Humans of Papua

First, I have no idea how and when I was originally interested in studying about the island of New Guinea. This is common with me. I study many things for absolutely no reason at all 😊 These are no superficial studies. I study virtually anything and everything under the sun related to that subject. Sometimes, my interest span decades, like in this case for Papua and Papua New Guinea. Sometimes, it only lasts for a month or so. With that said, those of your who do not know New Guinea is the second largest island, north of Australia. It is cut in half; the eastern half is the nation of Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the western half is the state of Papua in Indonesia. When I say Papua, I mean both Papua and PNG mostly. Don’t ask me why, but I can’t really make a difference.

Kind of following the same theme as my previous post about our African ancestry and our journey Out of Africa, the first people of PNG were hunter gathers who came through the main landmass of SE Asia. Quite obviously they were dark skinned and negroid, and migrated around 30K – 50K years back, when the climate was cooler and sea levels were much lower (read, last Ice Age). They are the early Melanesians. By 10K years Melanesians were spread into all over New Guinea and are probably world’s first gardeners. The interesting thing about Papua is the terrain. It is exceptionally rugged and heavily forested. That makes tribes living on either side of the valley completely contactless and isolated across thousands of years. Lot of these tribes, until very recently were completely isolated and had no idea of ‘human civilization’. For the most part, people of one village lived their whole life within a 10-20 miles of their birthplace and died without knowing their neighbors. Clan wars, distrust and rugged topography made trade routes non-existent. Only previous objects were bird feathers and seashells, which came from the coast and was incredibly hard to get in the highlands. No wonder PNG alone had developed around 700 languages. This makes them a fascinating subject for history, anthropology and geology.

Bush Flying: Ways to Communicate

Due to the isolation, even during modern times, there communities of Papua remain isolated. One interesting thing that happened in recent times is, believe it or not, airstrips. They have sprouted building airstrips on top of the mountains, deep valleys and nearly impossible places. Bush pilots begins to go there. There are now even commercial bush planes that go to these remote locations regularly. There is this show that got me interested as I was searching bush flying several years back and came across this interesting show; Worst Place to become a Pilot. People think being a pilot is glamorous job. In reality it is nothing but. In most of the western countries, earing a ‘wing’ for a commerial airlines is incredibly hard. Most of the US commercial airlines requires 15000 hours of flight time under your belt. That is not the ‘requirement’ but that is what is needed to get above the competition for big airlines, transcontinental or even coast to coast domestic flights. Only very experiences airforce vets of commercial pilots of previous experience can have that. So most young pilot resort to international carrier, and in some cases go to strange places like Papua to fly for Susi Air, as featured in that documentary above.

Back to Papua

With a little diversion on Bush Flying (which I hope you guys enjoyed), let me get back to the geology and anthropology of Papua. You know this is actually a window into my mind. The way my thought process works. It jumps from one thing to the other quite randomly. Sometimes there is a theme, sometimes there is not. I was always fascinated with the geology of Papua as the island was really young and full of arc related volcanism and recent tectonic uplift. I can imagine how our ancestors are crossing the shallow sea and walking into the highlands of Papua. Building huts on the outcrop of Toro Sandstone. I get goosebumps, thinking about it. More on that later…