Solomon Islands

The independent nation of Solomon Islands, located in Oceania just east of New Guinea, is composed of 992 islands spread out across more than 11,000 square miles of ocean. It is a culturally diverse nation that prides itself on being the melting pot of Oceania. Indeed the three dominant cultures that make up the rich diversity of many of the Pacific Rim island nations—Melanesian, Polynesian, and Micronesian—have evolved together throughout the more than a dozen centuries of the Solomon Islands’ evolution. When the islands were first visited by Spanish explorers from Peru late in the 16th century, they were named after the biblical king in recognition of the islands’ wealth of natural beauty.

[Page 1141]Solomon Islands is recognized for its remote and unspoiled tropical landscape—long stretches ...