involved a blind crossing of some 60-90 km in a 200-300 km voyage, when no land would have been visible whether coming from the north coast of Sahul or New Hanover at the northern end of New Ireland. These would have been tense hours or days on board that first voyage and the name of Pleistocene Columbus who led this crew will never been known. The target arcs for Manus are 15° from New Hanover, 17° from Mussau and 28° from New Guinea. (Matthew Spriggs, The Island Melanesians, Oxford: Blackwell, 1997) History of the term The terms Remote Oceania and Near Oceania were proposed by anthropologists Roger Green and Andrew Pawley in 1973. By their definition, Near Oceania consists of New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands, with the exception of Santa Cruz Islands. They are designed to dispel the outdated categories of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia; Near Oceania cuts right across the old category of Melanesia, which has shown to be not a useful category in respect to the geography, culture, language and human history of the region. The old categories have been in use since they were proposed by French explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville in the mid-19th century. Though the push of some people in academia has been to replace the categories with Green's terms since the early 1990s, the old categories are still used in science, popular culture and general usage. See also East Melanesian Islands Micronesian navigation Polynesian navigation Remote Oceania Remote Oceanic languages References Regions of Oceania Geography of Melanesia