PAPUA PEOPLE & THEIR WAY OF LIFE
The indigenous people of this province are Melanesians with black skins and curly hair. They generally have a root crop subsistence agriculture based on sweet potatoes and taros.
The people of Irian Jaya obtain their starch from the sago palm which gives and extremely generous yield for remarkably little effort. Feral and domesticated pigs on the island is originally came from Southeast Asia was an event which has had vast cultural and ritual significance for its people. Pigs are often treated as members of the family and are sometimes suckled by women.
While many other people of the world were still hunters and gatherers, Papua people had begun to garden. After fairly recently, many of them lived with a simple Stone Age Culture wearing little clothing and decorating their bodies with paintings, shells, pig tusks, feathers and skins. There is a plethora of language in the province, perhaps some 250 in all, each representing a tribal group which mixes little with the others. Some of the more remote groups still have virtually no contact with the outside world.