during a German scientific expedition of the Southern Seas that took place in 1908–1910. This expedition visited both Nukumanu and neighboring Ontong Java Atoll, where they also carried out their research. Their work, "Luangiua und Nukumanu" was published in 1931.
]
References
Bibliography
* Sarfert, Ernst, and Hans Damm. ''Luangiua und Nukumanu. Ergebnisse der Südsee Expedition,'' 1908–1910. Hamburg 1931, 2 vols.
External links
{{Authority control
Atolls of Papua New Guinea
Polynesian outliers