53 PAPUA NEW GUINEA 1998
Papua New Guinea is known as “the land of the unexpected”, by both the national people and foreigners. The area of PNG is equivalent to that of the State of Montana in the USA. Papua New Guinea occupies the eastern half of the Island of New Guinea (the second largest Island in the world). (Map) The Indonesian Province of Irian Jaya shares the western half of the Island. Many smaller islands mostly extending to the east are also included with the national territory. Papua New Guinea lies between the Equator and Australia and centers on about 6° North Latitude and 146° East Longitude. Generally PNG is considered to be part of the “South Pacific Realm” but some include it with “Southeast Asia”.
Map produced by the Central Intelligence Agency 1998, Public domain Perry Castaneda Map Library, University of Texas
Papua New Guinea sits on the colliding plate boundary of the northward moving Australian Plate and the southwestern moving Pacific Plate. The Island has been created over the last 30 million years from this collision. Earth quakes and volcanic eruptions are a daily occurrence while tsunamis are reported from time to time. In 1998 a tsunami took 3000 lives along the north coast of the main island.
The interior of the main Island is mountainous with heights reaching over 14000 feet. Mountains form ridges running east to west and on the north side of the main island the mountains are being built at a rate of 2 to 3 inches per year.
The southeast trade wind belt dominates the weather patterns of Papua New Guinea. This produces heavy rainfall throughout the year along the east coast and in certain highland areas where moisture-laden air masses directly affect exposed areas. The northern City of Lae receives an average of 15 feet of rainfall per year. A pronounced dry season in rain shadow locations affects much of the country including the capitol, Port Moresby which receives only 40 inches. Three basic PNG climate types are “tropical rainforest,” “tropical Savannah” and “highland temperate.”
Biodiversity is quite unique in Papua New Guinea. Typical terrestrial biomes are tropical rainforest, tropical savanna, and anemone forests. Aquatic biomes include freshwater swamp, mangrove swamp and coral reef. They include thousands of species found nowhere else on earth.
The people of New Guinea are Melanesians, a Negroid race whose realm extends southeastward into the Pacific as far as the Islands of Fiji. PNG includes a few interspersed small islands where the people are racially considered Micronesian or Polynesian.
It is believed that the first people came to New Guinea about 50,000 years ago, island hopping from the west probably from Asia. These Papua speaking people reached the highlands about 30,000 years ago and by 10,000 BC had settled most of the islands. Archeological evidence shows that agriculture began in the highlands around 9,000 years ago, making Papua New Guineans some of the first farmers in the world.
Trade between the highlands and the lowlands and with the other Melanesian islands existed 10,000 years ago. About 5,000 years ago, Austronesian language speakers conquered the coastal areas and expanded trading activities. Linguistic linkages extend from Madagascar to well into the Polynesian Pacific. Origins of domesticated crops and animals link Papua New Guinea with an early Asian contact of about 10,000 BC and more recently with South America of about 1000 AD.
European contact with New Guinea began when Portuguese explorers landed in 1512 and gave it the name New Guinea because of the people’s similarity with those of the Guinea Coast of Africa. Jorge de Meneses used the name “Ilhas das Papua’s” referring to the Islands of the Fuzzy-haired people.
PNG woman collecting shell fish from a reef belonging to Lababia village. Photo by Rick Bein 1997.
For over 300 years there was little or no physical European contact with New Guinea Island. The European powers had charted the Island on maps, but did little more than banter political claims back and forth. It was not until the mid-1880’s when the Dutch (1828) made a token settlement on the western end, the British (1883) landed Missionaries on the south coast and the Germans (1984) raised a flag on the north coast. The Island was divided into three colonies; the Dutch claimed the western half, the British the southeastern fourth and the Germans the northeastern fourth.
Actual European developments did not take place until the late 1880”s as the British and the Germans began exploration, agricultural enterprises and missionary out reach. The Dutch did little more than use their half as a “buffer zone” for their profitable “Dutch East Indies.”
In 1906 British New Guinea became “Papua” and was given over to the recently independent Australia. Port Moresby was the capitol. With the onset of World War I, Australian troops quickly over ran the German missionary settlements and their capitol, Rabal on New Britain Island. After the War the League of Nations officially handed over German New Guinea to Australia as a mandated territory.
Between the World Wars Papua New Guinea experienced two major developments. One was the discovery of gold in the Tau – Bulolo area that brought thousands of miners to the northern half of the country. Further exploration for gold into the interior fostered the second, the amazing accidental discovery of the previously “uncontacted” people of the vast “Highlands area.” Previously thought of as a tangled uninhabited wilderness the highlands turned out to be the most fertile and populated part of the country. About one million tribal people had been living in isolation from the rest of the world up until 1939. This more than doubled the known population of the country.
With World War II the Japanese occupied all the northern islands and most of the north coast of Papua New Guinea. They progressed quickly southward and in 1942 were in sight of Port Moresby when their New Guinea campaign ran out of steam. Within the year the Japanese were banished from most of the main Island, but it was not until the war’s end in 1945 when the Islands of New Britain, New Ireland, and Bougainville were surrendered.
Australia continued to administer Papua New Guinea as a colony after the war and in 1975 PNG asked for and was give independence. PNG maintains a democratic government with a parliament, which selects a prime minister. To become a minister of Parliament, one must win a plurality of votes in the appropriate district. In some districts there are so many candidates that a minister can be elected with less than 10% of the vote. Often the dominate tribe determines who will be the minister, but frequently more than one candidate from a tribe will split the tribal vote so that no tribal candidate is elected. Election time in Papua New Guinea is a very unstable time as candidates compete to acquire their small pluralities. Often violent times inhibit travel and many people leave the country for a couple of months prior to the election.
It is said that there are over 800 tribes in Papua New Guinea. The “tribe” or “clan” is the basic unit with in PNG that has integrity for a majority of people. “Tribal thinking” prohibits any other unit of organization be it other tribes, district, province or national level of being worthy of respect. This attitude stems from the rural tribal environment where disagreements within the tribe are resolved by the headman or a group of elders. Any disagreement between tribes is resolved with a show of physical force to intimidate the enemy into negotiation with some form of compensation such as a contribution of a number of pigs or young women to the stronger tribe.
This frequently leads to an inter-tribal war. Such confrontations never resolve anything in the long run as the neighboring tribe becomes a permanent enemy upon which revenge may justify an attack anytime in the future. The victors of such mini-wars are gratified with the right to slaughter, pillage and rape the vanquished. At any future date whenever the vanquished have recovered and feel they have built up enough strength to overcome those that defeated them, a war of revenge would be next on the agenda. Many of these feuds have been going on so long that the original reason for disagreement, be it land or women, has long been forgotten. What does remain however is an attitude of tribal chauvinism, which fosters disrespect and justifies any action against non-tribesmen.
There has been much effort to reduce this tribal conflict through the efforts of the educated elite, missionaries, government officials, judicial system and international workers. Some tribesmen can still remember the time before the first Caucasians came to their villages when tribal law was all that existed. Still an environment of lawlessness prevails throughout many areas of Papua New Guinea.
I was told by different villagers that cannibalism is rare. In a tribal war if one tribe kills the dominant warrior of the enemy, the will eat parts of his body believing that they could gain some of his dynamic energy.
Maryellen, my wife, was on a mission into the highlands. At the first stop a whole tribe boarded the plane with lots of decorations on their bodies. She thought they were going to a Sing Sing, a dance competition where many tribes get together and demonstrate their tribal dances. She asked the man sitting nest to her to her, if they were going to such an event. He ignored her, but she kept pressuring him and finally he exclaimed “Going to war!” Apparently having anything to do with women was seen as bad luck in tribal warfare and he was trying to keep his distance. At the next stop the whole tribe got up, collected their spears from the steward, and got off the plane to prepare their attack on the enemy tribe. In years past they would have had to hike over the mountain and would be too tired to engage in battle. Technology provided a suitable alternative.
This lawlessness has evolved to a new form with the advent of urbanization. Many rural youth taking with them their tribal mentality, have migrated to the urban centers hoping to participate in the better life, which seems to be there. Once there, they find that they do not possess the means with which to participate. With no money or little education to obtain a job, criminal activity offers a quick solution. The Capitol City of Port Moresby has become an armed camp with high walls and barbed wire surrounding every home and place of work. Robbery is an everyday occurrence. Urban “rascal” gangs with tribal identification rule neighborhoods. The Port Moresby police force strives to control the urban lawlessness but is far from successful. Papua New Guinea is only 15% urban, so this urban rascal problem hardly affects the 5 million people living in rural villages.