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According to the intro of this article:
”Ethno-linguistic groups classified as Micronesian include the Carolinians (Northern Mariana Islands), Chamorros (Guam & Northern Mariana Islands), Chuukese, Mortlockese, Namonuito, Paafang, Puluwat and Pollapese (Chuuk), I-Kiribati (Kiribati), Kosraeans (Kosrae), Marshallese (Marshall Islands), Nauruans (Nauru), Palauans, Sonsorolese (Palau), Pohnpeians, Pingelapese, Ngatikese, Mwokilese (Pohnpei), and Yapese, Ulithian, Woleian, Satawalese (Yap)”.
But of course since Green and Pawley (1973), this is perfectly untrue: Chamorros and Palauans are not Micronesians at all so are not the Yapese or the Outliers living in Micronesia. Arorae (talk) 16:32, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Although based on a superficial understanding of the Pacific islanders, Dumont d’Urville’s tripartite classification stuck. Indeed, these categories — Polynesians, Micronesians, Melanesians — became so deeply entrenched in Western anthropological thought that it is difficult even now to break out the mould in which they entrap us[1]. Such labels provide handy geographical referents, yet they mislead us greatly if we take them to be meaningful segments of cultural history. Only Polynesia has stood the tests of time and increased knowledge, as a category with historical significance" Patrick Vinton Kirch, On the Road of the Winds: an Archeological History of the Pacific Islands before European Contact, Berkeley, University of California Press , 2000:5.
Pohnpei's Position in Eastern Micronesian Prehistory by William S. Ayres, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Oregon. "A continuing problem in perceptions of Western Pacific prehistory and cultural relationships is the view that Micronesia represents a monolithic cultural entity. This follows from the earlier characterizations of Pacific Island peoples in terms of culture areas of which the Polynesian exemplar provides such a neatly defined unit. While the ethnographic pattern and the linguistic connections at least from the Gilberts (Kiribati) west to Sonsorol and Tobi (Bender 1971, Shutler & Marek 1975) are not markedly at odds with such a characterization, this seems to be a relatively recent, emergent pattern, and the uniformity implied may be misleading when viewing the earlier prehistoric record. Consistent with available archaeological, linguistic, and human biological data is a basic dichotomy between the large islands at the western extreme (Marianas, Belau, Yap) of the Micronesian area and the remainder to the east (the remaining Carolines, the Marshalls, and the Gilberts). This reflects different origins for the first colonizers (Craib 1983) but, especially in the eastern groups, these origins have not yet been archaeologically documented. Recent evidence from the eastern islands, where archaeological study began much later than the pioneering research in the Marianas and Yap, provides only an outline of the major settlement and cultural development phases.
It is the archaeological data which offer at present the least clear but, in the long run, the critical information on the time depth of a Western/Central-Eastern Micronesian cultural dichotomy."
^Nicholas Thomas, 1989, Out of time: history and evolution in anthropological discourse. 149 pp. Cambridge: University Press (Studies in Social Anthropology 67) [second edition, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996]; French translation, 1998, Hors du temps, Belin, Paris.