PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Papua New Guinea occupies the eastern half of the island of New Guinea, the world’s second largest island, along with numerous smaller islands in the southwestern Pacific, and shares its only land border with the Indonesian province of Papua to the west. It is one of the most culturally and linguistically varied countries in the world, with more than 800 languages spoken across its territory, and much of its interior highland terrain was unknown to the outside world until aerial surveys in the 1930s revealed densely populated agricultural societies that had developed in isolation for thousands of years.

ADVERTISEMENT