Geology
Tectonic plates and earthquakes
The southern part of the island of New Guinea is located at the northern end of the Australian Plate.
The Australian lithosphere plate moves north at a speed of 7 cm per year and with a slight turn clockwise, which makes it the fastest moving tectonic plate on the planet. It is predicted that in 20-30 million years it Australia could face East Asia,
The neighboring Pacific Plate is moving west at a speed of 10 cm per year.
Beginning in the Eocene, the northward movement of the Australian Plate led to the collision of the continental fault arc with the Philippine and Caroline Plates and the uplift of the New Guinea Highlands.
The northern and eastern parts of the island of New Guinea are divided between several lithospheric microplates.
Currently, the Solomon Sea plate is submerged under the South Bismarck plate.
The eastern part of the Woodlark Plate sinks northeast under the New Georgia Islands in the Solomon Sea of the Pacific Plate.
Earthquakes in this geographic region are usually associated with the complex interaction of the Australian and Pacific plates and several associated microplates, most notably the South Bismarck Plate, Solomon Sea microplates, and the Woodlark Plate.
Central Range of New Guinea
The central ridge of New Guinea (Cordillera Central) belongs to the Mediterranean fold belt, which formed in its modern form about 70 million years ago. It separates the southern group of ancient platforms, which constituted the supercontinent Gondwana until the middle of the Jurassic period, from the northern group, which formerly constituted the continent of Laurasia and the Siberian platform.
This belt includes the southern regions of Europe, Northwest Africa, Alps, Carpathians, Crimea, Caucasus, Persian mountain systems, Kopet Dag, Pamir, Himalayas, Tibet, Indochina and Indonesian islands.
The height of the mountains of the Central Ridge of New Guinea continues to grow due to tectonic processes that are caused by the subduction of the Pacific Plate under the Australian Plate. The Maoke and Woodlark tectonic microplates, commonly associated with the Australian Plate, are simultaneously the foundation for the Central Range Mountains of New Guinea. Due to collision processes, these microplates rise while raising the mountain range of the highlands.
The width of the mountain range varies significantly, from 210 km in the Central Highlands (Papua New Guinea) to 150 km in the Maoke Mountains (Indonesia), with the central narrowest segment (up to 70-80 km) on the border of the two states.
Punchak Jaya - the highest mountain peak on the islands of the world - 4884 m
The mountain is the highest point in Indonesia.
The name of the mountain in the language of the indigenous Amungme people is Nemangkavi Ningok, which means "White Arrow Peak." The name Punchak-Jaya is in Indonesian "White Arrow Peak," where Pancak is "peak" or "mountain" and Jaya is "victory," "glory." It is also known as Carstens Pyramid, Jayawijaya Mountain or Carstens Mountain.
Since the 1970s, satellite images show that the Punchak Jaya glaciers are rapidly retreating. Meren Glacier melted sometime between 1994 and 2000.
The expedition, led by paleoclimatologist Lonnie Thompson in 2010, found glaciers disappearing at a rate of seven metres a year and in 2018 it was predicted they would disappear in the 2020s.
The vast Grasberg open-pit gold and copper mine, the world's second largest gold mine, is four kilometres west of Punchak Jaya.
Deaths during the ascent
Climbing Punchak Jaya is one of the most difficult.
In 2016, Eric Airlangga died of hypothermia while climbing the summit, caught in extreme weather.
In 2017, Ahmad Hadi died of hypoxia while climbing the summit.
In the 2024 climbing season, two climbers died while trying to climb the summit. The first died of a heart attack on September 29. The second, Chinese climber Dong Fei, died in a fall during a descent.
In early 2025, Lily Vijayati Poegiono and Elsa Laksono died from hypothermia while descending from the summit after falling into extreme weather.
Geography
Pacific Ocean
Main article: Pacific Ocean
The second largest island on Earth after Greenland
The area of the island of New Guinea is 829 km ², which is more than the area of the Khabarovsk Territory (787 km ²), which occupies the fourth place in terms of territory in Russia.
The length of the island is over 2000 km, the width is up to 700 km.
Climate
New Guinea differs from its drier, flatter and less fertile southern neighbor, Australia, with much more rainfall and active volcanic activity.
In most of New Guinea, the wet season occurs between December and March, the dry season from May to October, although most often seasonality depends on the nature of the main winds and can change noticeably even on two nearby slopes of the same mountain range.
During the two transition months (April and November), the weather is unsustainable and little suitable for travel due to strong winds and brief but very powerful showers. The best time to visit the country is the dry season from May to October, but even at this time the air is hot, and the total humidity of the air is difficult for a European.
Population
Melanesians are among the modern nations whose ancestors interbred with Denisovan people
Melanesians, along with Australian natives and Icelanders, are among the modern peoples whose prehistoric ancestors interbred with Denisovan humans, sharing 4-6% of their genome with this ancient Neanderthal relative.
In a 2024 study, scientist Danat Ermakovich from the University of Tartu found that people living at different heights in Papua New Guinea have differences in the DNA of Denisovans: people living in the mountains have options associated with early brain development, and those living in lowlands have options related to the immune system.
Papuans
In anthropology, the term "Papuan" is often used to refer to the very diverse aboriginal peoples of Melanesia and Wallace before the arrival of speakers of Austronesian languages, as well as the dominant genetic traces of these peoples in the modern ethnic groups of these regions.
Indigenous peoples are part of the Melanesian cultural group
Indigenous peoples inhabiting the islands of Melanesia are called Melanesians. It is a heterogeneous collection of different genetic groups and ethnic communities, different cultural practices (mythology, music, art, etc.) and various unrelated language families. Together, however, they form a vast area with a long history of interaction. The region covers populations that have a certain linguistic, biological and cultural proximity.
This region includes four independent countries:
It also includes the Indonesian part of New Guinea and the Maluku Islands, the French overseas territory of New Caledonia, and the Torres Strait Islands.
At the same time, there is no consensus among anthropologists about the geographical boundaries of Melanesia. Many apply the term only to smaller islands, excluding New Guinea; Fiji was often seen as an anomalous border region, or even referred entirely to Polynesia; and Torres Strait Islanders were often simply classed as Aboriginal Australians.
The name Melanesia (in French Mélanésie) was first used in 1832 by the French navigator Jules Dumont-Durville: he coined the terms Melanesia and Micronesia along with pre-existing Polynesia to designate the three main ethnic and geographical regions forming the Pacific Ocean.
The name Melanesia (from ancient Greek: melas, letters. "Black" and ancient Greek: nesos, letters. "Island") etymologically means "islands of black [people]" in connection with the dark skin of the inhabitants.
Countries
- Indonesia (Western New Guinea)
- Papua New Guinea
Languages
The 14th edition of the Ethnologist lists 826 languages of Papua New Guinea and 257 languages of Western New Guinea, a total of 1,083 languages, of which 12 are complementary.
They can be divided into two groups:
- Austronesian languages and
- all others, which for convenience are called Papuan languages. The term "Papuan languages" refers to a territorial group rather than a linguistic one. The so-called Papuan languages include hundreds of different languages, most of which are unrelated.
History
1916: Map of Netherlands New Guinea
1545: Spaniards give name to island due to perceived similarity of its population to inhabitants of African region of Guinea
The island got its name from the Spanish explorer Iñigo Ortiz de Retes during his sea expedition in 1545 due to the alleged similarity of the island's indigenous peoples with the inhabitants of the African region of Guinea.
3500 hp: Relocation of Austronesians from the north along with pigs
Genetic evidence suggests a wave of New Guinea Austronesians from the north, who brought Austronesian languages and pigs about 3,500 years ago. They also left a small but significant genetic footprint in many coastal Papuan peoples.
10 thousand rubles: Demographic crisis of mountain peoples during the transition to the Neolithic
Mountain peoples in New Guinea experienced a demographic crisis about 10,000 years ago related to the transition to a Neolithic lifestyle.
18 thousand hp: The end of the last glacial maximum, the rise of the world's oceans, the flooding of the shelf and the separation of New Guinea from Australia
Sahul existed in isolation until the end of the last glacial maximum (18,000 years ago), forming a unique ecosystem.
The flooded isthmus is now 100-140 meters below sea level.
29,900 hp: Crossing the ancestors of New Guineans with Denisovans
In 2019, geneticist Guy Jacobs and colleagues revealed that introgression into the gene pool of modern people from whom New Guineans descended, with a population of Denisovans, took place about 29,900 years ago.
The genetic structure of the Papuans was mainly formed under the influence of the ancient East Eurasians, which makes them related to other groups of mainland Asia, such as "AASI," the Andamans, as well as East and Southeast Asians, although the Papuans may also have received some genes from an earlier group (xOoA), about 2%, along with an additional archaic admixture of Denisovans (4-7%) in the Sahul region.
40,000 hp: Australian natives and Papuans dispersed genetically
Genetically Australian natives and Papuans diverged around 40,000 years ago. Papuans are more closely related to Melanesians than to Aboriginal Australians.
46 thousand hp: Human sites in the Ivan Valley
To reach Sahul, it was necessary to cross the water space from Southeast Asia. Most of the early sites in New Guinea were found along the coastline.
An exception first documented in the 1960s is an open space [AER code in the National Museum of Papua New Guinea (PNG)] in the Ivan Valley in the New Guinea Highlands, where excavations at the Kosipe Mission found stone artifacts, including tools with notches dating from 26,870 ± 590 14C years ago (radiocarbon analysis No. ANU-191) (calibrated to 30 350-32 580 years ago).
Mission Kosipe is located at an altitude ~ 2000 m above sea level, on a spur of a hill overlooking a large swamp. Further excavations in 2005 established that people lived there from 41,000 to 38,000 years ago. In layers between 36,000 and 34,000 years old, a charred core of pandanus nut was found.
Subsequent field studies conducted in 2007 and 2008 revealed traces of human habitation from the late Pleistocene to the Holocene in seven additional places in the Ivan Valley, with the earliest dating from 49,000 to 43,000 years to the present.
Sediments in the Ivan Valley are dominated by a series of volcanic ash that probably formed on Mount Lamington, located about 140 km southeast. In all eight highland settlements, there is a basic set of five identified layers: dark brown topsoil (layer 1), brown-orange clay (layer 2), black-brown soil (layers 3a and 3b) and gray soil (layer 4). These layers with traces of human habitation overlay sterile orange clay (layer 5).
The earliest dates of settlement of the valley date back to Vilakuav and date from 49,000 to 43,000 years ago. In three places (Vilakuawa, South Kove and the Airport mound), artifacts were found that, according to calibrated 14S dates, were created more than 42,500 years ago with a probability of 95.4%.
Settlement at the site of the Kosipe mission dates from 41,400 to 38,000 years ago, again with a confidence level of 95.4%. Layer 3b indicates settlement between 38,500 and 30,000 years ago, and layer 3a indicates settlement between 30,000 and 26,000 years ago. Layer 2 refers to the Holocene.
These radiocarbon dates are among the earliest for any Sahul settlement, except for a few controversial finds in Australia. Together with artifacts dated indirectly from Bobongara on the Huon Peninsula, the oldest cultural strata in the highland settlements of Vilakuav, Airport Mound and South Cove are older than any other known settlement in New Guinea or island Melanesia.
Two thickened stone artifacts made from slate and metabazalt have been found in Layer 4 in South Kove and in Layer 4 in Airstream Mound. This characteristic type of artifact was also found in Layer 3a in South Kove and in Layer 3b in Jos Garden and Vilakuawa, but disappears before the last ice age. They are often referred to as "sheath axes," and are also found in several other Pleistocene highland and low-lying locations on mainland New Guinea.
"Axes with a sheath" were used to change the forest environment by creating areas where sunlight fell to promote the growth of edible and other useful plants. In the Ivan Valley, other Pleistocene period stone artifacts include flakes, tool blanks, ax-like double-machined tools, and debris from flakes. An expanded assortment of stone artifacts is found in Holocene layers in all other sites except the Aerodrome mound.
At all sites where stone artifacts were found, cores and industrial waste are present, and local raw materials are used, the main source of which was water bodies.
The set of stone artifacts corresponds to finds from Bobongara - the only Late Pleistocene site in New Guinea over 35,000 years old. Artifacts with depressions were found at this site under the tephra 2 layer, which, according to thermoluminescent (TL) dating, are 38,000 ± 600 years old (9), although archaeologists claim that the age is 40,000 years or more, based on a high level of humidity affecting the TL readings.
Pandanus and yams have been used for food in the Ivan Valley since the arrival of the first colonists. Although the ramp grew in abundance in local conditions, yams could be found at lower elevations, indicating that the harvest areas included lower elevation zones outside the Ivan Valley. The collection of food plants was accompanied by hunting small animals.
Explorer Hope had been clamoring that ancient humans were burning moist mountain vegetation. Human activity was probably one of the factors that influenced the physical changes in the Ivan River basin. The base of layer 4 indicates the presence of a swampy lake (Hope KOS-4 phase), which gradually turned into a peat bog extending south by the time of settlement in layer 3b. The presence of humans, the increase in fires, and changes in lake hydrology are likely related.
The data shows that people settled a valley in New Guinea 2000 m above sea level shortly after their arrival in Sahul. As the climate cooled, optimal conditions for yam cultivation arose at lower altitudes. This may indicate that pandanus was the most important food item at the time, and helps explain why people left the highlands in the late Pleistocene. Foraging in this highland area would guarantee high levels of vegetable fat and protein in addition to local animal food, starch-rich yams native to lower altitudes, and other foods not preserved in archaeological records.
50 thousand hp: Wave of immigrants from the Malay archipelago
Genetic evidence suggests that a wave of immigrants from the Malay archipelago appeared in New Guinea, possibly 50,000 years ago, when New Guinea and Australia were still a single land mass called Sahul.
Archaeology comes to the same conclusions. Sahul was inhabited by people about 50,000 years ago.
60 thousand hp: Australian natives and ancestors of modern inhabitants of New Guinea separated from the main population of Eurasia
The ancestors of modern residents of New Guinea, together with Australian natives, separated from the main population of Eurasia 51-72 thousand years ago[1].
120 thousand hp: The first small wave of Homo Sapiens migration from Africa
Main article: History of mankind. Main dates
The work of Axel Timmermann and Tobias Friedrich (2016) provides the results of modeling the climate and its impact on the resettlement of mankind, which allows you to establish the time windows in which it could occur. The authors proceed from the assumption that people moved only in territories where they could find food, which means that it was possible to leave Africa only at that time and in that way, when and where flora and fauna were represented in sufficient quantities.
According to scientists, the Sapiens had only three windows suitable for resettlement: 130-118, 106-94, 89-73 thousand years ago[2]. The last of them best fits the "main event," when the resettlement became massive. But the first and second windows could also be suitable for migration. And, judging by the results of other teams, ancient people really took advantage of them.
So, judging by the genetic analysis of the natives of Australia and the inhabitants of New Guinea, the first people in this region appeared 120 thousand years ago, long before the ancestors of most non-Africans came out.
But the genetic contribution of these early migrants is no more than two percent in the gene pool of modern New Guineans.
804 thousand hp: Heidelberg man - a common ancestor of Denisovans and Neanderthals - separated from the ancestors of Homo sapiens in Africa
The common ancestor of Denisovans and Neanderthals separated in Africa from the ancestors of Homo sapiens about 804 thousand years ago.
Heidelberg man is generally believed to have been a direct ancestor of Denisovans and Neanderthals. For details, see Palaeolithic in Spain.
43 million hp: Indian and Australian plates are connected into one
The Indo-Australian plate was formed as a result of the merger of the then Indian and then Australian plates about 43 million years ago. The merger occurred when the mid-ocean ridge in the Indian Ocean, which separated the two plates, stopped expanding.
The Indo-Australian Plate may have already split into two or three separate plates mainly due to stresses caused by the Indo-Australian Plate's collision with Eurasia along what later became the Himalayas. The Indian Plate and the Australian Plate may have separated as early as 3 million years ago.
Modern models suggest that there is currently a deformation zone between the Indian and Australian plates, and earthquake and global satellite navigation system data indicate that Hindustan and Australia are moving north along different vectors. Over time, some expect that a clearly marked localized border will form between the Indian and Australian plates.
98 million hp: As part of the mainland Sahul
Sahul is a prehistoric mainland. It is thought to have formed 98 million years ago.
It initially combined present-day Antarctica, Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania.
150 million hp: The beginning of the collapse of Gondwana in the southern hemisphere
Main article: The history of the Earth before the appearance of hominids
150 million years ago (Mesozoic) Gondwana broke up into two parts: western (Africa, Arabia and South America) and eastern (Australia, Antarctica, Madagascar and Hindustan), the border of which was the Mozambique Strait.
Fauna
New Guinea and Australia are home to a similar fauna: marsupials, including wallabies and possums.
Oviparous monopods are the only group of living mammals that lay eggs rather than give birth to live cubs. The living species of single-passage include platypus and four species of echidna.
Dangerous animals
In the rivers and swamps of the lowland there is a combed crocodile.
Movies
- Dead Birds (1963) is a documentary about the constant military skirmishes of the people of Danios with neighbors.
- The Disappearance of Michael Rockefeller in New Guinea is a television film about the disappearance of a 23-year-old American from a wealthy family in New Guinea during a trip to the Asmat people.
- Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale, 2000 is a film about a homosexual Jewish traveler who stayed, including with the Asmat people in New Guinea.
Researchers
Nicolai Miklouho-Maclay
In New Guinea in 1871-1872, 1876-1877, 1883, the Russian scientist Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklouho-Maclay lived and conducted research. He was the first European to explore this area of the island during his long stays on it. The bank of Miklouho Maclay was named in his honor, renamed Rai Coast in 1914. A section of the northeastern coast of the island of New Guinea between 5 and 6 ° S. sh. with a length of about 300 km, between the Astrolabe Bay and the Huon Peninsula, is now located in the state of Papua New Guinea.
Ekaterina Belyakova
Ekaterina Belyakova - anthropologist, ethnographer, documentary photographer. Junior Researcher, Department of Australia, Oceania and Indonesia, Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Peter the Great (Kunstkamer) RAS. For more than ten years he has specialized in ethnography of traditional societies in New Guinea. He has extensive field work experience in Papua among local Papuan communities. Research interests: transformation of traditional cultures, intercultural interaction, bodily modifications, visual anthropology, medical anthropology.
Notes
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