Who discovered the great Sunda Islands. Map of the Western Lesser Sunda Islands with cities. What country is the Western Lesser Sunda Islands in?

Where are the Greater Sunda Islands? They belong to the Malay Archipelago. The islands are located in the region between two oceans - the Pacific and Indian. In the north they border with

a brief description of

The area of ​​the islands is just over 1.5 million square meters. km. They consist of 4 large islands, as well as a large number of small ones, such as Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi, etc. The Greater Sunda Islands are the largest island group on the planet. The islands are home to about 180 million people.

Let's take a closer look at some of the islands from this group.

Kalimantan

The largest of the Greater Sunda Islands is Kalimantan (another name is Borneo). Its area is 743 thousand square meters. km. It is one of the three largest islands on the planet. Another feature of the island is that its territory is divided between several countries: Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia. Kalimantan is washed by 4 seas and 2 straits. If we compare all the Greater Sunda Islands, then only Kalimantan is dominated by flat terrain. Nevertheless mountainous terrain also present on this landmass. The most high peak islands - the city of Kinabalu (more than 4 thousand m). Also on the territory of Borneo is the active Bombalai volcano. The river system is also relatively densely represented. The largest river is Kapuas. It has a length of more than one thousand kilometers. Other large rivers- Barito, Mahakam, Rajang.

Sumatra

Located to the west of Kalimantan. In such a system as the Greater Sunda Islands, it ranks second in size, and in the world ranking - sixth. Its area is more than 470 thousand square meters. km. Territorially belongs to the state of Indonesia. The equator border runs along the central part of the island, dividing this landmass into two identical parts located in different hemispheres. Sumatra has an elongated shape. The southwestern part of the island is dominated by mountainous terrain, where there are a large number of active volcanoes. Sumatra is a seismically active region of the planet. Earthquakes are a common occurrence here. Highest point- Kerinchi volcano (3,800 m). The rest of the island is flat. There are many rivers in Sumatra.

Sulawesi

The third largest island is Sulawesi, with an area of ​​174 thousand square meters. km. Located east of Kalimantan. It is washed by two seas - Banda and Sulawesi, and the very shape of this island is unique and interesting. It consists of four distinct, elongated peninsulas that connect in the western part. These so-called branches are mainly of the plain type. The population lives in these territories. The central part is mountainous, and therefore the connection between the peninsulas is quite complex.

Java

When describing the Greater Sunda Islands, one cannot help but talk about Java. This is the smallest of all that are included in this system. Java has an area of ​​about 130 thousand square meters. km. The island is very elongated from east to west. Its length is more than one thousand kilometers. This piece of land belongs to the state and is located on this island. Its central territory is occupied by mountains, the rest is jungle. The population lives mainly on the coast of the island, since at a distance from it there are simply no conditions for a normal life for people.

Conclusion

The Greater Sunda Islands belong to the equatorial climatic zone, and also have rich flora and fauna. This territory is not deprived of mineral resources. There are large reserves of tin and oil here. The population is engaged in tropical agriculture, actively exporting spices, rubber, rice, tea and coconut palm products.

The Sunda Islands are an archipelago in South-East Asia- This is between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. It is located between New Guinea and the Malay Peninsula. It consists of large and many small islands, most of which belong to Indonesia. Kalimantan - Northern part islands belonging to Malaysia. Part of the island belongs to the state of East Timor, a small part to the state of Brunei. There are more than 3,000 islands in the archipelago. The area of ​​the archipelago is 1.6 million km². The islands are divided into Greater Sunda Islands and Lesser Sunda Islands.

The Big ones include Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi. The Lesser Sunda Islands are Bali, Barat Daya, Lombok, Sumbawa, Savu, Timor, Flores. The area of ​​the Greater Sunda Islands is 1.5 million km², the area of ​​the Lesser Islands is 128 thousand km².

Basically, the territory of the islands is mountainous, with quite extensive lowlands in Sumatra and Kalimantan. The archipelago has more than 130 volcanoes and belongs to a zone of seismic activity. The South China and Arafura seas wash the archipelago from the outside. Within the archipelago, the interisland seas are the Java Sea, the Sulu Sea, Sulawesi, Savu, Flores, Banda, Seram, Moluccas, Timor. Equatorial and sea tropical air dominates here, the temperature in January is + 24 ° C, in July + 32 ° C, constantly high humidity, and a large amount of precipitation falls from 2000 to 3000 mm per year. Evergreen forests, with occasional shrouds. Vegetable and animal world rich and varied.

Malay archipelago geographical

Greater Sunda Islands

The Greater Sunda Islands (Indian: Kepulauan Sunda Besar, Sund: Kapuloan Sunda Gedе) are a group of islands within Indonesia. Together with the Lesser Sunda Islands they form the Sunda Archipelago.

The Greater Sunda Islands represent the border between Pacific Ocean(more precisely, one of its seas, South China Sea) and the Indian Ocean. WITH with total area With an area of ​​1.5 million km and a population of about 180 million inhabitants, the Greater Sunda Islands are the largest island group world (only Greenland is slightly larger in area).

The Greater Sunda Islands include Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, Bali and some others. In total, the Malay Archipelago has about 10,000 islands as part of the Sunda group. The Sunda Archipelago closes the tip of the main fire belt of the Eastern Hemisphere. Indonesia accounts for the most active part of this belt. There are 63 volcanoes here, of which 37 are active.

Noteworthy is the dormant volcano in the southeast of the island of Luzon, called Mayon (“beautiful”). Its height is 2462 m. Over the past 2 centuries, Mayon has erupted about 20 times.

The large number of victims is explained by the fact that the disaster occurred on the very day when believers gathered on the volcano for a sacrifice ceremony that takes place once every 100 years.

The eruption of Tambora (2821 m) on the island of Sumbawa occurred in 1815. 3 years before this disaster, the volcano showed concern. Numerous cracks formed on its slopes near the top, from which jets of hot gas hissed out. Gases in the Tambora volcanic channel exploded on April 5, 1815. The volcano had a height of 4 km, but the explosion tore off its top. Almost 100 km of rock turned into debris, and the height of the hill was reduced by 1200 m. In place of the top of the cone was a very wide caldera, the depth of which reached 700 m and a width of 6 x 6.5 km. A monstrous roar was heard within a radius of 1,400 km - on Kalimantan, Java, Sulawesi, Timor and other islands.

The largest Sunda Islands are of considerable age. It is part of the landmass of Southeast Asia, largely built up by volcanoes.

Tremors periodically shake the island of Sumbawa, reminiscent of the 1815 eruption of the region's tallest volcano, Tambora. geological structure which is shown. Tambora's eruption killed 92,000 people.

About 5 million years ago, almost all of these islands had land connections, but when the level of the World Ocean rose significantly at the end of the Ice Age, the land areas immediately became isolated.

The Keli Mutu (Kelimutu) volcano has three craters, each containing a lake with colored water: one is blue, the other is scarlet, the third is milky white. The water in the first two acquired color due to copper and iron salts, and in the third - due to the work of sulfur bacteria.

Since then, volcanic processes have proceeded very rapidly, as a result of which many real volcanic islands have arisen in the vicinity of the former mainland. Violent volcanism, characteristic of many islands from the Sunda group to this day, significantly affects the local topography, changing their outlines.

An archipelago on the southernmost border of Southeast Asia. Together with the Greater Sunda Islands, it is part of the Malay Archipelago, which belongs to Indonesia. There are only about 570 Lesser Sunda Islands. They are mainly represented by the six largest ones - Timor, Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores, Sumba. The inhabitants of the island speak 68 dialects, follow the commandments of different religions, but are convinced that ultimately everything in the world depends on the will of the spirits.

COMING FROM THE OCEAN

The Lesser Sunda Islands are one of the most geologically complex and seismically active areas of our planet.

The Lesser Sunda Islands (Nusa Tenggara, meaning "southeastern islands" in Indonesian) archipelago consists of almost 570 islands. 320 of them are so small that they remain nameless. 42 islands are inhabited. The archipelago is usually represented by six of them, the largest being Timor, Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores, Sumba. Together with the Greater Sunda Islands (Sumatra, Java, Borneo) they make up the Malay Archipelago, which in turn is part of Indonesia, the largest in the world island state. From the north the island is washed by the Flores Sea and the Banda Sea, from the south by the Timor Sea and other, smaller seas. Indian Ocean. Eastern part himself big island The Lesser Sunda Islands - Timor is occupied by the independent state of East Timor (we wrote about it in No. 104 of the Atlas), which also includes several small islands off the coast.

Scientists date the beginning of the geological history of the Lesser Sunda octpodod to the Paleocene (about 65.5 million years ago), when some of them appeared on the surface of the ocean as a result of volcanic processes in the earth’s crust at the junction of the Australian and Pacific plates. The other part of the archipelago islands is of coral origin. Magma flows that “warmed up” the islands created by underwater volcanoes moved them to the close southern tip of the Eurasian plate. From the interaction of three plates, the islands received new geological metamorphoses, decreased or, on the contrary, grew in size, but finally decided on their location. This can be said about most of the islands of the archipelago, but not about all. The island of Flores, according to some geologists, was once part of the Australian Plate, although others believe that it is of volcanic origin, because there is a volcano, although inactive, on it.

This volcano, Kelimutu (1639 m), has three crater lakes that periodically change color, which is extremely beautiful, but this phenomenon has not yet found a clear scientific explanation. The islands of Sumba, Timor and Babar are also considered splinters of Australia. You just need to keep in mind that not a single geological theory of the origin of the Lesser Sunda Islands, with the exception of islands with a visible volcanic history, can be called generally accepted in the scientific world. Most of these theories arose quite recently - at the end of the 20th century. - and still need verification. There is also such a theory: part of the islands of the archipelago are fragments of the Eurasian plate. One way or another, today the islands stand at the junction of the Eurasian and Australian plates and are part of the Sunda mountain arc, which has an external and internal contour and is surrounded by deep oceanic depressions. This arc is considered part of the Himalayan fold system. Between the islands of Bali and Lombok runs the Wallace Line (named after the British geographer and biologist A.R. Wallace, who explored the islands of Indonesia in 1854-1862) - a biogeographic division between the natural systems of South Asia on the one hand and Australia and New Guinea on the other .

The Lesser Sunda Islands are part of an area of ​​tectonic activity called the Pacific Belt (Ring) of Fire. In 1815, Mount Tambora erupted on the island of Sumbawa, which is still considered the most powerful eruption in the world. Its consequences were felt even a year later - 1816 remained in the history of Europe and North America as “a year without summer”: clouds of Tambora volcanic dust that reached these continents were still in charge. At the time of the eruption, Tambora reached a height of 4300 m. Now this figure is 2821 m, but the volcano is active. And the most powerful active volcano in the Lesser Sunda Islands is Rinjani on the island of Lombok. In addition to Lombok and Sumbawa, of the large islands of the archipelago, its most famous island, Bali, has significant volcanoes, it has two active volcano: Agung (3142 m) and Batur (1717 m).

The border between Southeast Asia and Australia is marked by the Burma-Javan, or Sunda, mountain arc. It also includes the Lesser Sunda Islands. The northern ridge of the arc includes islands of volcanic origin - Lombok, Sumbawa, Komodo, Flores, Dembata. Southern ridge - Sumba, Kabi, Rota, Timor, traces are also found on these islands volcanic activity, but very ancient. The small islands of the archipelago are of coral origin. The topography of the large islands is defined by wide, hilly plateaus, cut by fast small rivers with deep valleys.

CALL OF THE ISLANDS

The Lesser Sunda Islands are one of those places on Earth where the confluence different cultures happened especially whimsically, although to some extent predictable.

It is believed that Homo erectus (Homo erectus) entered Bali about 1 million years ago, through Sandaland (the Malacca Peninsula, the islands of Kalimantan, Java and Sumatra with adjacent islands). Now these parts of land are located on the continental shelf of Asia, but during the Ice Age they were the southern tip of the continent and the sea level between Java and Bali was much lower, if it existed at all. In addition, there is evidence of development of this species ancient man other islands of Indonesia.

And the most reliable ancient evidence of the development of homo sapiens, homo sapiens, of the Lesser Sunda Islands - silicon tools, which are about 130 thousand years old, found by archaeologists in East Timor, others, from the bones of extinct elephants here, they are at least 100 thousand years old - on the island of Flores. About 40 thousand years ago, migration to the Indonesian islands from Southeast Asia began. Linguists, based on linguistic analysis of 68 languages ​​of the archipelago, believe that the main wave of migration of tribes of the Austronesian group from New Guinea and Australia occurred about 5,000 years ago.

At the same time, domestic animals appeared on the islands - goats, pigs, dogs, and later - buffalos. About 2000 years ago, Timor was first reached by merchant seafarers from China and India. They were primarily interested in white sandalwood, a local endemic, and, of course, spices. They also delivered these goods to the countries of the Middle East and Egypt. Drums made of bronze (Dongzhong culture) from the Indochina Peninsula, 1st century. BC e. - 1st century, were discovered on the islands of Sumbawa and Roti. In Bali, the first state formations (kingdoms) appeared in the 10th century. In the 13th century. Islam comes here, most likely with Arab merchants. In the XII-XIV centuries. The Islamic kingdoms of Java and Sumatra made their claims to the islands more than once, but, as a rule, these claims remained unfounded: the rulers did not have enough strength for conquest. The ancient communal way of life on the islands with rituals of worshiping the spirits of the mountains and underground forces has survived to this day, and Islam is not at all an obstacle to this, as are Catholicism and Protestantism, brought by Europeans in the 16th-17th centuries, and other religions.

In 1522, Magellan's ships landed in Timor (Magellan himself was killed a year earlier on Philippine island Mactan), and in 1610 the Dutch (Dutch East India Company) appeared there. They failed to build a real colony, and they acted on the principle of “divide and conquer,” supporting first one or another local king, and their main interests lay in commerce, for primacy in which they competed with each other. In 1816, Indonesia became part of the Dutch colonies under the name of the Netherlands East Indies. During World War II, in 1942, Japan occupied Indonesia. On August 17, 1945, one of the founders of the Indonesian National Party, Sukarno, proclaimed the independence of Indonesia and himself as its president. After this, wars began between Sukarno's army, first with the British and then with the Dutch troops. The Indonesians won. In 1949, the UN recognized Indonesia's independence.

The main product produced on the islands is rice (primarily in Bali and Lombok). By the middle of the 20th century. soil rice plantations began to deplete, and agriculture Coffee came to the fore, and plantations of vanilla, cloves, citrus fruits and exotic flowers expanded. Further development The Lesser Sunda Islands are primarily associated with tourism, which has become an economic priority since the 1970s. How tourist site The island of Bali is in the lead. But something interesting can be found on all the islands of the archipelago. And no one will miss the Komodo Islands, where you can watch the huge monitor lizard - the “Komodo dragon”. Lizards of this species also live on other islands - Flores, Rincha, Gili Motang.

FUN FACTS

■ In 2003 on the island. Flores discovered the skeletal remains of a miniature hominid species, about 1 m tall and with a brain volume of about 400 cm3, which is three times smaller than the brain of a modern person. This species was called Homo flores, although wits immediately attached the nickname “Hobbit” to it. It is assumed that this species appeared about 95 thousand years ago, and became extinct about 12 thousand years ago due to a volcanic eruption.

■ There are about 230 holidays in Bali, and on almost every one of them there are ceremonial processions symbolizing respect for the gods of the invisible world: if you forget about them, misfortunes will begin in the visible world. The processions are always very colorful, thanks also to the colored umbrellas that are extremely popular in Bali. Women carry baskets with gifts to the gods on their heads. And since they have been doing this since early youth, they all have excellent posture.

■ According to the legends of the island of Flores, the three colored lakes of the Kalimutu volcano are colored for a reason: one lake, dark red, absorbs the dark souls of sorcerers, the second, also red, but lighter, absorbs the souls of sinners; in the waters of the third, most beautiful color - azure, rest the souls of the innocent - babies and virgins. Souls are constantly worried, which is why lakes change the shades of their colors.

ATTRACTIONS

■ Timor Island: Kupang (colonial architecture), Taman Wisata Kamplong Nature Reserve.
■ O. Bali: temple complex Pura Besakih (Mother Temple) on the slope sacred mountain Agung, Taman Ayun - main temple the kingdom of Mengwi, the Pura Ulun Danu temple on Lake Bratan, the Tanah Loh temple, the Uluwatu temple, where the kecak dance performance takes place, Goa Gadzha - the temple “in the mouth of the demon”, Buddhist monastery Brahma Vshara Ashram, Botanical Garden in the caldera of Batur volcano, Royal House Klungkung, Git-Git waterfall, Kawi volcano, Bali Museum, Arts Center.
■ O. Lombok: Chakranegara - Hindu temple Pura Meru, temple of three religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam) Pura Lingsar, Ampenan - Maritime Museum, Mayura Park. Narmada Royal Garden, Rinjani Volcano, Otokokok Falls.
■ O. Sumbawa: Bima - Sultan's Palace (collection of crowns and daggers decorated with precious stones), Subawa-Besar - Royal Palace on stilts, Tambora volcano, National Park Mauo.
■ O. Flores: three lakes of the cooled Kelimutu volcano, Larantuka - Portuguese port on the nearby island of Salor.
■ Komodo Island - excursions to the habitats of the Komodo dragon, which grows up to 3 m in length,
■ Sumba Island: megalithic monuments near the villages of Tarung, Pasunga, Sodan and in the vicinity of the city of Waikabubak.

Atlas. The whole world is in your hands No. 155

In front of you detailed map Western Lesser Sunda Islands with names of cities and settlements in Russian. Move the map while holding it with the left mouse button. You can move around the map by clicking on one of the four arrows in the upper left corner. You can change the scale using the scale on the right side of the map or turning the mouse wheel.

What country is the Western Lesser Sunda Islands in?

The Western Lesser Sunda Islands are located in Indonesia. This is wonderful a nice place, with its own history and traditions. Coordinates of the Western Lesser Sunda Islands: north latitude and east longitude (show on large map).

Virtual walk

The “little man” figurine above the scale will help you make virtual walk on the cities of the Western Lesser Sunda Islands. By clicking and holding the left mouse button, drag it to any place on the map and you will go for a walk, while inscriptions with the approximate address of the area will appear in the upper left corner. Select the direction of movement by clicking on the arrows in the center of the screen. The “Satellite” option at the top left allows you to see a relief image of the surface. In the "Map" mode you will have the opportunity to familiarize yourself in detail with

 

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