Highlands and Islands

Papua New Guinea owes much of its diversity to its topography, the mountainous terrain and lowlands jungles. The central highlands of Papua New Guinea were not mapped until the 1930s and not effectively brought under government control until the late 1960s. As a result, the people of PNG are even more interesting than the countryside.

During the 1980s Kent Brooks travelled extensively across its heterogeneous communities, divided by language, customs, and tradition; New Guineans, from the north of the main island, Papuans from the south, Highlanders, and Islanders, with considerable cultural variation within each of these groups. Many people still live in small villages and follow traditional tribal customs and engaged in low-scale tribal cmpetition with their neighbors for millennia. Modern migration has greatly magnified this impact though moves into urban areas.