I have read somewhere that the cannibalism claims are overrated and kind of artificially inflated by the natives. (Most natives are actually Christian.) I have not looked closely into it though.

Unrelated. We have servers across the world; one in Mount Hagen. It has by far the biggest latency in the world; so I always use it as a "benchmark"; if it works in Mount Hagen, it works everywhere.

I’ve just asked a friend of mine who lives in PNG and yeah, this definitely happened. Nowadays it doesn’t happen anymore except potentially in some insanely remote areas.

Supposedly the Japanese during WW2 also resorted to cannibalism.

Supposedly the Japanese during WW2 also resorted to cannibalism.

Germans and Russians did too. Most humans with a survival instinct will turn to cannibalism if it their only means to survive. This is completely unrelated to cannibalism as a cultural practice.

I had to look that up. Wow. Does someone rent out rack space in Mount Hagen, or how did you come to have a server there?

PNG is on my list to visit. It’s relatively complex to get to. Most flights either leave from Australia or Jakarta, they don’t run frequently enough to where you will probably spend the night in Jakarta or Australia in order to catch the flight the next day.

I visited Timor Leste earlier this year and what an interesting country

It sounds like it is easy to get to Port Moresby (which is apparently a bit of a dump and very dangerous), but difficult to get anywhere else.

PNG has changed very rapidly. Parts of the country were in the Stone Age within living memory and are moving over.

Any cool facts to share about Timor Leste? My usual go to - wikipedia - does paint a rather mundane picture of it.

Crypto scammers have long operated in Cambodia, Philippines, Myanmar after being kicked out of China, and were looking to go to Sri Lanka and Timor Leste next - but Timor Leste's politicians and population got together and fought back successfully, it seems:

https://theconversation.com/asias-scamming-gangs-target-timo...

(More on those scam factories: https://theconversation.com/it-seemed-like-a-good-job-at-fir...

And from The Economist - lamentably paywalled: https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc)

I actually visited abandoned scam centers a couple weeks ago in Bavet, Cambodia. It’s really eery now.

All the units had air conditioning units, which I thought was sweet, considering many Cambodians don’t have that. But the prison bars on the windows and barbed wire surrounding the complex was a bit uncomfortable to see.

Wtf. How come you ended up in such a compound?

I live in Vietnam. Bavet is a popular border for visa runs for expats. Normally, you don’t actually leave the Cambodia border building or you just take a bus all the way to Phnom Penh to wait for a visa was approved.

I was curious about the town, because it’s famous for casinos, scam centers, and Chinese manufacturers.

I tend to fly cheaply with multiple transfers/layovers. What I figured out recently is that it is nice to combine the flights in such a way that one of the layovers is _longer_.

When the airport has a good connection to a major city then 12 hours during the day are enough, but I'm happy to bump it to 2-3 days.

I have managed to visit some Chinese and Canadian cities this way and it was both more interesting and much cheaper than taking a direct flight.

It seems astonishing to me that a "relatively complex" intercontinental trip these days means "have to spend a whole night waiting for the next flight".

the additional complexity is visas and immigration for that country.

I’m American, so I have to pay $35 every time I enter Indonesia and I’m limited to the number times per year I can enter the country.

Australia is easier. Just need to fill out ETA for a $20AUD fee.

The extra night also eats into your limited vacation time. 18 hours in addition to the 20 hours flying means you’re losing almost 4 days of your trip just transiting.

Also, my flights aren’t intercontinental. I did this monkey dance going from tp hcmc to Timor Leste.

I read about a Japanese flying to Indonesia in 1959 (the president of the country was courting her). She flew from Tokyo to Hong Kong, then to Bangkok, then to Singapore before making the last hop to Jakarta.

two great films in PNG are joe leahy's neighbours and black harvest

really excellent insight into society and values there as it meets capitalism

I used to watch https://www.youtube.com/@MissionaryBushPilot deliver stuff around PNG in a Kodiak. If you're into aviation, the videos are golden

On the other hand, the MAF is a highly questionable organization that exists specifically to convert the local people away from their own belief systems into whatever brand of evangelical Christianity its supporters are peddling. There's plenty of bush plane videos from Alaska, Nunavut and other challenging places in the world from ordinary small commercial bush plane operators.

It's morally indefensible in my opinion for a bunch of random people from many thousands of km away to go off to some pre-technology rural villagers' home territory and basically say "everything you believe is wrong, here's our god, you must follow and believe in him or you're going to hell".

If people want to go do bush plane things in remote areas and work in very challenging environments as weird foreigners, there's plenty of ways to justify that in the form of a secular NGO (something like Medecins Sans Frontiers) without combining it with missionary work.

Are they actually violently forcing anyone though, like Russians did in Siberia etc?

Probably not, but there is a massive imbalance of power between white missionaries with the trappings of the modern world and indigenous people.

Do you see diversity of cultures with different levels of development on the planet as a problem? Because as long as it exists there will be the imbalance

Do you see diversity of cultures with different levels of development on the planet as a problem?

When a more 'advanced' group use their wealth, technology, medicine etc to control a less developed group - yes that can be a problem.

Do you argue for full isolation and no assistance between those groups you describe?

No.

A friend (now a very fine lawyer in London) travelled PNG during an election assisting in some fashion for several weeks if not months. She came home with a crimp in her hair and ridges on all her toe and fingernails from nutritional deficiencies. This is when I realised differences in standards of living were not theoretical.

Malnutrition after 3 weeks? I mean, pack 21 multivitamins.

Indeed. Given average western diet, 3 weeks of malnutrition can only do good.

How is malnutrition ever good?

"Mal", bad, in the latin

A friend travelled PNG during for several weeks if not months. She came home with a crimp in her hair and ridges on all her toe and fingernails from nutritional deficiencies.

Gonna press X to doubt on that one, bro.

F is for respect, X is for doubt.

People still shoot arrows at each other in urban centres

My mother (who is a doctor, although she's retired now) was part of the medical team who worked on this case: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/arrow-attack-attempted-rape-in-...

My mother isn't mentioned in that article, but the "Allan Mason" it mentions is her husband

It's ongoing in both PNG and the Northern Territory (Australia).

  Northern Territory Police are investigating a series of disturbances in Ngukurr after a 14-year-old boy was speared in the back on Saturday afternoon.

~ (Sept 2026) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-07/nt-14yo-boy-speared-i...

  Police respond to armed disturbance in Wadeye involving up to 100 people, bows, spears

~ (today) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-15/nt-100-people-in-wade...

Going back to the 1970s and 80s: Kiaps, known formally as district officers and patrol officers, were travelling representatives of the British and Australian governments

Kiap Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FK5N_ObFeQ

Maybe they are using traditional weapons for a completely different reason, but I'm reminded of why India and China have their soldiers on the disputed border carry poles and clubs. It looks old school, but it prevents clashes from turning into a larger shooting war where everyone's getting killed.

Im fully on the spectrum, but my first thought when I hear about stuff like this is what would be the moral implication of "recreational gang war" experience. I.e you pay a lot of money, you get guns and armor, you go into gang territory, they shoot arrows at you, you defend yourself. Seems like you would have the right to use deadly force, but you would obviously be at a big advantage.

Do you have a desire to kill people?

sounds vaguely similar to pirate hunting tours, put yourself in a dangerous situation where you can respond with deadly force.

https://www.sail-world.com/USA/Russian-luxury-yachts-offer-p...

This is those articles that I would just skip but I didn't...very interesting

Indonesia's dictator Suharto (who was put into power by the US) annexed West Papua in the 60's on behalf of US corporations. Indigenous groups united together to form the Free Papua Movement (OPM) and wage a guerilla war of resistance. The resistance is ongoing and most of West Papua (which is basically a colony) and PNG (which is basically a banana republic) want reunification

Carved open whole mountains: https://imgsrv2.voi.id/kn25_PwLY-AF-WW29WhOyKglpuHx95_W7T90y...

In regards to Suharto, it seems the 1965 coup attempt that got him into power was a surprise even to the US embassy in Jakarta, but of course they welcomed it, considering the previous president (Sukarno) was anti-imperialist and was flirting with the 3rd largest communist party in the world (after USSR's and China's).

Somewhat relatedly, a documentary moviemaker realized what was behind the curtain of Indonesian society and said "it's as if I had wandered into Germany 40 years after the Holocaust only to find the Nazis still in power.". He made a documentary following a man who was sanctioned by the Suharto regime to kill a lot of "communists" in 1960's Indonesia: The Act of Killing (available at e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TDeEObjR9Q ).

A review:

Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing is a challenging documentary. It is not only difficult to watch, but it also probes into one of the most grotesque aspects of human nature: the capacity for self-delusion in the face of horrific atrocities. This isn’t a film about history, facts, or statistics; it’s about the memories of the men who killed, the stories they tell themselves, and how they continue to live with the horrors they’ve inflicted on others. The film’s power lies in its ability to take the viewer beyond a surface-level understanding of evil and into the psychological abyss of those who have committed atrocities—and seemingly moved on with their lives.

From: https://docthisway.com/2024/09/23/the-act-of-killing-review/

I hear 'The Act of Killing' is an amazing film. But I am not sure if I can bring myself to watch it.

It's maybe not as bad as you might think. People reminiscing about killing rather than footage of it.

netsharc 51 minute ago

This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated.

Someone's quick on the draw this morning

Oops. Admittedly I copy/pasted the 2nd half of my comment.

This one works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKoP2PnU60s (but according to https://tools.watannetwork.com/blocked in Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and United States)

The link is down. Did anyone from here report the movie?

This one works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKoP2PnU60s

Sorry, I copy/pasted half my reply from an old comment.

Still doesn’t work

Shrugs. Works for me.

Sorry YouTube regional-based DRM (presumably) is fucking you. Director's name and documentary title is available, you're going to need to search it for yourself.

The resistance is ongoing and most of West Papua

I'm unsure if that's an accurate description. I would say it is more accurate to say that West Papua is being genocided. Indigenous West Papuans are being genocided by settlers from Java. More than 500,000 West Papuans have been killed according to estimates by indigenous groups. It is hard to verify since Javanese settlers (Prabowo is Javanese) control the army and no media or journalists, and not even Indonesians are allowed to enter West Papua. This year, thousands of excavators were shipped on barges into West Papua. Western corporations like Freeport McMoran are complicit. It is horrific to see videos that have come out. There is one which I saw, I still get nightmares. It is an indigenous Papuan man being skinned alive in a drum of water. The name that was spread was Defianus Kogoya. It is so sad... West Papua was one of the most beautiful places on this planet with inland seawater lakes that had non-venomous jellyfish in Misool. Cave systems with handprints said to pre-date the Toba erruption. All of this being destroyed.

I would say it is more accurate to say that West Papua is being genocided

I can just add it has been going on for a while in recent history and noone talks about it.

Gives you opportunity to think how deeply flawed our media is.

Wow. Really? This sounds terrible.

I am shocked it’s not reported about in Western media.

There are lots of atrocities all over the world that western media just ignores flat out. But they do hyper focus on one or two specific cases for their political agenda.

Hell, then love self flagellating about how they themselves (the west) are the worst people on earth, which is also a political agenda and is only convincing if you ignore pretty much all of human history and large parts of the current day reality elsewhere in the world.

Random PNG fun facts: their most watched sporting event is State of Origin, a rugby league competition between two Australian states, over which many people have died in PNG. Australia recently allowed them a team in the NRL, its premier rugby league competition, essentially in exchange for PNG not signing a security agreement with China like the Solomon Islands did.

This does not make sense I love it. Why State of Origin and not just simply the NRL?

Maybe because State of Origin is the 'tribal' grudge match series, players are only ever eligible for the one team.

The "Pre-bronze age war between two tribes in West Papua, 1963" video in the article is an embedded tweet. Twitter currently doesn't allow to view it without an account (extensively discussed on HN [0]). Fortunately, it is also available on Youtube [1] (longer version [2]).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49694296

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNHIP2FJzko

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI4uirwxx1Y

Thanks for posting the videos. Two thoughts that came from watching that:

1. It is really interesting that we live on a planet that has such a society, along side one that had built nuclear weapons, and was soon to walk on the moon.

2. Our modern society has not progressed at all from any of these base instincts, and in some cases & applications we have gotten worse.

Our modern society has not progressed at all from any of these base instincts, and in some cases & applications we have gotten worse.

Not at all surprising given that base instincts come from genetics and genes take tens to hundreds of thousands of years to change significantly.

Agreed. My theory about our "great filter" event is that our technological advancement proceeds so much faster than our genetics, and that will be our ruin.

To put in plain terms, we keep inventing far better "spears" (including kinetic, bio, and chemical) that allow one to kill many, while still behaving like cavemen.

In my opinion,it is more about culture than it is genetics, although I do think genetics are modified by culture in the long term.

Possibly, but look at modern times. It takes years to build social constructs that might guide us towards cooperation and non-violence. Yet, those can be overturned in an instant by a slick turn of phrase that appeals to our base instincts/caveman brain, which i believe we all have.

I do think genetics are modified by culture in the long term.

For example, "self-domestication" by executing or ostracizing individuals that don’t fit into the culture.

They are only modified if there is some form of selection though, like for example some people say of the Dutch and their height.

In modern times it is more likely that culture and education augments genetics such that your violent tendencies are repressed, you are brought up leading a soft and comfortable life, taught to be polite and kind, etc. Contrast to maybe someone brought up in a warzone or some other place.

I mean post apocalyptic shows like the walking dead express this quite well (at least the first few seasons) where once society falls it's just a free for all and back to our roots again.

In addition, please check out Sentinelese tribe from the North Sentinel Islands in India [1]. It is more mindblogging than this, in my opinion.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island

They had had a long battle with what looks to be hundreds of participants and there were a few wounded, but nobody died. Compare with e.g. battles in the ancient Mediterranean, where the fighting would have continued until one side panics and tries to flee, and the winning side kills anyone who can't run away fast enough. Now maybe they're simply bad at warfare, but I think a more likely explanation is that they're intentionally not escalating to that level of violence and mostly stay at a standoff distance where fatalities are unlikely. The narrator also calls it a "formal battle" at one point.

In any case, I don't think you can ascribe much of their bow-and-arrow tactics to base instincts.

That's because very primitive humans still have a bicameral mind, i.e. things appear to them as auditory hallucinations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameral_mentality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in...

"a bicameral mentality was the "normal and ubiquitous state" of the human mind as recently as 3,000 years ago, at the end of the Bronze Age"

You are aware that this is the theory of a single crank, and not supported by any modern scientific thought, yes?

I'm pretty sure Julian Jaynes' work is entirely hypothetical and is thought if as just an interesting idea rather than actually having any semblance of truth to it... unless you actually believe the Greeks were amongst the first humans to truly emerge with consciousness which seems farfetched to me

"They had had a long battle with what looks to be hundreds of participants and there were a few wounded, but nobody died."

Observe the weapons. Most of them are sharpened sticks and they had a limited supply. Less deadly than swords and no mass manufacturing of weapons either.

The spears would be lucky to penetrate the ribcage. But they could go through the gut or throat, and if they were embedded in a thigh, they could easily cause sepsis.

You can easily kill someone with a fire-hardened pointed stick or a wooden club, if you really want to. I think it is just that they don't want to.

You’d have to catch them first. If you watch the video there almost zero hand to hand combat. Their arrows don’t seem to have stabilizers either.

Obviously if this was filmed on video someone could have given one side a machine gun. Would’ve they used it or would have they still opted to maintain the tradition and fight the old way. The battle may have other reasons besides 100% dominating or wiping out the opponent.

I took an anthropology class that focused heavily on the Papua New Guinea highlanders and they fight a ritualized tit-for-tat warfare where they rarely kill and when they do, it’s essentially tribal revenge for the last kill. Almost every male participates and they specifically avoid high intensity warfare because the cost could effectively kill a tribe’s agricultural output.

Note though that even in the Mediterranean, routes where most of the enemy was killed were relatively rare.

we live on a planet that has such a society, along side one that had built nuclear weapons, and was soon to walk on the moon.

“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.”

― William Gibson

And we are not the ones that live in the future... This two pre-bronze age tribes live in it, the future we all will experience with collapse of our natural world and our civilization.

Do you think they're more likely to survive global warming than a relatively technologically developed nation?

Probably, actually. “Primitive” societies survived the ice age. Modern societies depend on a relatively fragile system of infrastructure and many of the individuals in modern society are utterly dependent on it. Technology only works within its rightful context, and 99% of it is completely useless after infrastructural collapse.

Meanwhile, premodern societies depend on the ecosystem as a whole which tends to adapt over time; the individuals in such societies are more self sufficient in terms of ability to survive the elements.

So it’s just as likely those not dependent on modern technology will do fine against the vicissitudes of climate change as much as those who are dependent on it. At least in terms of ability to survive. At least, their expectations of survival baseline won’t change nearly as much in the face of natural disaster.

Watching that battle, my mind went immediately to Dodge Ball. Play that simulates perhaps our most natural type of group fighting.

Our most natural type of group fighting is a bunch of guys raiding a rival settlement while everyone is asleep and killing them in their beds.

Fighting always works better when only your side is doing it.

Most intra-species fighting is not designed to end in murder, so this seems like a pretty bold claim. Got any research to back it up?

Most intra-species fighting is not designed to end in murder

That depends a lot on scarcity. If you are a male and you only get one chance at mating, you will probably fight to the death. If you will get plenty of other chances, then you might accept the results of a ritualised non-lethal combat (e.g. giraffes headbutting each other, rather than kicking). Its just evolution + game theory.

Is this backed by some anthropological real world examples, or are you just extrapolating theories?

What animal species often offers males only one chance of mating ?!

It's common among animal species for males to fight over females, but it's highly uncommon for them to fight to the death, because that is not evolutionary adaptive - it risks the individual as well as the genetic diversity of the group/species (and evolution is selecting for survival of the species, not the individual).

obligate male death happens, but usually in things like spiders after mating, so there's a few examples for you

Fighting to the death and mating are not the same!

There are a number of species where the female eats the male after mating - examples such as praying mantis and octopus. Both octopus males and females die after mating, the female after having protected the eggs, so it makes sense that she sometimes eats the male too (who is going to die anyway). But, examples like this are relatively rare, and for species specific reasons.

evolution is selecting for survival of the species, not the individual

This is very wrong. Evolution is selecting for the total reproductive fitness of genes, and to a slightly lesser extent, individuals. There’s no mechanism that helps the process of evolution select for the survival or reproduction of the species. See any recent textbook on evolutionary biology, or read Dawkins, or even Darwin. I don’t know where you got this idea but it’s exactly wrong.

There’s no mechanism that helps the process of evolution select for the survival or reproduction of the species

The "mechanism" is just the process of evolution itself, and how it plays out in practice, e.g. via punctuated equilibrium.

Over shorter timespans the gene pool of a breeding population incrementally drifts according to the success of individual genetics, but then once in a while, over multiple generations, something in the environment (disease, food, competition, etc) may change quickly and the gene pool as a whole, not just that of individuals, is thereby tested, with accumulations of previously benign changes sometimes suddenly becoming critical. In this way evolution is acting on the entire gene pool - of the species or more correctly of that interbreeding sub-population.

Success in evolution, the ability of the species as a whole to adapt and compete, also requires genetic diversity, not only to avoid inbreeding, but also to provide species level resilience, and species level ability to quickly adapt. e.g. It seems that the success of sexual reproduction is because it is a way to "game the game" by increasing genetic diversity and therefore improve along these axis of resilience and fast adaptation.

There are also social species, such as ourselves, where the social group becomes port of the individuals environment, and genetics best-fitted-to-the-environment becomes a group dynamic.

evolution is selecting for survival of the species, not the individual

I believe that is wrong. Selection works on the level of the individual and their genes. Dawkins covered this extensively in at least one of his books. Any professional biologists care to comment?

Intra-species dominance is very different from group raiding. Chimps team up to slaughter other chimps all the time. Raid style warfare was the norm for humans

Sure, you can go in to kill everyone, and sometimes they did, but only when they were OK with almost as many of their own group dying as the enemy. There's no big technological or tactical advantage to be had in the stone age. Maybe, if you're really lucky, only one of you die for every two of theirs?

(Attacking them in their beds, pah, don't you think maybe the neighboring tribe thought about that and had someone on watch?)

Attack in beds was very common. Sneak in canoes, kill as many as you can before the enemy regroups, canoe away as the sun comes up.

I watched a few documentaries about the North Sentinelese and uncontacted Amazonian tribes, and it's terrifying how violent they are compared to modern standards. They kill and ask questions later.

That's the only reason they are uncontacted. If they welcomed visitors like the native Hawaiians did, they'd be speaking English today.

And “they” would arguably cease to exist.

Yeah this is selection bias. The remaining uncontacted tribes are uncontacted because they are very hostile to outsiders.

In the case of the North Sentinelese, this incident in 1880 might have something to do with their hostility to the outside world.

After several days, six Sentinelese—an elderly couple and four children—were taken to Port Blair. The colonial officer in charge of the operation wrote that the entire group "sickened rapidly, and the old man and his wife died, so the four children were sent back to their home with quantities of presents".

The alternative is to be potentially oppressed, subjugated, and colonized. A good example is the British Raj. Being peaceful is fine as long as you're able to use overwhelming force and win against someone who might harm you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Raj

Not even remotely similar. India had been trading with the rest of the world for millennia, was far more technologically developed than stone age tribes (in some ways ahead of pre-industrial revolution Britain) and was only conquered at all with the help of Indian allies, soldiers and even Indian financing. British people could not have conquered India alone.

Divide and rule, they say.

Those are not real “wars”. Basically mostly for show.

Tribal warfare is often ritualized [1]. I remember reading that the tribes on what is now Canada's West Coast practiced real, brutal warfare compared to their eastern counterparts, due to the scarce resources.

In Burden of Dreams [2], the documentary about the making-of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, some of the tribal extras would occasionally go off in their motor boats for raids on neighbouring tribes. It's so interesting to me, tribal life would be fascinating to experience.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual_warfare

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_Dreams

tribal life would be fascinating to experience.

Not when life is filled with warfare, murdering other people, and having loved ones killed?

It's really strange how close Papa New Guinea is to Australia (by territory, not people to people) and how little contact there is between the two countries, and how little interest there is. Australians couldn't tell you a thing about PNG, its people, or its politics (except those few who've gone to PNG for mining jobs). Compare with New Zealand - NZ is further away by continental distance, but closer to the main cities of Australia. Completely different relationship.

Isn't it still hundreds of kilometers from the mainland?

The straight of Gibraltar is 10km and barely any Europeans have anything more than superficial knowledge about North-African cultures.

It’s of interest certainly but why would it be strange that Australia, a member of the Commonwealth and New Zealand, also a member of the Commonwealth have closer ties? The US has closer ties with the UK than it does Cuba, for example.

PNG is in the commonwealth. It was also part of Australia for a bit.

I can't stop thinking about Papua New Guinea

Me too, this track is certified classic at this point, cant get it out of my head.

https://archive.org/download/fsol-papua_new_guinea-vinyl-199...

Aside from the name, what does it actually have to do with PNG aside from the imagining of Brits taking drugs in Manchester?

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_New_Guinea_(instrumental...

Why not Pink Floyd's Mudmen and other tracks from Obscured by Clouds (named after the PNG highlands)(eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-u7BPpAYsM ) or even something with voice of a PNG artist, eg:

Tabaran : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdvNFKL8h2U

Fascinating read. I also found the stuff about PNG very interesting in Jared Diamond's 'Guns Germs and Steel'. IIRC he said you could trade and marry with the the tribes in the next valley. But if you want 2 valleys away, they would likely kill you.

That book is so garbage, psudoscientific, empirically wrong, sinophobic, and I'm probably forgetting a bunch.

Also lol to it's explanation for no beasts of burden in Africa. Sorry, folks have actually mostly domesticated the zebra. The explanations for why Zebra's were not domesticated after all this time are a massive cope. Even worse copes are the non recognition/misunderstandings of Elephant usage in large numbers for warfare / burden from Africa to India,

"It is possible that having evolved under pressure from the many large predators of Africa, including early humans, they became more aggressive, thus making domestication more difficult.[104] However, zebras have been trained throughout history. In Rome, zebras are recorded to have pulled chariots during amphitheatre games starting in the reign of Caracalla (198 to 217 AD).[105] In the late 19th century, the zoologist Walter Rothschild trained some zebras to draw a carriage in England, which he drove to Buckingham Palace to demonstrate that it can be done. However, he did not ride on them knowing that they were too small and aggressive.[106] In the early 20th century, German colonial officers in East Africa tried to use zebras for both driving and riding, with limited success."

Oh and also Africa had cattle and donkies and the donkey was actually domesticated in Africa.

West African empires like Mali, Songhai, and the Oyo Empire famously maintained massive cavalry units. They adapted horses to tropical conditions, using them for state-building and warfare long before the arrival of Europeans.

Also uhh Camels!

Environmental Determinism is the ultimate racism.

Environmental Determinism is the ultimate racism.

Diamond says that the reasons Europeans colonised South America (rather than vice versa) is largely due to geographic factors, not due to any inherent genetic superiority of European over South Americans. I don't see how that is racist. Quite the opposite.

His entire section/epilogue on "Why China isn't actually a counter example to my whole thesis, tee-hee!!" AKA Chapter 13 literally goes into "well the emperor there had so much power and could unilaterally keep their technology levels down with stupid trade restrictions so that's why Europeans put them through the century of humiliation and eclipsed them!" and other nonsense is straight up massive Sinophobia and very racist.

Diamond makes broad genetic/intelligence claims about whole populations, rankes societies as "advanced/backward" constantly and describes conquest as inevitable

"in mental ability New Guineans are probably genetically superior to Westerners"

"modern "Stone Age" peoples are on the average probably more intelligent"

"some societies seem hopelessly conservative, inward looking, and hostile to change."

Actual quotes from this so called bastion of liberalism

"China’s connectedness eventually became a disadvantage" [because] "a decision by one despot could and repeatedly did halt innovation."

China = monolithic, obedient, centralized, despotic, stagnant; Europe = pluralistic, competitive, innovative.

Diamond turns "Chinese authoritarianism" into a transhistorical condition produced by the land itself. I'm all about the LVT and Georgism and all but this is doing too much service for land.

In other words, the old Orientalist story survives perfectly well after the race science has been supposedly removed from the chassis. Better still, Diamond treats Ming maritime policy, imperial bureaucracy, and Mao’s Cultural Revolution as variations on the same ancient geographical bug, as though two thousand years of Chinese politics were basically the Yangtze River repeatedly pressing the "authoritarianism" button with it's floods!!!

What if it's due to neither environmental nor genetic factors but ideas. Europe was backward until it re-absorbed classical learning and absorbed newer ideas from the Orient, which led to the renaissance and everything that followed. Did Europeans suddenly gain 40 IQ points in that time? No. Did their environment change? No.

For some reason a lot of people have a huge problem with this explanation, actually preferring either environmental determinism or racism. This is in spite of what seems to be a lot of historical evidence for it in the form of causal influence: ideas are introduced somewhere (inventions, methods, philosophies, languages, mathematics, literature, etc.) and large changes follow.

It's been more than a decade since I have read it, but I remember Diamond writing specifically about the relative lack of domesticable animals in sub-Saharan Africa. Mali, Songhai, and Oyo didn't "[adapt] horses to tropical conditions", they imported already domesticated animals from elsewhere (North Africa). It is telling that none of your examples are in Central or Southern Africa.

Also, domestication is the process of breeding animals over multiple generations to make them more pliable and is not the same as training individual animals to pull a carriage. The very first sentence of the paragraph that you quoted from the Wikipedia article on zebras is "Attempts to domesticate zebras were largely unsuccessful."

I read Guns, Germs and Steel recently and loved it. After finishing it, I was wondering how well the theses had held up in the time since it was published and did some research, and seems like most (though not all) of the major points have held up pretty well or even been strengthened by recent evidence. However, the book seems to have attracted a surprising amount of hate, which this reminds me of! It feels to me like an instinctive hateful backlash to a remarkable achievement, like "crabs in a bucket syndrome" or the Einstein quote -

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.”

I was there in '84, I have a page here with pictures and recordings of an interesting encounter. The subjects are from a coastal town though, not the highlands, but they were at the "Highlands Show". https://vin-dit.org/amyours.html

Almost forgot - I was at the annual highlands "sing-sing" competition and took a lot of pix, but only really recently got them digitized. They're not that well-preserved etc but there's a ton of them here: https://vin-dit.org/goroka84/gallery1.html

Very nice music. It has the same song three times?

These are recordings I made on a walkman-like thing in 84, I don't remember all the details of the encounter. I think when I got them digitized and listened to them, they were separate recordings with some differences. Maybe the Amyours band only knew one song, or maybe we can't tell their songs apart. The one has me trying to talk to them in Tok Pisin asking what they call the thing where they hit the bamboo tubes with flip-flops and he responds "Bamboo!" "Thong!" :)

Western-ish tuning and harmony with some independence in the lines. I'd guess hymns influenced this at some point.

It would have been really interesting to hear original pre-contact music.

What a joy to read this article, and the shell dump to the highlanders seems make me know a bit more of how money works and why bitcoin's scarcity make it have that high price

that's a pretty bad take away

It's not a sophisticated take but if you haven't really thought about inflation before and its relationship to monetary supply it's a pretty good illustration. I'd not really want to knock someone for having an insight.

I did a ctrl-f in the article for "missionary" or "missionaries" and found nothing. There's a real problem (in my opinion) with weird evangelical Christian missionaries who treat the population of PNG as some sort of religious terra nullus. It's a bit weird to write a reasonably lengthy and detailed article about New Guinea and not mention the missionaries...?

They see it as some great holy mission from god to go out into the hinterlands and convert the local people from their local existing belief system to their own particular form of Christianity. The "mission aviation foundation" collects considerable amounts of money to operate bush planes for this purpose.

Edit: PNG is really the most egregious example, but there is clearly a phenomenon that exists of evangelical christian missionaries that seek out the "least developed" or most "bone in the nose" pre-technology isolated cultures and then do fervent work to convert them into dedicated followers of their own specific niche of Christianity. You'll see it in very rural parts of Africa as well. If you spend some time in the churches where they raise funds for these and look at the presentations of the guest speakers brought in to solicit funds for their ongoing missionary campaigns you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

Well, colonialism also been an issue for hundreds of years, but wouldn't it be boring to bring that up every time a country impacted by it is mentioned?

This article is clearly not about missionaries, why would they be required to mention them? Half the world been impacted by missionaries one way or another, we'd never hear the end of it if it'd be mentioned every single time...

It's a very incomplete picture of the situation in PNG to describe it in a reasonably lengthy article (particularly the situation in the post 1945 modern era) without at least spending a paragraph on the presence and influence of missionaries.

It's like trying to describe Idaho and neglecting to mention the potato farming area in the fertile flat land within a few hundred km radius of Boise, for example.

Missionaries put a very specific special emphasis and great deal of attention on PNG as a "target", so yes they're worldwide, but they're very much more so in PNG.

It's a very incomplete picture of the situation in PNG to describe it in a reasonably lengthy article (particularly the situation in the post 1945 modern era) without at least spending a paragraph on the presence and influence of missionaries.

Why don't you read through the article before you comment on how incomplete or not it is? It's literally not about missionaries but about something else, the first contact with those tribes, which wasn't missionaries at all, but seemingly gold prospectors, if I skimmed correctly.

I read the article and I comprehend the English language. The article puts a specific emphasis on foreigners "discovering" that the rural interior of the country was populated, and foreigners going up into the highlands and contacting the local people. A great many of those foreigners were (and still are) missionaries.

It's a well documented historical fact that a great deal of the "exploration" of the interior of PNG was by Christian missionaries.

A great many of those foreigners were (and still are) missionaries.

Sure, but not in this case, that the article we're supposed to be discussing, is about! Does every article about PNG need to include that Christian missionaries at one point were there, even if the events the article discusses isn't about Christian missionaries? Like some sort of legally enforced disclaimer in the footer or whatever? Why the crusade here, against some random article about something else??

To be clear I don't have a beef with the author of the article, but the missionaries themselves. I just thought it was odd to write an article about foreigners going up into the PNG highlands and not mention missionaries at all.

Not sure whether it's intentional in the context, but interesting Freudian slip type use of the word "crusade", you might want to consider its etymology and origins.

Very much intentional, because just like the crusades, you're fighting against some imaginary enemy in a very misplaced location. The article is about different set of foreigners going to the highlands, the first ones, which weren't missionaries, so of course the article doesn't talk about the missionaries...

They see it as some great holy mission from god to go out into the hinterlands and convert the local people from their local existing belief system to their own particular form of Christianity.

Call me apologist, but I can see no real problem with that. They are willing to take risks and have enough motivation to spend resources. Whatever I think about their belief system in my opinion they are free to do that.

It's not 1800s, if the given population doesn't like missionaries, as far as I'm aware it's equally free not to listen to them. Or to throw them out.

Cargo culting is still a thing, the power imbalance is still real here. Kicking people out is generally much trickier than letting them in, these aren't simple things. Remote populations aren't global idea consumers at the internet-accessible global ideas mart.

Remote populations aren't global idea consumers at the internet-accessible global ideas mart.

Why not?

At the risk of taking the bait, what percentage of PNG highland villagers living in grass thatched huts do you think have 24x7 electricity and broadband Internet and intermediate to advanced level literacy in one of the Internet's major languages?

It’s not bait. I don’t think the OP that I responded to was speaking about the mechanics of introducing these populations to the Internet (they’re welcome to correct me) but that they shouldn’t be introduced to such things or that the introduction would be tantamount to exploitation of some sort.

I read it more as that a remote highlands PNG villager is not "innoculated" against the concept of, and is not aware of the methodologies that will be used by odd foreigners who have a well thought out plan to convert people to their specific ideology.

Like, if you're out shopping and some person starts up a weirdly friendly conversation with you that leads to a MLM sales pitch, you already know that's a thing which exists and why you're almost certainly not interested in participating even before the pitch arrives.

It is immoral to treat another human being as too stupid to be exposed to others and worthy of your protection because you view them as primitive.

It's also immoral to expose isolated populations to all manner of the modern world's vices, optimized to be maximally addictive and maximally extractive, for which they have zero defense or even knowledge of their dangers.

That's a decision for them to make. If they don't want it by all means don't force it. But to say you shouldn't talk to them is unfathomably cruel.

It's not 1800s, if the given population doesn't like missionaries, as far as I'm aware it's equally free not to listen to them. Or to throw them out.

The given population doesn't know that though...

There's a real problem (in my opinion) with weird evangelical Christian missionaries who treat the population of PNG as some sort of religious terra nullus

The contemporary role of missionaries is complicated. My mother is a (now retired) doctor, who formerly (>10 years ago) worked for a Seventh Day Adventist church mission in the Solomon Islands (I also mentioned in another comment she worked in the PNG, that was with Australian Doctors International, a secular charity–although even part of that work involved working with a French doctor who happened to be a Catholic nun). My mother isn't a Seventh Day Adventist, she isn't even particularly religious (lapsed Catholic) – her personal motivations weren't about religion, it was about charity, and also the professional and personal experience. She just somehow (I think through some work colleagues who happened to be Seventh Day Adventists) became aware of the mission and ended up working for it–it was essentially volunteering, they may have reimbursed some of her expenses, but whatever she was paid was a fraction of what she'd get working as a doctor in Australia. The mission wasn't currently converting the local population – that had already happened generations ago - and much of the local population combined Christianity with elements of their indigenous belief systems. I guess coming from a Catholic background gave her some personal tolerance for the religious aspect, even if it was never her motivation.

This is what Columbus saw:

"The captive women told the Spaniards that Carib men traveled by canoe to neighboring islands, killed or captured men and carried away young women. Chanca says the women were kept as servants and concubines. They further alleged that children born to these captive women by Carib men were eaten, whereas children born to Carib women were raised."

IMHO People had it rough before missions. These particular natives left right there and were ready to sign up!

why is there so much gps blocking on inland PNG, does anyone know?

This is interesting also (and very sad) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/08/24/the-scientist-...

My first exposure to this was reading Lost in Shangri-La (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_Shangri-La), which concerns the search for an airplane that crashed in PNG in 1945, the recovery of survivors, and the ensuing media sensation (heightened because one of the survivors was a woman).

I think it is overall a well written and engaging article on a topic I knew nothing about.

However, about half way through the author writes

The only place on the whole island where the two worlds nearly collide is the Markham valley […]

Author then goes into a bit of detail on that place before giving two reasons why he believes “that”. Two reasons I cannot for the life of me parse

The reason why I believe that, despite the minimal trade that existed, the highlands were functionally cut off, is that when the Europeans occupied New Guinea, they themselves did not ever speak of or show knowledge of the highlanders. Similarly, when the highlanders first encountered Australians, they had no concept of the coastal people, or where the shells came from, or any further concept of the broader world.

So the reason the highlanders world nearly collided with the coastal dwellers at Markham Valley is because the Europeans didn’t meet the highlanders when they occupied the island?

The other reason is to do with genetics, which I find equally detached from the core subject of those paragraphs.

No, the reason it occurred in the Markham Valley is because of the bit immediately after that sentence:

a 1,000 metre climb over about 30 km takes you straight up onto the edge of the eastern highlands

i.e. because the Markham River provides a pathway from the Lowlands into the Highlands.

The paragraph you quote concerns a different proposition, as may be clearer if some of the subordinate clauses are elided:

The reason why I believe that […] the highlands were functionally cut off, is that […] they themselves did not ever speak of or show knowledge of the highlanders. Similarly, when the highlanders first encountered Australians, they had no concept of the coastal people, or where the shells came from, or any further concept of the broader world.

As I understand it one of the reasons why PNG developed so many unique languages is the extreme geographic complexity of the place. This resulted in language developing in isolation.

I have a personal theory that people living hunter/gatherer or very small scale subsistence agriculture lifestyles historically did not have a ton of surplus calories to spend on hiking over multiple ridges and mountain ranges to discover who's living in the valley 45 km away. The complexity of the jungle environment also makes it very difficult to 'bush whack' through somewhere that no trail exists. And if a foot trail isn't frequently used it will become overgrown very quickly.

Google "language isolates in papua new guinea".

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=language+...

Google "language isolates in papua new guinea".

My preferred source for these things is Palmer’s Language families of the New Guinea Area [0] (part of the extremely comprehensive book, The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area). Page 10 has a nice map of language families and isolates.

[0] https://www.academia.edu/86071361/The_languages_and_linguist...

I am the furthest possible thing from a linguist but looking at a hastily searched language map of PNG, my first thought is "wow, that's a lot. And some of those aren't even in the same family of language?"

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/TNG_map....

Never going to be able to see “PNG” written again without secretly thinking “Papua New Guinea” in my mind.

They practice cannibalism, and Michael Rockefeller was likely eaten there, and maybe Joe Biden’s uncle too - and one group ate their dead relatives’ brains at funerals so consistently that they gave themselves a mad cow type disease called kuru, which killed a large percentage of their population and then, within a few generations, evolved a genetic mutation that protects against it, one of the fastest cases of natural selection ever documented in humans

Jared Diamond thinks the people there are genetically smarter than Europeans

Never seen two consecutive paragraphs so completely contradict each other.

Well Jared Diamond is referring to individual intelligence, not the wisdom of their cultural practices.

More specifically, he states: "My perspective on this controversy comes from 33 years of working with New Guineans in their own intact societies. From the very beginning of my work with New Guineans, they impressed me as being on the average more intelligent, more alert, more expressive, and more interested in things and people around them than the average European or American is. At some tasks that one might reasonably suppose to reflect aspects of brain function, such as the ability to form a mental map of unfamiliar surroundings, they appear considerably more adept than Westerners. Of course, New Guineans tend to perform poorly at tasks that Westerners have been trained to perform since childhood and that New Guineans have not. Hence when unschooled New Guineans from remote villages visit towns, they look stupid to Westerners. Conversely, I am constantly aware of how stupid I look to New Guineans when I’m with them in the jungle, displaying my incompetence at simple tasks (such as following a jungle trail or erecting a shelter) at which New Guineans have been trained since childhood and I have not."

they had no way to evolve past this stage of development

That infantilizes them, in my opinion. Their state then was an early state of many people around the world that made different choices that lead to different results. They made choices, those choices had consequences, and no one decided to do otherwise -- OR, if they did, they failed and have been lost to history. But lets not remove their agency.

My parents lived in the highlands in PNG in the late 70s and early 80s and my dad still speaks pidgin (mostly with his current neighbours who are from Port Moresby the capital). I've heard of lot of amazing (and pretty wild!) stories over the years. And met some interesting folk who up were up there with them - locals, missionaries and others. But despite our childhood being fairly steeped in PNG culture - and my name being from there, after a local who used to work with my dad - the closest I've been myself is the Torres Strait :/

I would bet $20 your parents were either evangelical missionaries or working with something directly adjacent to their efforts. Now at the risk of over generalizing, there's basically three major reasons why (presumably white, foreign) people go up into the highland of PNG to live for extended periods of time:

1. Mining

2. Missionary work and ancillary things related to it.

3. Anthropological and linguistic research, biology/ecosystem related research and similar.

It is a pity you are being downvoted. I do linguistic fieldwork in a similarly remote region and, yeah, you learn pretty quickly visitors fall into about those three types.

I worked in two way geostationary satellite for years and learned pretty quickly what sort of groups of people needed to pay money for Internet in truly the most off the grid locations. The other major users not so relevant for PNG which I intentionally didn't mention are military/government. I guess if it's not "mining" in some places you've also got "oil/gas", which basically falls into the same category of resource extraction. Sometimes forestry/logging.

By the way, your discontent about missionaries shouldn't be centered just around "gospel" groups. Multiple denominations of Islam have pretty far-reaching missionary networks into seemingly faraway places.

Original footage of PNG tribe's first contact with white man in 1993, filmed by Jean Pierre Dutilleux, Belgian anthropologist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ynx14JEYbyI

Does anyone know what they're smoking in that big pipe at about 25:15 into the video?

Imagine showing up in a remote village as an anthropologist and after a few hours the first thing the villagers ask you to partake in is the equivalent of a huge bong hit. And you don't want to offend anyone by refusing...

Actually your comment reminds me of this guy who travels to Vanuatu to try really strong kava. The village chief invites him to drink multiple bowls, which he can't refuse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BtP_B4TBWs

Having actually travelled there, a lot of authors assumptions are invalid in a way that reveals our (euro-american) biases. There are no roads, but people travel by plane (both jets, our guide made a joke that there are two kinds of airlines in Papua, ones that crash into mountains and into the sea, or prop on grassy landing strips, you can look up videos from visiting remote villages, those pilots are super skilled) and on the coast - by boat. Smartphones, solar panels, FC Barcelona t-shirts and catholic church made their way into the mountains and jungle before any other sort of infrastructure, and so did the tourists and fake attractions: fake cannibals, fake legends and fake customs (even BBC fell for some). Demand gives birth to supply. One super interesting thing the author does not mention is that Papua is the last stand for betel nut chewing: you can try it if you're into light psychedelics. I can also shill my video essay here of anybody is interested in listening to pseudophilosophical/journey journal ramblings in heavy accent: https://youtu.be/0cCoZguizdg?is=o-5urE4E2GTolaDv

I read somewhere that the famous tall stilt houses were now mostly made to attract tourists.

Betel nut chewing is still found lots of places in South and Southeast Asia.

Not to that extent: it's against regulations in most cities from Singapore (obviously) to Saigon, and it's considered 'old people thing' in general. In Papua you see people with red teeth all the time, blood like stains on sidewalks accompanied by tiny zipper bags, which are very intriguing when you're out of context. I saw a mother giving betel to her 10 yo daughter on a boat ride - It is a bit calming, so...

This was fuelled by what is known as moka, a system of competitive gift giving, where you give someone in your tribe goods like a pile of pigs and shells, and they are then obligated to give you back more later, and you them more again after that. Whoever gives the most, publicly, becomes the big man.

This reminds me of the Reciprocity and Re-Distribution system in the Inca Empire. There wasn't a system of currency or markets. But there was an Ayni (mutual aid) and Minka (collective work) system, paired with a Mita system: work done for the Sapa Inca which was in return "paid" by the Sapa Inca in feasts, food and goods/gifts. This was all glued together by the concept of Ayllu (family), where these obligations were established through family connections and of course the Sapa Inca had marriage connections with subordinate chiefs.

I myself can't stop thinking about the Inca Empire Economy and how it shows in reality that currency is not about the paper nor number nor symbols, and more about the "I owe you"s that move in the economy.

I’d recommend reading the late David Graeber’s “Debt” which does a good job illustrating exactly what you described, which is how currency is at its core an IOU

So… does it follow that the very wealthy basically hold a massive IOU to the general public?

Not related but See also: future sound of London's version of P.N.G.

when the Australians later sent highlanders to work on coastal plantations in the 1950s, they died at alarming rates

What is this referring to? Indentured Servitude? Slavery?

It says Malaria further in.

No, I am asking why were Australians sending the Highlanders anywhere? By what right? Why were they leaving?

I love reading about that place, too, but I want to point out that

They practice cannibalism, and Michael Rockefeller was likely eaten there

is kind of misleading. If you read Carl Hoffman's book Savage Heart you see that the tribe that are suspected to have eaten Michael Rockefeller probably gave up cannibalism for good not long afterward (i.e. the early 60s).

I lived in Igam Barracks in Lae for 2 years when my father was posted there from the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). His name is William Fiedler.

The trappings of colonialism were still all around when we stayed there in the mid 80s.

We had a house Mary who came over from a nearby village and worked for us, Mrs C. There was a hut behind each house for the house Mary or house man. Pidgin English was spoken. Betel nut stains covered the sidewalks in Lae.

Still it was an incredible experience for a 10 year old I'd like to go back one day, but it's unlikely I'll ever get the chance.

Truly an amazing place and people.

Why is it unlikely? Seems like quite the adventure to pursue at some point in your life as a small goal. You should pursue it before your body decides for you.

My father lived in the PNG Highlands for a year in 1960 when he was 19, joining a mission station in Simbai (that had only been visited by the white man maybe 5 years earlier) and had an incredible time. He hatched an idea to help the manpower challenge of trekking supplies between the highland villages, by bringing donkeys to the highlands. He bought 5 donkeys left behind by the Japanese in WW2 in Lae, and together with two boys from the village (Wengi and Kanimnep), who’d never Simbai before, brought them by sea and plane to Aiome, where a gruelling and dangerous trek eventually got man and beast successfully back to Simbai - 4 months later. Crazy adventure, can you imagine what the boys thought of flying in a plane, seeing the ocean and becoming donkey husbandry experts (my father could only explain they were like ‘big pigs’ - nothing similar at all in the highlands)

50 years or so later I found there was a Cultural Festival in Simbai where about 20 tourists would go each year, and went out with some mates, along with prints of my dads slides. What followed was a trip I’ll never forget, as I was welcomed with a warmth and strength unlike I’d ever experienced, from the whole village and particularly from Wengi’s son Steven (his father had sadly died a few years previously). Whilst the donkeys had not transformed travel in a Simbai, and never bred, they were fondly recalled and had shaped the lives of both Wengi (forever known by others as Donkey) and Kanimnep. It was particularly joyous to be able to hand out pictures of peoples parents or family, who never had any photo of them or had any idea one could even exist, before some random person turned up one day

I left convinced that my father needed to return, and we did so four years later with me and my mother, which was a mind boggling trip - and another story.

It’s an extraordinary country, and incredible to have this documentation of first contact with tribes that had no idea the outside world existed. Highly recommend the First Contact book and film

I hear the PNG Highlands are quite picturesque.

yes it's stunning. Here's a few pictures I took:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/4itqdahyk467qmi5u6xnu/DSC0067...

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/p2mffw6r2zdgk45ycdtxa/IMG_077...

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/3czn9rs6sreu9ir1svjl4/DSC0065...

Would love to hear the second story!

So I returned with my father and mother (who'd never been to PNG), 57 years after my dad left.

We were welcomed in Simbai by many friends old and new. Steven and Aiden, eldest sons of Wengi and Kanimnep, were first to greet us at the airstrip, and Wengi’s daughters gave us a traditional sing sing escort to our guest house. It was a day of greetings, sing sings and smiles, and a hint at what was to come - the Wengis had planned a day of welcome activities the following day, with a ribbon cutting of a new guest house on a ‘donkey trek’, of which we only knew a few snatches. We also met Lyn, a priest from Norfolk UK who has settled in Simbai with her husband Tony for the last year working tirelessly to help the village and its people in every way imaginable. Sadly Tony was in Mt Hagen but Lyn greeted us so warmly and spent days with us with such joy, generosity and kindness.

I was expecting a memorable welcome, but nothing could have prepared us for what followed the next day.

We walked into town from the guest house with a number of escorts, and were greeted by a traditional sing sing, beckoning us up the hill, with seemingly the rest of the village there to watch and welcome. This was not like any sing sing I’d seen before however, as the songs called my name and my father’s, and we learnt that new songs had been written specifically to welcome us. They sang of how we were walking in the footsteps of my father and of the donkeys; we were enveloped by the singers, circling us and moving us up the hill, like dolphins moving a shoal of fish.

We passed under arches made of leaves and flowers, and arrived at the bottom of a hill. A path has been freshly cut into it, and at the bottom was a screen made of banana leaves, with a sign - ‘Welcome to Courage family’, and drawing of a donkey above the word ‘track’. This is their plan - to open a new trek for tourists, that follows in reverse the route my father, Wengi, Kanimnep and 4 donkeys took between Simbai and Aimone. At the top of the hill is a new guest house, literally just finished, the result of the hard work of many hands in the community. This day was the ribbon cutting, and a major celebration.

The sing sing group had progressed to the top of the hill, and were working their way down as we went up, still singing and drumming. My father had to break down the plant screen, behind which was Wengi’s wife and many hugs. We were given flower garlands, and at the top of the hill was a beautifully constructed guest house, with flowers pushed into the matted walls, as well as another traditional building and a room for eating, all with amazing views over the village and highlands.

A huge amount of people were sitting up on the hill, and we were sat as guests of honour opposite a screened podium, from where speeches are given by many in Simbai, including the priest and Steven, and then by my father, myself and my mother. The themes were consistent - of the joy of families, of coming together in communities and across borders and cultures, and the impact of friendship.

We visit the wonderful guest house, my father cutting the garland ribbon, and the celebrations continue with the killing and cooking of pigs, and feasts for all. I slept in the new guest house, my brain buzzing with the echoes of song and dance, handshakes and hugs. I felt like I really understood what ‘mindblowing’ truly means – the magic of the day was almost too much to process, me and my family being the focus of such extraordinary friendship and celebration, it was overwhelming. A day that showed the just how strongly friendships and bonds can be formed out here, it was extraordinarily uplifting.

Lyn told us that she has seen many incredible welcomes in her year here, but none that were like this. It can be hard for volunteers to know what impact their hard work and difficult times leave behind, but this clearly showed the long standing impact my father’s friendship made.

PNG is still a very young country, with many rough edges, but it has something that we have lost - the true spirit of community, of families truly living together, and many families coming together to work and play as a community.

One line that got me wondering: "...and one group ate their dead relatives’ brains at funerals so consistently that they gave themselves a mad cow type disease called kuru, which killed a large percentage of their population and then, within a few generations, evolved a genetic mutation that protects against it"

I had heard this before but my question now is, did they develop this tradition recently? If it were a historical thing wouldn't that genetic mutation have evolved a long time ago? One would expect that if they had this tradition for a long time the genetic mutation that happened so rapidly would have happened long ago, yet it did not. I'm curious as that thought struck me just now.

This is fascinating, and there's a key inconsistency in the article that points to an unresolved mystery.

The author posits that sweet potatoes and tobacco moved into the highlands through intermarriage. Yet he later acknowledges that genetic evidence suggests no mixing of the highland people with the coastal people. So to me the mystery remains of how those crops got there.

Im kind of sad that tribes, who have never been exposed to the modern world, get exposed to the damaging effects of materialism. It reminds me of that film "The gods must be crazy" [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_Must_Be_Crazy

The moral of the story is that things, when they are coveted, can destroy our humanity. I feel like we are destroying ourselves with modernity and to bring that to a culture like this is dangerous.

It seems like Alzheimer’s and prion diseases like Kuru share a core molecular mechanism with misfolded proteins propagating and causing brain lesions. I find it really interesting that the gene protecting against Kuru has evolved naturally when according to Wikipedia, prion diseases don’t seem to have any effective treatments.