Sunda Islands

The Sunda Islands are a group of islands made up of the Greater Sunda Islands and the Lesser Sunda Islands, the outer islands of the Indonesian Archipelago. The Greater Sunda Islands are Borneo, Java, Sulawesi and Sumatra, while the Lesser Sunda Islands run from west to east through Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa, Sumba, Komodo, Flores, Savu, Rote, Timor and the Alor, Barat Daya and Tanimbar island groups. The islands are divided among five countries, Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, and most fall under Indonesian jurisdiction; Borneo, Timor and Sebatik are each split between countries. The name Sunda denotes the Sunda Shelf in the west, and the Portuguese of the 16th century separated the region into Greater Sunda for the larger western islands and Lesser Sunda for the smaller eastern ones, a division still used in geological and geographical literature.