Question

Name the islands that form the Malay Archipelago.

Answer 1

Hint: The archipelago between mainland Indochina and Australia is the Malay Archipelago. The "Malay world," "Nusantara," East Indies, Indo-Australian Archipelago, Spices Archipelago, and other names have also been referred to overtime.

Complete solution:
 This name was taken from the 19th-century European concept of a Malay race, later based on the distribution of Austronesian languages. It is formed largely by seven islands namely: New Guinea, Borneo, Sumatra, Sulawesi and Java in Indonesia; and Luzon and Mindanao in the Philippines.

The archipelago is, geologically, one of the most active volcanic areas in the world. Development of many volcanoes, in particular in the area of Java, Sumatra and the Lesser Sunda Islands, where most volcanoes are located over 3,000 m. Large mountains were also formed by tectonic uplifts, including the highest at Mount Kinabalu in Sabah, Malaysia, with a height of 4,095.2 m and Puncak Jaya at 4,884 m in Papua, Indonesia. Other high mountains in the archipelago include Puncak Mandala, Indonesia at 4,760 m, and Puncak Trikora, Indonesia at 4,750 m. Due to its location on the Equator, the climate in the archipelago is tropical.

The archipelago of over 25,000 islands and islets is located between the Indian and Pacific Oceans and is the largest archipelago by size and forth by a number of islands in the world. It includes Brunei, East Malaysia, East Timor, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines. Maritime Southeast Asia is generally synonymous with the term.

In the area, over 380 million people live. The people living there are mostly from Austronesian sub-groups and speak western Malayo-Polynesian languages correspondingly.

Note:
 Islam (62 per cent), Christianity (33 per cent), as well as Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and traditional folk religions are the major religions in this region. Culturally, the region is also seen as part of "Farther India" or Greater India-the Southeast Asian Indianized States of the Coedes refer to it as "Island Southeast Asia."