Solomon Islands archipelago
The Solomon Islands archipelago, with the nation Solomon Islands in beige and Bougainville (part of Papua New Guinea) in dun. (Click to enlarge)
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| Geography | |
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| Location | South Pacific |
| Major islands | Bougainville, Guadalcanal |
| Administration | |
The Solomon Islands are an archipelago in the western South Pacific Ocean, located northeast of Australia. They are in the Melanesia subregion and bioregion of Oceania. The archipelago forms much of the territory of the nation of Solomon Islands, while the northwestern islands are within the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, in eastern Papua New Guinea.
The Solomon Islands consist of both volcanic islands of varying activity and of coral atolls. Bougainville Island is the largest in the archipelago.
The climate of the islands is tropical, however temperatures do not greatly fluctuate due to the heat sink of the surrounding ocean. Daytime temperatures are normally 25 to 32 degrees Celsius and 13 to 15 °C at night. From April to October (the Dry Season), the southeast trade winds blow, gusting at times up to 30 knots (55 km/h) or more.
November to March is the wet season, caused by the northwest monsoon, and is typically warmer and wetter. Cyclones arise in the Coral Sea and the area of the Solomon Islands, but they usually veer toward Vanuatu and New Caledonia or down the coast of Australia.
It is believed that Papuan-speaking settlers began to arrive around 30,000 BCE from New Ireland. It was the furthest humans went in the Pacific until Austronesian speakers arrived c. 4000 BCE, also bringing cultural elements such as the outrigger canoe.
It is between 1200 and 800 BCE that the ancestors of the Polynesians, the Lapita people, arrived from the Bismarck Archipelago with their characteristic ceramics. Most of the languages spoken today in the Solomon Islands derive from this era, but some thirty languages of the pre-Austronesian settlers survive (see East Papuan languages).
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