Micronesia
By Felicia Beardsley

Scattered like pearls loosed from a string and stretched across nearly 2,000 miles of azure seas in the western Pacific, the exquisite islands of Micronesia represent a highly diverse region — culturally, linguistiically, biologically, and geologically. Though the boundaries are artificial, set by 19th century map-makers intent on imposing order in our world, today this region is a colorful stewpot. Micronesia is very different from the rest of the Pacific — it is a mélange of the peoples and traditions of Asia, Melanesia and Polynesia, yet it is also culturally distinct. Its known history is sparse, tentatively pieced together through a limited number of archaeological and ethnographic investigations, coupled with scattered remnants of oral histories.

Within a few hundred years of settlement, these islands were racing for control of the sea-trade routes; regional centers emerged and were vying for power and credibility; monumental architecture and landscape modifications were used to symbolize the power and wealth of these centers; even the oral histories were awash with mythic and historical accounts of inter-island conflicts, culture heroes, and cultural patrimony. Today, the terraces of Palau, the monumental architecture of Leluh and Nan Madol, and the vast stone villages now swallowed by the jungle stand as mute testimony to a rich cultural legacy that ultimately developed into complex cultural systems rivaling the accomplishments of the Maya and Inka Empires of the New World and the Egyptian and Han Dynasties of the Old World, and all with the accompanying intrigues that would make even the Portuguese blush. Travel with Dr. Felicia Beardsley to Micronesia in January 2004.