and some two dozen each of parrots, pigeons, raptors, and kingfishers. The mammals are less in evidence, mainly because of chronic hunting and their nocturnal habits. Fruit bats, insectivorous bats, tree kangaroos, possums, and rats are the best represented among the 180 or so species. Amphibians include more than 150 species of frogs, many still unknown to science. Reptiles include two crocodiles, 61 snakes, and 141 lizards. The fishes comprise ca 150 freshwater species and more than 2,250 marine taxa (about 1,500 of which inhabit coral reef ecosystems). Of special note are the 36 species of rainbow fish that inhabit Papua. This is an incomplete list, undoubtedly, and new taxa were described as recently as 1998.
TERRESTRIAL INVERTEBRATES
The forest invertebrate fauna is diverse beyond imagination, defying our ability to enumerate it. There are probably in excess of 100,000 species of insects alone, only a fraction of these having been cataloged. Most prominent are the huge and beautiful birdwing butterflies, the giant phasmid stick insects, several lineages of giant beetle (longicorn, dynastine, etc.), and the world’s largest moth. One can also find freshwater crabs, a range of edible freshwater shrimp and crayfish, and an abundance of blood-sucking leeches.
MARINE LIFE AND CORAL REEFS
The marine reef environments found in Cenderawasih Bay and the Raja Ampat Islands are among the very richest on earth in terms of species diversity. One finds extraordinary numbers of hard corals, mollusks, and reef fishes. These environments are also very productive, and form an important sustainable resource for local communities. The region also supports a significant pelagic fishery, with key migratory species (such as various tuna).
Human Cultures
CULTURAL SETTING
Although the island of New Guinea is rather young in geological terms, its peoples are of apparently ancient stocks, and there is evidence that humans has been present on the island at least 40,000 years, perhaps longer. Not surprisingly, the details of the earlier habitation on the island are scanty, and it is possible that humans have occupied New Guinea for as long as 60,000 years. The whole island of New Guinea supports more than 1,200 language groups. No other comparable land mass supports more languages. This could be taken as an indication of the longevity of human occupation of New Guinea. The Papuan half of the island supports about 250 languages (dwarfed by PNG’s 800 languages). We can offer no explanation as to why the west supports so many fewer languages, but physiographic and biogeographic diversity may offer a partial explanation (or it may be nothing more than sampling error—a nonconformity in classification methodology by scientists working in Asia vs. the Pacific).
Many of Papua’s language groups are small and insular, with fewer than 1,000 speakers. A few other languages (e.g., Dani, Asmat) are spoken by many. These dominant languages seem to indicate cultural dominance as well. As with Papua New Guinea, the language diversity parallels diversity in local culture and thus Papua is culturally very diverse and heterogeneous. This is one reason there has been only limited local development in Papua. Small, diverse, egalitarian societies do not have the human capacity and structure needed for complex social and economic structures to develop, as has been explained eloquently by Jared Diamond in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel (1999). The absence of stratified societies and the lack of key domesticated livestock and grain crops has certainly contributed to the generally minor development of local economies in Papua. In one point of contrast, important sweet potato cultures in the fertile valleys of the central highlands have developed since the arrival of the sweet potato on the island—perhaps as little as 500 years ago. The major traditional population centers are found in the interior uplands (Baliem and Ilaga valleys, Paniai Lakes, and Arfak Mountains). Most societies are forest-or coastal-dwelling, with primary dependence upon sweet potatoes and pigs (interior) or fish and yams (coastal). It seems all New Guineans are accomplished gardeners as well as accomplished warriors. In most instances, the warlike traditions have been suppressed over the last century, mainly through the teachings of Christian missionaries.
HISTORY OF WESTERN ENGAGEMENT AND POLITICAL HISTORY
Papua was undoubtedly first contacted by Islamic traders from the west in search of spices and other exotic trade goods. The undocumented first contacts between the traders and the coastal Papuans perhaps first took place more than a thousand years ago. But initial trade was probably local—between Papuan people and those of Maluku just to the west and south. Major trade probably did not begin until after 1000 bce. The first Europeans to sail the coastline of Papua were Portuguese, in the 1500s, and they were followed by the whole cast of exploring nations (Spanish, Dutch, then English). These explorers were seeking trade routes as well as products to trade. This exploring era lasted from the 1500s to the early 1800s. It was followed by a period of regular trade (bêche-de-mer or trepang, bird of paradise skins, turtle shell, massoi bark, etc.), which, in turn was followed by initial settlements (trade driven), then missionary activity. Early naturalist/explorers included Alfred Russel Wallace, who visited the Vogelkop (Bird’s Head) and Raja Ampat Islands in the 1840s, and Odoardi Beccari and Luigi d’Albertis, who visited the Arfak Mountains in the 1870s. The Dutch made a preliminary claim to New Guinea west of the current border of 141 east longitude in 1826, but this infamous border was not formalized with the colonial powers of Britain until 1895 (in the south) and with Germany in 1910 (in the north). What followed was a rather weak attempt to establish government outstations, some rather stronger efforts to explore the interior (1900–1930), and to surmount Papua’s forbidding high peaks. Remarkably, the highest peak of Papua, Mt Jaya, was not successfully ascended until 1962 by Austrian Heinrich Harrer. Dutch, British, and American biological expeditions were conducted into the remote interior in the 1930s. Most famous was the Snow Mountains Expedition led by Richard Archbold, who discovered the populous Baliem Valley in 1938 during his aerial reconnaissance flights that allowed the expedition to ascend successfully high into the interior mountains. World War II brought this era of exploration to a close. After the War, independence issues dominated Indonesia and this led to the eventual annexation of Papua into the young Indonesian state in 1962. Indonesia has aggressively developed Papua through a bout of transmigration of landless poor from western Indonesia, through significant government and military oversight (which have included considerable conflict, tension, and bloodshed between Papuan ethnics and western Indonesians), and through natural resource exploitation (mining, fishing, logging). One expects this exploitation to expand considerably in the next several decades, and there is a question whether this exploitation will be predatory or, we hope, environmentally and culturally sustainable. Certainly that issue is a theme that runs through this book.
This Book and Its Goals
This book, following the model of the preceding eight volumes of the Ecology of Indonesia series, seeks to provide a clear, comprehensive, yet concise account of the environment of this easternmost region of the vast archipelagic nation of Indonesia. The text is written with a university student in mind, but there is authoritative material that will be of interest to the serious academic researcher as well. We have departed from the plan of the original series in that we have sought out the world’s experts to contribute chapters on their specialties. In doing so, we have collected the very latest thinking on each subject. Through judicious editing, we have made certain that this cutting-edge material is accessible to the reader. We have attempted to avoid use of specialized and jargon terminology, or at least carefully defined these terms for the reader. Our goal is to have compiled a broad and comprehensive accounting of the natural history of Papua.
Literature Cited
Diamond, J. (1999). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. W. W. Norton and Company, New York.
Hope, G.S., J.A. Peterson, U. Radok, and I. Allison (eds.). 1976. The Equatorial Glaciers of New Guinea. A.A. Balkema, Rotterdam.
Petocz, R. 1989. Conservation and Development in Irian Jaya. Brill, Leiden.
Oatham, M., and B. Beehler. 1997. Richness, taxonomic composition, and species patchiness
