A little background.
Papua New Guinea was populated by HSS very early, at least 60,000 years ago. The topography of Papua New Guinea is such that original population rapidly fragmented into many thousands of smaller, geographically highly isolated populations, that have remained essentially isolated from each other for the last 50,000 - 60,000 years.
So lengthy have been the isolation of different population that more linguistic families have evolved on that island as in the rest of the world combined. So extreme have been the isolation that two tribe in adjacent vallies might speak languages much more fundamentally different than Norwegian and Chinese.
As a result of this, no communication except sporatic skirmeshes existed between even bordering tribes. Most Papua New Guinean tribes' concept of "people" is literally restricted only to their own tribe. Anyone not from their own tribe is considered to not be merely disagreeable "others", but fundamentally evil spirits, demons, really, that must be killed on sight. This state of affaires persisted into the 1950s.
Papua New Guinea was populated by HSS very early, at least 60,000 years ago. The topography of Papua New Guinea is such that original population rapidly fragmented into many thousands of smaller, geographically highly isolated populations, that have remained essentially isolated from each other for the last 50,000 - 60,000 years.
So lengthy have been the isolation of different population that more linguistic families have evolved on that island as in the rest of the world combined. So extreme have been the isolation that two tribe in adjacent vallies might speak languages much more fundamentally different than Norwegian and Chinese.
As a result of this, no communication except sporatic skirmeshes existed between even bordering tribes. Most Papua New Guinean tribes' concept of "people" is literally restricted only to their own tribe. Anyone not from their own tribe is considered to not be merely disagreeable "others", but fundamentally evil spirits, demons, really, that must be killed on sight. This state of affaires persisted into the 1950s.
