Papua New Guinea Mask

Papua (Western New Guinea)

New Guinea is the second-largest island in the world, and it stretches from warm equatorial sands to icy glacial peaks. Indonesia shares the island with the country of Papua New Guinea, which controls the eastern half of the island. Papua (PAH-poo-AH) features abundant natural resources, including the second-largest tract of rainforest in the world.

About 75 percent of Papua is covered by forests, which contain more than 2,500 species of orchids and 600 species of birds. Papua is also rich in culture, with as many as eight hundred different languages spoken among the various tribes and ethnic groups. Papua also is famous for its various art forms and its unusual flora and fauna.

Tangled swamps and rugged mountains blocked access to most of the island until the 1950s, when Christian missionaries began hiking and flying into the interior. Michael Rockefeller lost his life in the area in 1961, while conducting research and collecting art. Crocodiles or headhunters likely took his life.

The island of New Guinea is like a lost world, where Stone Age tribes still live remotely and where unique forms of plant life thrive like nowhere else on earth. It has a very old civilization, with carbon dating suggesting human inhabitation for the last 25,000 years.

The population of Papua is estimated at approximately 1.8 million people. An estimated 800,000 migrants now live in the province. Most are landless Javanese who were encouraged to move to Papua under the government’s transmigration program. Under

this resettlement program, Papua is now the largest destination for migrants from other islands such as Java, Bali, and Sulawesi. The diversity of vegetation in Papua includes an estimated sixteen thousand species. It is considered to hold the richest concentration of plant life in the world. Many unique plants are of special interest such as the beautiful flame of Irian, a winding vine with large red flowers. Papua also has carnivorous pitcher plants.

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