Ambrym

The Ambrym are an Oceanic-speaking Melanesian people of Ambrym, a triangular volcanic island near the centre of the Vanuatu archipelago, dominated by a vast desert-like caldera whose two craters hold some of the few persistent lava lakes in the world. Villages cling to the three forested corners of the island, and in the north the people speak North Ambrym, whose two dialects survive from five or six earlier varieties merged as communities moved down to the coast.

Their island entered European records through James Cook, who sailed past in 1774 and is traditionally credited with naming it Ambrym, although his expedition never actually landed.