Antoni Judit: „Ablakok Pápua Új-Guineára" (Távoli világok emberközelben II. Gödöllői Városi Múzeum, 2008)

a lesser extent here, because of the relative isolation of the area, and the traditional way of life has therefore been better preserved than in the coastal regions where contact with the western world occured earlier. The houses, settlements, utensils and traditional dress of the people living here therefore more closely resembles that of the neighbouring Highland people. Highlands: the upland of the central mountain range of New Guinea The first archaeologically palpable signs of human settlement in the Highlands are traces of thicket burning: the fires were lit 36,000 years ago because of hunting, or in order to accelerate the growth of the pandanus palm. The earliest above-ground, mountain-range settlement is Kosipe, estimated to be 26,000 years old. Its inhabitants hunted and gathered food, and often descended to the nearby plateaus to collect pandanus fruit. Several rock caverns hide the traces of hunters who camped there 8,000-10,000 years ago, but there are also permanent settlements dating from that period which consist of oval log-built houses containing circular fireplaces made of stones. This was also the period in which commercial relationships began to develop: highland peoples imported kauri snails and various seashell species from the northern coast region, and pearl-oyster (china clam) from the southern shores. Traces have also been found showing evidence of the early use of raddle, or red ochre: Papua peoples have been painting their bodies with this material for 15,000 years. Similarly, the beginnings of the horticulture flourishing today reach far back into the past: at the sited dated as 9,000 years old near Kuk in the valley of the river Wahgi, it was found that people cultivated taro using irrigation. Axeheads with polished edges came into general use some 6,000 years ago, indicating that forest clearing speeded up in parallel with the expansion of horticulture. Pigs of Indonesian origin were introduced into the Highlands at about the same time, and the introduction of sweet potato made pig breeding more productive. Moka, the ceremonial exchange system which involes the sacrifice of many pigs, presumably began to develop from this point. The peoples of the Highlands The greater part of the Highlands portion of the collection comes from peoples living in the territory of Southern Highlands Province. There are sixteen main ethnic groups living in the 26,000 km

2 territory of the Southern Highlands. Ninety-two percent of them are typically „highlander", in that they live in open, grassy areas or in more enclosed valleys and basins in the zone between 1,400 and 2,100 m above sea level. They began to be in contact with Europeans from the middle of the 1930s onwards. Because of their geographic isolation, and especially because of the rough terrain, these groups are, to this day, among the richest, most varied, and most tradition- preserving in Papua New Guinea. Highland peoples living in temperate, malaria-free areas have been experienced land labourers for millenia. In addition to the sweet potato (a relatively recent arrival only introduced in the sixteenth century), they grow cabbage, taro, sugarcane, yam and also several European plants: onion, tomato, bean, cucumber and pumpkin. Horticulture is supplemented by hunting and - where possible - by fishing, and also by food gathering, which is considered a basic activity everywhere. A few animals are kept around the houses - pigs, occasionally cassowary, and hunting dogs - but their meat is consumed mostly on holidays. Meals with protein content are traditionally prepared from the meat of possums, rats, and birds, and also from larvae living in different plants, e.g. sago grubs. The two peoples represented by the greatest number of exhibits in the collection, the Huli and the Mendi, traditionally support themselves in the manner described above. They are farmers, spending most of their lives in their gardens, and their settlements do not significantly differ from each other. The men and women of the quite numerous Huli people (about 75,000 individuals) living in the Tari basin and in the nearby valleys are lodged apart. Their houses are built of lumber directly on the ground, and have roofs made of kunai grass (Imperata cylindrica). Houses are built beside the gardens and near to the pigs. The small boys and all the girls stay with their mothers. At the age of seven or eight the boys go over to their fathers, but the girls remain. The men's houses are sometimes surrounded by a strong fence. Such fences used to protect the whole village. 134