Papua New Guinea gained independence from Australia 50 years ago today.What interesting history has happened there since?
>>18001734I'm not too familiar with their actual history (I wonder how many of their actual citizens are in the first place, considering how spread out/isolated they all are), but I do find the sheer amount of tribes they have pretty interesting. The country has upwards of ~820-840 distinct languages spoken and many tribes still live off subsistence farming. Globalization & the accompanying integration into the global economy is gradually evaporating that subsistence-based lifestyle, but it's still extremely common, especially in more rural areas like the Highlands.Their capital, Port Moresby, has pretty much always been a complete shithole due to tribal intermingling which inevitably leads to disagreements. Mix that with impoverished citizens who have no access to food via subsistence farming and property crime such as theft soars.
>>18001734Realistically if Papua New Guinea never gained independence from Australia, would Australia in any way benefit from it?
>>18002224>would Australia in any way benefit from it?If by Australia you mean mining companies and their Aussie employees then yes. Otherwise, non-mining Aussies get some sort of vague trickle down (assuming companies don't dodge taxes lol) or a backup option for economic mobility citizens. But it's like why not just nationalize assets on Australian soil or buy up huge stakes of it and use the steady flow of income to just enrich Australia without having to do like 7 extra steps? Not like Australia has to compete and contest claims against huge imperial powers
>>18001734>papua new guinea was administered by Australia until 1975I didn't even know about this. We should have never given it up.
>>18001734>What interesting history has happened there since?trespassers are cooked on gas stoves now.
>>18002224Most of the Papuan population would probably just move to Australia if it were to become an overseas territory. As mentioned it would really benefit mining companies, most of which are not Australian, and maybe the lumber industry.
>>18001734I don't know about history but I want to travel there and sodomize some abo goblin girls.
>>18002526They're still basically Australia's client state. You effectively own them and their economy and their natural resources, just without the burden of having to directly administer their day-to-day business, make sure they actually develop, or deal with the implications of owning a colony.
Absolutely nothing
All i know is that some indigenous people from there got a disease with a 100% fatality rate because they commited cannibalism
Not much I'm afraid, the place is underdeveloped as shit and most of its population live in tribes and don't pay taxes or speak the same language. I do know that Indonesia has been violently repressing independance movements in their provinces in West Papua for quite a while now, as well as that there's the island of Bougainvillea which passed an independence referendum and is slated to become the newest country (barring sudden conflicts of course) in 2027 iirc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yali_(politician) this guy was super interesting but didn't live to see the independent period for very long
>>18001734>What interesting history has happened there since?Papua New Guinea is probably one of the most interesting places on Earth, Anthropologically speaking. Some of the interesting tidbits I know offhand:-The indigenous people living there are avid and passionate cannibals (even moreso before the introduction of the pig by South East Asians) and it wasn't until maybe 1991 the government was actually capable of enforcing the criminalization of the act in "most" places. Papua New Guinea is extremely hilly, with dense jungles, so there still remains plenty of places where people get eaten, cannibal raids, wife theft, old women getting burned as witches, etc.. -Many, many, indigenous people possessed no cultural concept of "getting old". Most tribes thought that men had a limited amount of sperm in their bodies and every time they ejaculated they'd get a little bit older; gay sex (specifically oral) could prolong life. Women would be immortal if not for periods. -Despite everything else to the contrary, the indigenous people are weirdly brilliant when it comes to plants and vegetation: excellent farmers, the island was a global center of plant domestication and the origins of dozens crops (banana, bread fruit, yams, sugar cane, taro,) and the people highly knowledgeable about soil remediation, terracing, and irrigation.
>>18005153>-Despite everything else to the contrary, the indigenous people are weirdly brilliant when it comes to plants and vegetation: excellent farmers, the island was a global center of plant domestication and the origins of dozens crops (banana, bread fruit, yams, sugar cane, taro,) and the people highly knowledgeable about soil remediation, terracing, and irrigation.More on this? I thought they were all pre-agricultural savages.
>>18005153To be fair on the cannibalism thing, there are zero natural large land animals in Papua besides a bird that can disembowel you with a kick. Unless you are by a large body of water from which you can fish, there aren't many alternatives to long pig. Especially before Dogs and Pigs.There's a debate on whether they domesticated the cassoway.I could add on with a list of factoids I know about New Guinea, but I think it's unecessary. It's a very fun Island from an anthropology perspective. I've been searching incessantly if New Guineans ever made megaliths but I still can't find shit about it.>>18005180A short paper that may be of use to you. General info on Agriculture in New Guinea. Though personally I like Papua better.https://png-data.sprep.org/system/files/History%20of%20agriculture%20in%20Papua%20New%20Guinea.pdf
>>18005197Though, oddly enough Dogs and Pigs in Papua seem to be older than the Austronesian expansion. If only by a few thousand years. Maybe I'm just misinformed about current dates.
>>18005197>I've been searching incessantly if New Guineans ever made megaliths but I still can't find shit about it.Not New Guinea, but Nias Island (of the coast of Northern Sumatra Indonesia) was a largely intact isolated megalithic bronze-age society until either the start or end of WW2. There's a couple amazing black & white photos floating around that document the process of quarrying the stones, rigging them onto sleighs, and then having the peasants tow the stones by hand with ropes. SUPER interesting stuff. This is a thread about Papau New Guinea, but the entirety of South East Asia is a treasure trove of endlessly fascinating peoples, rare hominid genetics, and very ancient cultures.>>18005180>More on this?>I thought they were all pre-agricultural savages.I don't have much else on me atm, I just know off-hand that when Europeans & Americans were finally exploring New Guinea they'd fly into the interior and you'd see entire valleys populated with hundreds of thatched huts, with the mountain faces terraced, farmer's fields hedged with specific trees that prevent erosion and affix nitrogen, and worked by the primitive locals with nothing but sticks & stones. The Australian Aborigines *almost* share this trait: they possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of over 2,000 edible plants, but then never farmed or garden. One of which included Ube, that sweet purple yam the other South East Asian cultures went on to use as a fundamental ingredient in their confectionaries. I'm tickled by the notion that a couple of Australian agricultural universities have become curious if any of the Abbo "bush tucker" plants possess similar untapped agrarian potential.
>>18001734Apparently they are getting genocide by Indonesia
I love Papua New Guinea
>>18004701>BougainvilleaIs that where the flowers come from?
>>18004843>He attended a meeting of a local council in Port Moresby where the Papuans asked the local officials when they would get electricity in their village. They were told that they would get it as soon as they could afford to pay for it, which dismayed the people who had believed that electricity was a service free of charge. kek literally gibsmedat
>>18005277Nah, the flowers are from South America and were named first.
>>18005288Can't really blame them for not knowing how public utilities work.
>>18001734There's evidence that the native Papuans had at one point domesticated some cassowaries on the island, so picrel was almost a possibility. But nah fr it was actually the dwarf cassowary species and it was believed through evidence of the eggs being taken care of that they were hatched as ornamental pets rather than livestock. The best part is that all of this occured before we even domesticated the chicken in Asia, so these fuckers were ahead of the curve for a while until they lost it.
their biggest mistake, they missed out on abo gibs
>>18005332The rape, war, and pig theft were worth it.
