Geography of New Caledonia Ni-Vanuatu (1.2%), and various other groups (3.9%), Tamils, other South Asians, Berbers, Japanese, Chinese, Fijians, Arabs, West Indian (mostly from other French territories) and a small number of ethnic Africans. "Other microcontinental islands:" Geography of New Caledonia The geography of New Caledonia ("Nouvelle-Calédonie"), an overseas collectivity of France located in the subregion of Melanesia, makes the continental island group unique in the southwest Pacific. Among other things, the island chain has played a role in preserving unique biological lineages from the Mesozoic. It served as a waystation in the expansion of the predecessors of the Polynesians, the Lapita culture. Under
Geography of New Caledonia in Oman in the 1970s, New Caledonia has the planet's largest known outcrop of ultrabasic rock, derived not from the crust, but from an upthrust fold of the more deeply underlying mantle of the earth. These mineral-rich rocks are a source of nickel, chromium, iron, cobalt, manganese, silver, gold, lead and copper. The toxicity of the mineral-rich soil has helped preserve the endemic vegetation, which has long been adapted to it, from competition from would-be colonizers which find it unsuitable. Anthropologically, New Caledonia is considered the southernmost archipelago of Melanesia, grouping it with the more close-by islands to its north,