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New Guinea



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Terrestrial

According to the WWF, New Guinea can be divided into twelve terrestrial ecoregions: [3]

  • Central Range montane rain forests
  • Central Range sub-alpine grasslands
  • Huon Peninsula montane rain forests
  • New Guinea mangroves
  • Northern New Guinea lowland rain and freshwater swamp forests
  • Northern New Guinea montane rain forests
  • Southeastern Papuan rain forests
  • Southern New Guinea freshwater swamp forests
  • Southern New Guinea lowland rain forests
  • Trans Fly savanna and grasslands
  • Vogelkop montane rain forests
  • Vogelkop-Aru lowland rain forests

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Freshwater

The WWF and Nature Conservancy divide New Guinea into five freshwater ecoregions:[4]

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Marine

The WWF and Nature Conservancy identify several marine ecoregions in the seas bordering New Guinea:[5]

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History

See also: History of Papua New Guinea

The first inhabitants of New Guinea arrived at least around 40,000 years ago, having travelled through the south-east Asian peninsula. These first inhabitants, from whom the Papuan people are probably descended, adapted to the range of ecologies and in time developed one of the earliest known agricultures. Remains of this agricultural system, in the form of ancient irrigation systems in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, are being studied by archaeologists. This work is still in its early stages so there is still uncertainty as to precisely what crop was being grown, or when/where agriculture arose.

The gardens of the New Guinea Highlands are ancient, intensive permacultures, adapted to high population densities, very high rainfalls (as high as 10,000 mm/yr (400 in/yr)), earthquakes, hilly land, and occasional frost. Complex mulches, crop rotations and tillages are used in rotation on terraces with complex irrigation systems. Western agronomists still do not understand all practices, and it has been noted that native gardeners are as or more successful than most scientific farmers in raising certain crops.[6] There is evidence that New Guinea gardeners invented crop rotation well before western Europeans.[7] A unique feature of New Guinea permaculture is the silviculture of Casuarina oligodon, a tall, sturdy native ironwood tree, suited to use for timber and fuel, with root nodules that fix nitrogen. Pollen studies show that it was adopted during an ancient period of extreme deforestation.

In more recent millennia another wave of people arrived on the shores of New Guinea. These were the Austronesian people, who had spread down from Taiwan, through the south-east Asian archipelago, colonising many of the islands on the way. The Austronesian people had technology and skills extremely well adapted to ocean voyaging and Austronesian language speaking people are present along much of the coastal areas and islands of New Guinea.

The first European contact with New Guinea was by Portuguese and/or Spanish sailors in the 16th century. In 1526-27 Don Jorge de Meneses saw the western tip of New Guinea and named it ilhas dos Papuas. Ploeg[8] reports that the word papua is often said to derive from the Malay word papua or pua-pua, meaning 'frizzly-haired', referring to the highly curly hair of the inhabitants of these areas. Another possibility, (put forward by Sollewijn Gelpke in 1993) is that it comes from the Biak phrase sup i papwa which means 'the land below [the sunset]' and refers to the islands west of the Bird's Head, as far as Halmahera.

Whatever the origin of the name Papua, it came to be associated with this area, and more especially with Halmahera, which was known to the Portuguese by this name during the era of their colonisation in this part of the world.

In 1545 the Spaniard Yñigo Ortiz de Retez sailed along the north coast of New Guinea as far as the Mamberamo River near which he landed, naming the island 'Nueva Guinea'. The first map showing the whole island (as an island) was published in 1600 and shows it as 'Nova Guinea'.

The first European claim occurred in 1828, when the Netherlands formally claimed the western half of the island as Netherlands New Guinea. In 1883, following a short-lived French annexation of New Ireland, the British colony of Queensland annexed south-eastern New Guinea. However, the Queensland government's superiors in the United Kingdom revoked the claim, and (formally) assumed direct responsibility in 1884, when Germany claimed north-eastern New Guinea as the protectorate of German New Guinea (also styled Kaiser-Wilhelmsland). The first Dutch government posts were established in 1898 and in 1902 Manokwari on the North coast, Fak-Fak in the West and Merauke in the South at the border with British New Guinea.

Both the Dutch and the British tried to suppress warfare and head-hunting once common between the villages of the populace.

In 1905 the British government renamed their territory to Papua and in 1906 transferred total responsibility for it to Australia. During World War I, Australian forces seized German New Guinea, which in 1920 became a League of Nations mandated territory of Australia. The Australian territories became collectively known as The Territories of Papua and New Guinea (until February 1942).

Before about 1930, most European maps showed the highlands as uninhabited forests. When first flown over by aircraft, numerous settlements with agricultural terraces and stockades were observed. The most startling discovery took place on August 4, 1938, when Richard Archbold discovered the Grand Valley of the Balim River which had 50,000 yet-undiscovered Stone Age farmers living in orderly villages. The people, known as the Dani, were the last society of its size to make first contact with the western world.[9]

Map of New Guinea, with place names as used in English in the 1940s
Map of New Guinea, with place names as used in English in the 1940s

Netherlands New Guinea and the Australian territories were invaded in 1942 by the Japanese. The Australian territories were put under military administration and were known simply as New Guinea. The highlands, northern and eastern parts of the island became key battlefields in the South West Pacific Theatre of World War II. Papuans often gave vital assistance to the Allies, fighting alongside Australian troops, and carrying equipment and injured men across New Guinea. Following the return to civil administration, the Australian section was known as the Territory of Papua-New Guinea (1945-49) and then as Papua and New Guinea. Although the rest of the Dutch East Indies achieved independence as Indonesia on December 27, 1949, the Netherlands regained control of western New Guinea.

During the 1950s the Dutch government began to prepare Netherlands New Guinea for full independence and allowed elections in 1959; an elected Papuan council, the New Guinea Council (Nieuw Guinea Raad) took office on April 5, 1961. The Council decided on the name of West Papua, a national emblem, a flag called the Morning Star or Bintang Kejora, and a national anthem; the flag was first raised — next to the Dutch flag — on December 1, 1961. However, Indonesia threatened with an invasion, after full mobilisation of its army, by August 15, 1962, after receiving military help from the Soviet Union. Under strong pressure of the United States government (under the Kennedy administration) the Dutch, who were prepared to resist an Indonesian attack, attended diplomatic talks. On October 1, 1962, the Dutch handed over the territory to a temporary UN administration (UNTEA). On May 1, 1963, Indonesia took control. The territory was renamed West Irian and then Irian Jaya. In 1969 Indonesia, under the 1962 New York Agreement, was required to organize a plebiscite to seek the consent of the Papuans for Indonesian rule. This so called Act of Free Choice (Pepera) resulted, under strong threats and intimidations of the Indonesian military, in a 100% vote for continued Indonesian rule.

There has been considerable resistance to Indonesian integration and occupation, both through civil disobedience (such as Morning Star flag raising ceremonies) and via the formation of the Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM, or Free Papua Movement) in 1965. Amnesty International has estimated more than 100,000 Papuans, one-sixth of the population, have died as a result of government-sponsored violence against West Papuans,[10] while others had previously specified much higher death tolls.[11]

From 1971, the name Papua New Guinea was used for the Australian territory. On September 16, 1975, Australia granted full independence to Papua New Guinea.

In 2000, amid increasing discontent and opposition to Indonesian rule, Irian Jaya was formally renamed "The Province of Papua" and a large measure of "special autonomy" was granted in 2001. This law on special autonomy, however, was never implemented. On the contrary, at the beginning of 2003 President Megawati Sukarnoputri announced the division of the province into three parts, while the name "Papua" for the province would again revert to Irian. With strong public protest by Papuans, only the province of West Irian Jaya (with Manokwari as its capital and covering the Bird's Head Peninsula) was split from Papua Province. In 2005 a new proposal came from Jakarta to split the province into five provinces. This plan has not yet been implemented.

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Geography

Topographical map of New Guinea.
Topographical map of New Guinea.

A central east-west mountain range dominates the geography of New Guinea, over 1600 km in total length. The western half of the island of New Guinea contains the highest mountains in Oceania, rising up to 4884 m high, and ensuring a steady supply of rain from the equatorial atmosphere. The tree line is around 4000 m elevation and the tallest peaks contain permanent equatorial glaciers - which are disappearing due to a changing climate. Various other smaller mountain ranges occur both north and west of the central ranges. Except in high elevations, most areas possess a warm humid climate throughout the year, with some seasonal variation associated with the northeast monsoon season.

The Three Highest Peaks on the Island of New Guinea are:

Puncak Jaya, sometimes known by its former Dutch name Carstensz Pyramid, is a mist covered limestone mountain peak 4884 m above sea level on the Indonesian side of the border.

Mount Wilhelm is the highest peak on the PNG side of the border at 4,509 meters. Its granite peak is the highest point of the Bismarck Range.

Mount Giluwe 4,368 meters is the second highest summit in PNG it is also the highest volcanic peak in Oceanea.

Another major habitat feature is the vast southern and northern lowlands. Stretching for hundreds of kilometers, these include lowland rainforests, extensive wetlands, savanna grasslands, and some of the largest expanses of mangrove forest in the world. The southern lowlands are the site of Lorentz National Park, also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Sepik, Mamberamo, Fly, and Digul rivers are the island's major river systems that drain in roughly northeast, northwest, southeast, and southwest directions respectively. Many of these rivers have broad areas of meander and result in large areas of lakes and freshwater swamps.

In New Guinea is many of the world’s ecosystem types: glacial, alpine tundra, savanna, montane and lowland rainforest, mangroves, wetlands, lake and river ecosystems, seagrasses, and some of the richest coral reefs on the planet.

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Cannibalism

New Guinea is well-known in the popular imagination for ritual cannibalism that was apparently practised by some (but far from all) ethnic groups.[12] The Korowai and Kombai peoples of southeastern Papua are two of the last groups in the world said to have engaged in cannibalism in the recent past. In the Asmat area of southwestern Papua, it may have occurred up until the early 1970s. Among the Fore people in Papua New Guinea, ritualized cannibalism led to the spread of kuru, prompting the Australian administration to outlaw the practice in 1959.

Cannibalism may have arisen in New Guinea due to the scarcity of sources of protein. The traditional crops, taro and sweet potato, are low in protein compared to wheat and pulses, and the only edible animals available were small and unappetizing, such as mice, spiders, and frogs.[13] Anthropologists dispute this theory, pointing out that a number of medium-sized marsupials are endemic to the island, and are hunted by the natives, and that pigs were introduced several thousand years before contact with Europeans.

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See also

Look up New Guinea in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

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References

  1. ^ Groube, Chappell, et al., Letter to Nature Dec 1986
  2. ^ First contact with isolated tribes?
  3. ^ Wikramanayake, Eric; Eric Dinerstein; Colby J. Loucks; et al. (2002). Terrestrial Ecoregions of the Indo-Pacific: a Conservation Assessment. Island Press; Washington, DC
  4. ^ Abell, Robin, Michele L. Thieme, et al. (2008). "Freshwater Ecoregions of the World: A New Map of Biogeographic Units for Freshwater Biodiversity Conservation". Bioscience" May 2008 / Vol. 58 No. 5, pgs. 403-414
  5. ^ Spalding, Mark D., Helen E. Fox, Gerald R. Allen, Nick Davidson et al. "Marine Ecoregions of the World: A Bioregionalization of Coastal and Shelf Areas". Bioscience Vol. 57 No. 7, July/August 2007, pp. 573-583. [1]
  6. ^ Diamond, Jared. Collapse. (German translation), Frankfurt 2005, p. 350.
  7. ^ Diamond, Jared. Collapse. (German translation), Frankfurt 2005, p. 351.
  8. ^ Ploeg, Anton. 2002. '"DE PAPOEA" What's in a name?'. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 3(1), pp.75-101
  9. ^ Diamond, Jared. The Third Chimpanzee. Harper Collins, 1993
  10. ^ Report claims secret genocide in Indonesia - University of Sydney
  11. ^ West Papua Support
  12. ^ Sleeping with Cannibals
  13. ^ Diamond, Jared (1997). Guns, Germs, and Steel. W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-03891-2. 

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External links




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