In 1930, a Million People Were Found Living in a Lost World
I can't stop thinking about Papua New Guinea
In 1930, Australian prospector Mick Leahy stumbled into New Guinea's highlands and discovered a million people who had been completely isolated for 10,000 years. They had independently invented agriculture, spoke nearly 1,000 languages, and had no idea the outside world existed. The book First Contact documents this astonishing first encounter with hundreds of photos and hours of film.
Imagine, 1,000,000 people separated from the rest of civilization for nearly all of human history, suddenly meeting a group of Australians who captured the entire exchange on photo and film.
- simoncourage
My father lived in the PNG Highlands for a year in 1960 when he was 19, joining a mission station in Simbai (that had only been visited by the white man maybe 5 years earlier) and had an incredible time. He hatched an idea to help the manpower challenge of trekking supplies between the highland villages, by bringing donkeys to the highlands. He bought 5 donkeys left behind by the Japanese in WW2 in Lae, and together with two boys from the village (Wengi and Kanimnep), who’d never Simbai before, brought them by sea and plane to Aiome, where a gruelling and dangerous trek eventually got man and beast successfully back to Simbai - 4 months later. Crazy adventure, can you imagine what the boys thought of flying in a plane, seeing the ocean and becoming donkey husbandry experts (my father could only explain they were like ‘big pigs’ - nothing similar at all in the highlands)
50 years or so later I found there was a Cultural Festival in Simbai, and went out with some mates, along with prints of my dads slides. What followed was a trip I’ll never forget, as I was welcomed with a warmth and strength unlike I’d ever experienced, from the whole village and particularly from Wengi’s son Steven (his father had sadly died a few years previously). Whilst the donkeys had not transformed travel in a Simbai, and never bred, they were fondly recalled and had shaped the lives of both Wengi (forever known by others as Donkey) and Kanimnep. It was particularly joyous to be able to hand out pictur […]
- vova_hn2
The "Pre-bronze age war between two tribes in West Papua, 1963" video in the article is an embedded tweet. Twitter currently doesn't allow to view it without an account (extensively discussed on HN [0]). Fortunately, it is also available on Youtube [1] (longer version [2]).
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49694296
- som
My parents lived in the highlands in PNG in the late 70s and early 80s and my dad still speaks pidgin (mostly with his current neighbours who are from Port Moresby the capital). I've heard of lot of amazing (and pretty wild!) stories over the years. And met some interesting folk who up were up there with them - locals, missionaries and others. But despite our childhood being fairly steeped in PNG culture - and my name being from there, after a local who used to work with my dad - the closest I've been myself is the Torres Strait :/
- DanielVZ
> This was fuelled by what is known as moka, a system of competitive gift giving, where you give someone in your tribe goods like a pile of pigs and shells, and they are then obligated to give you back more later, and you them more again after that. Whoever gives the most, publicly, becomes the big man.
This reminds me of the Reciprocity and Re-Distribution system in the Inca Empire. There wasn't a system of currency or markets. But there was an Ayni (mutual aid) and Minka (collective work) system, paired with a Mita system: work done for the Sapa Inca which was in return "paid" by the Sapa Inca in feasts, food and goods/gifts. This was all glued together by the concept of Ayllu (family), where these obligations were established through family connections and of course the Sapa Inca had marriage connections with subordinate chiefs.
I myself can't stop thinking about the Inca Empire Economy and how it shows in reality that currency is not about the paper nor number nor symbols, and more about the "I owe you"s that move in the economy.
- skissane
> People still shoot arrows at each other in urban centres
My mother (who is a doctor, although she's retired now) was part of the medical team who worked on this case: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/arrow-attack-attempted-rape-in-...
My mother isn't mentioned in that article, but the "Allan Mason" it mentions is her husband
- gaoshan
One line that got me wondering: "...and one group ate their dead relatives’ brains at funerals so consistently that they gave themselves a mad cow type disease called kuru, which killed a large percentage of their population and then, within a few generations, evolved a genetic mutation that protects against it"
I had heard this before but my question now is, did they develop this tradition recently? If it were a historical thing wouldn't that genetic mutation have evolved a long time ago? One would expect that if they had this tradition for a long time the genetic mutation that happened so rapidly would have happened long ago, yet it did not. I'm curious as that thought struck me just now.
- culi
Indonesia's dictator Suharto (who was put into power by the US) annexed West Papua in the 60's on behalf of US corporations. Indigenous groups united together to form the Free Papua Movement (OPM) and wage a guerilla war of resistance. The resistance is ongoing and most of West Papua (which is basically a colony) and PNG (which is basically a banana republic) want reunification
- ddp26
I spent a summer in PNG in 2010, on the island of Karkar. It was wild.
One of my most formative memories was finding out that few of the people who live there, even those who are literate, had books and some DVDs, were high school students, even had occasional access to computers with internet, knew that humanity had landed on the moon!
- broodbucket
Random PNG fun facts: their most watched sporting event is State of Origin, a rugby league competition between two Australian states, over which many people have died in PNG. Australia recently allowed them a team in the NRL, its premier rugby league competition, essentially in exchange for PNG not signing a security agreement with China like the Solomon Islands did.
- jtotheh
I was there in '84, I have a page here with pictures and recordings of an interesting encounter. The subjects are from a coastal town though, not the highlands, but they were at the "Highlands Show". https://vin-dit.org/amyours.html