Head-marked possessive noun phrases are common in the Americas and Melanesia and infrequent elsewhere. Dependent-marked noun phrases have a complementary distribution and are frequent in Africa, Eurasia, Australia, and New Guinea, the only area where the two types overlap appreciably. Double-marked possession is rare but found in languages around the Eurasian periphery such as Finnish, in the Himalayas, and along the Pacific Coast of North America. Zero-marked possession is also uncommon with instances mostly found near the equator but does not form any true clusters.