Papuans

Papuans is the common name for the Indigenous peoples of New Guinea, the world's second-largest island, which is divided between Papua New Guinea in the east and the Papuan provinces of Indonesia in the west. They are not one nation but nearly a thousand distinct groups, speaking roughly as many languages, which makes New Guinea the most linguistically diverse place on earth. Their ancestors were among the first modern humans to reach the region, tens of thousands of years ago.

During the last ice age, low sea levels joined New Guinea and Australia into a single landmass known to scientists as Sahul. People crossed the shortened sea channels from the islands of today's Malay Archipelago and reached Sahul at least 40,000 years ago; estimates for the first arrival range from about 37,000 to 50,000 years ago, and some researchers argue for as early as 60,000. Rising seas cut New Guinea off from Australia about 10,000 years ago, although Papuans and Aboriginal Australians had diverged genetically long before. Genetic studies show that their ancestors also interbred with the archaic Denisovans.

The New Guinea highlands were one of the few places in the world where farming arose independently. At Kuk Swamp in the Wahgi Valley, archaeologists have found drainage ditches about 9,000 years old, used to grow the native crop taro, and evidence of bananas and sugar cane from roughly 6,900 to 6,400 years ago. Highland gardens became intensive systems of terraces, mulching and crop rotation able to support dense populations.

About 3,500 years ago Austronesian seafarers arrived from the north, settling many offshore islands such as New Britain and New Ireland and parts of the main island's coast. They introduced Austronesian languages, as well as pigs and dogs, and left a small genetic trace in many coastal Papuan peoples. Most New Guinea languages, however, belong to dozens of unrelated non-Austronesian families, loosely grouped as "Papuan languages". Pig exchange and pig feasts became central to social life, and most Papuan societies combine farming with hunting and gathering.

The west of the island had long contacts with the kingdoms of the archipelago: the Javanese poem Nagarakretagama lists places in the region among the tributaries of Majapahit, and the sultans of Tidore in Maluku claimed parts of the coast, from which resins, spices, slaves and bird-of-paradise feathers were exported. Portuguese and Spanish sailors sighted the island in the 1520s, and in 1545 Íñigo Ortiz de Retes named it New Guinea. The Netherlands claimed the western half in 1828, making it part of the Dutch East Indies, while in the east British New Guinea passed to Australian administration between 1902 and 1906, and Australian forces seized German New Guinea in the First World War. The densely settled highlands remained unknown to outsiders until the 1930s, when expeditions and aircraft found large farming populations, among them the Dani of the Baliem Valley in 1938.

The island was a major battlefield of the Second World War, and Papuans often carried supplies and wounded men for Allied troops. Papua New Guinea became independent from Australia on 16 September 1975. The Dutch kept western New Guinea after Indonesian independence, but in 1963 it passed to Indonesia, and in 1969 a vote by selected tribal elders, the Act of Free Choice, confirmed integration; critics say the participants were hand-picked by the military. The Free Papua Movement has resisted Indonesian rule since 1965, and estimates of Papuan deaths in the conflict vary widely, from more than 100,000 according to Amnesty International to higher figures in other reports.

About fifteen million people now live on New Guinea. Christianity and traditional beliefs are both widely practised, and Islamic communities exist in areas such as Fakfak and Sorong. Widely used languages include Tok Pisin, Hiri Motu and Papuan Malay. Indonesia split its Papuan territory into six provinces by 2022.

Our maps label the island's peoples as "Papuans" or "Papuan" on the 200 BCE, 800, 900, 1200, 1530, 1600, 1650, 1700 and 1815 maps, covering New Guinea, north of Australia. The outline is approximate.