Papua New Guinea

People reached New Guinea more than 50,000 years ago, among the earliest human migrations beyond Africa and Asia, and in the Highlands they independently developed agriculture some 7,000 to 10,000 years ago. Long isolation between valleys and islands produced one of the most fragmented societies on Earth — thousands of small clan-based groups, hundreds of unrelated languages, and cultures built on gift exchange, "big man" leadership, and cycles of warfare and payback. The Highlands, home to perhaps a million people, were unknown to the outside world until Australian gold prospectors walked into them in the 1930s.

Colonial partition split the island: the Dutch in the west, Britain and then Australia in the southeast as "Papua", and Germany in the northeast, which Australia seized in the First World War. In the Second World War, Japanese forces who landed in 1942 were fought back toward Port Moresby over the Kokoda Track in months of appalling jungle warfare, and Rabaul became a vast besieged Japanese base.

Australia administered the combined territory and handed it to independence, somewhat reluctantly on both sides, in 1975 under Michael Somare. Politics since has been formally democratic but chronically unstable, dominated by no-confidence votes and money politics. A civil war on Bougainville from 1988 to 1998, sparked by grievances over a giant copper mine, killed up to 20,000 people and ended in an autonomy deal and a 2019 vote for independence still being negotiated. A resource economy built on gold and liquefied natural gas has largely bypassed the rural majority, and recent years have brought escalating Highlands violence, deadly 2024 riots, and a catastrophic landslide in Enga.

Papua New Guinea is often called the most culturally diverse country in the world, with around 840 languages and no single national culture, only a mosaic of them. What many groups share is a life organised around the clan and the wantok — the obligation to help those who speak your language — and around exchange: bride-price, compensation payments to settle disputes and killings, and ceremonial gifts of pigs and shell valuables that build a "big man's" standing.

The sing-sing — massed groups in feathered headdresses, shell ornaments, and body paint, dancing and drumming — is the great public expression of identity, seen at the Highlands shows and countless local festivals; the Huli "wigmen" of Hela and the mud men of Asaro are among the best known. The Sepik river is famed for its carved spirit houses and masks, and the Trobriand Islands still practise the kula, a vast inter-island exchange of shell valuables.

Christianity is near-universal but sits alongside strong beliefs in ancestors, spirits, and sorcery, and rugby league is a genuine national passion — the one thing that unites the country.

Four in five Papua New Guineans live in rural villages and grow most of their own food — sweet potato above all in the Highlands, sago in the lowland swamps, taro, yam, banana, and pigs — with little cash income. Towns are small and troubled: Port Moresby, cut off by road from the rest of the country, is a security-conscious city of compounds and fences; Lae is the industrial port; Mount Hagen and Goroka are the Highlands hubs.

The formal economy is dominated by resource enclaves — gold and copper mines and the ExxonMobil-led LNG project — whose wealth has done little for the rural majority, while logging, palm oil, coffee, and cocoa provide most rural cash. Human-development indicators are low, with high malaria and maternal mortality, a serious HIV problem, limited schooling, and villages that can be days from a road.

Land is almost entirely held under customary clan tenure, which shapes — and often blocks — everything from development projects to the settlement of disputes.

Everyday food is starchy and plain: kaukau (sweet potato) roasted or boiled, taro, yam, cooking bananas, and, in the lowlands, sago beaten from the pith of the sago palm. The feast dish is the mumu, an earth oven in which pork, chicken, and vegetables are steamed for hours over hot stones, and the killing of pigs is central to ceremonies and compensation payments.

Fish, shellfish, and coconut dominate island and coastal cooking, with leafy greens such as aibika as the everyday vegetable. Town food adds rice, tinned fish and corned beef, instant noodles, and takeaways of lamb flaps and fried chicken.

Betel nut, chewed with lime and a mustard stick, is a pervasive, red-staining social habit, and PNG's Highlands coffee, grown by smallholders, is prized by roasters abroad.

Papua New Guinea rewards travellers who go with a reputable operator. The Highlands cultural shows — the Mount Hagen Show in August and the Goroka Show in September — bring dozens of sing-sing groups together in an overwhelming display of feathers, paint, and drumming. The Kokoda Track, an eight-to-ten-day jungle trek over the Owen Stanley Range following the wartime campaign, is a demanding pilgrimage for many Australians.

The Sepik river offers dugout-canoe journeys between villages with towering spirit houses and a living carving tradition. The islands hold some of the world's best diving — Kimbe Bay off New Britain, Milne Bay, Tufi's fjords, and the wrecks and reefs around volcano-buried Rabaul — and the Trobriands keep the kula exchange and the yam-harvest festivals.

Wildlife is extraordinary and elusive: birds of paradise in their courtship dances, best seen at lodges in the Highlands, along with tree kangaroos and the world's largest butterflies. Mount Wilhelm, the highest peak, can be climbed in a few days, and the war relics of Kokoda, Milne Bay, and Rabaul round out a country that is difficult but unlike anywhere else.