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1. Pre-Christian Society The name “Solomon Islands” originated from the first European contact made by a Spanish expedition led by Alvaro de Mendana in 1568. The archipelago consists of a chain of large parallel islands running northwest to southeast, with numerous outlying and smaller groups of islands. The people had no overall natural, political, or linguistic unity in the precontact period, speaking over 70 languages. The first settlers, largely in the west, spoke languages connected to the ear…

[German Version] (Apr 5, 1809, Hampstead, England – Apr 11, 1878, Lichfield, England), Pan-Anglican leader. Educated at Eton and Cambridge, he became the Anglican bishop of New Zealand in 1841 and bishop of Lichfield in 1868. Selwyn pioneered Episcopal oversight over the Maori and the colonial church. In 1849 he founded the Melanesian mission and, with clergy and laity, developed an innovative church constitution in 1857. Allan K. Davidson Bibliography J. Evans, Churchman Militant, 1864 W.E. Limbrick, ed., Bishop Selwyn in New Zealand, 1893.

[German Version] I. Religious Studies The two main islands of New Zealand (North Island and South Island) together with several smaller islands have an area of 270,534 km2, making it the largest island nation of Polynesia. New Zealand experienced several waves of immigration from small islands. The present-day Maori (“normal, ordinary”; used as a collective term only since the arrival of the whites in the 18th cent.), for example, came from the Society Islands. Maori ¶ identity is determined primarily by individual ancestry, the kinship group, and the meeting house. Gen…