Papua (ethnic group)

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Yali man in the Baliem Valley, Western New Guinea

The indigenous inhabitants of New Guinea and the surrounding islands are called Papua . Linguistically, the population is very heterogeneous. Though only 0.1% of the world's population, Papuan languages ​​are estimated to comprise around 15% of the world's total languages.

Word history

The first known use of the word Papua dates back to the early 16th century. When the navigator António de Abreu reached the Moluccas in 1511 , he was accompanied by the cartographer Francisco Rodrigues . This recorded a Jlha do Papoia in a map dated 1513 in the east of the Malay Archipelago , the name of which had to go back to Javanese or Malay informants or maps. In the same year, Tomé Pires also noted an island called Papua . In 1527, Martín de Uriarte , a participant in García Jofre de Loaísa's expedition , reported eight islas de las Papuas . Soon after the first mentions, the development began with which the word Papua could refer to geographical objects (initially islands in the north and west of New Guinea, later New Guinea itself) as well as to their inhabitants.

There are a number of diverse theories about the etymology of the word Papua . The most widespread was a derivation from the Malay papua or puah-puah , which means something like "curly-haired" (according to some statements but also "black") and is thus intended to refer to the appearance of the indigenous population. The mentioned meanings of papua only appear in dictionaries in the 19th century and are not used in today's Malay. In addition, the word was apparently never used for the curly-haired and dark-skinned residents of Timor . Another theory refers to the name sup i papwa (roughly "land under the sunset"), which the inhabitants of the Schouten Islands occasionally used to refer to the western Raja Ampat . This derivation would also explain the geographical flexibility of the name Papua , which can already be observed when it was first mentioned .

Western New Guinea

In Western New Guinea , also known as West Papua, a distinction is made between groups living in the lowlands and highlands. Both groups break down into a multitude of small and very small ethnic groups with once very different languages ​​and cultures. It is believed that there are around 312 different indigenous groups, many of whom were uncontacted until the 1970s . A common identity of the indigenous people of Western New Guinea is only slowly emerging today. In Western New Guinea, the sometimes repressive Indonesian rule and the immigration of Indonesians ( Transmigrasi policy) have contributed to the Papuans seeing themselves as a unit in contrast to other inhabitants of Indonesia.

Papua New Guinea

The jungle areas of Papua New Guinea are among the last regions in the world where the indigenous peoples still live largely unaffected by the effects of modern civilization. There are still Papuan peoples who have retained their traditional way of life into the 21st century.

See also

literature

  • Martin Gusinde : The Ayom pygmies in New Guinea. A research report . In: Anthropos. International Journal of Ethnology and Linguistics , ISSN  0003-5572 , vol. 53 (1958), pp. 497-574.
  • Heinrich Harrer : Among Papuans. People and culture since their stone age. , Fischer, Frankfurt / Main 1982, ISBN 3-596-23508-1 .
  • Steffen Keulig: Nightmare Civilization - Back to the Stone Age. A journey to the forest people of New Guinea . Meridian, Rostock 2002, revised edition 2015 ISBN 3-934121-04-7
  • Iago Corazza: The last Papuans. Native art and culture of New Guinea. White Star Verlag, Vercelli (Italy) 2008, ISBN 978-3-86726-084-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b J. HF Sollewijn Gelpke: On the origin of the name Papua . In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde , 149, 1993, pp. 318–332
  2. Indigenous Peoples of Papua, Survival International .