Papuan Culture ID

The Papuan culture encompasses the peoples of New Guinea and its surrounding islands, one of the most diverse human regions on earth, home to a vast number of distinct languages and communities.

Papuan societies subsisted largely through horticulture — the cultivation of taro, yams, and other crops — alongside the raising of pigs, hunting, and gathering, with agriculture in the highlands reaching back to great antiquity.

Communities were typically small and local, bound by kinship and exchange, and rich in ceremony, oral tradition, and a religious life centred on ancestors and spirits.

Extraordinarily diverse and deeply rooted in the land, the Papuan peoples formed one of the world's great mosaics of culture.