Next to its sheer size, the profound isolation of its many small islands is the mostdistin

Next to its sheer size, the profound isolation of its many small islands is the most

distinctive feature of the Pacific Ocean. Over 25,000 islands are scattered across the

surface of the Pacific, more than in all the other oceans combined, but their land area

adds up to little more than 125,000 square kilometers, about the size of New York State,

5 and their inhabitants total less than two million people, about a quarter of the number that

live in New York City. The oceanic islands of the Pacific are some of the most isolated

places on Earth. Many are uninhabitable, by virtue of their small size and particular

characteristics, but even the most favored are very isolated fragments of land, strictly

circumscribed by the ocean, strictly limited in terms of the numbers of people they can

10 support. This basic fact of environmental circumstance has been the most pervasive

influence in determining the social arrangements, and cultural practices of the people that

settled in the Pacific Islands.

The peopling of the Pacific Islands has been described as the greatest feat of maritime

colonization in human history. Contrary to the conclusions of Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki

15 expedition of 1946, the evidence of plant dispersal, archaeology, linguistics, and genetics

now shows quite conclusively that the Pacific Islands were not populated from tile east by

South Americans who drifted on balsa-wood rafts and the prevailing wind and current, but

from the west, by groups from mainland Asia who gradually spread from island to island

out into the Pacific. The process began over 40,000 years ago and reached Easter Island

20 the most isolated place on Earth-about 1.500 years ago. It ended about 1,000 years ago,

when people first settled in Hawaii and New Zealand.

Simply surviving those ocean crossings of indeterminate length, in open canoes, to

arrive on the shores of uninhabited and hitherto unknown islands, was a formidable

achievement. But having found an oasis of land in a watery wilderness, crossed its reef,

25 and landed, on its shores, the survivors then faced a series of pressing problems for which

solutions had to be found quickly if the small group was to become a vigorous, self-

sustaining island population.

The word "scattered" in line 2 is closest in meaning to ______.

A．widely known

B．usually estimated

C．rarely inhabited

D．irregularly distributed