Fore people

This article is about the people of Papua New Guinea. For other uses, see Fore (disambiguation).

Fore
Total population
20,000
Regions with significant populations
Languages
Fore
Religion
Polytheistic

The Fore (/ˈfɔːreɪ/)[1] people live in the Okapa District of the Eastern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea. There are approximately 20,000 Fore who are separated by the Wanevinti Mountains into the North Fore and South Fore regions. Their main form of subsistence is slash-and-burn farming. The Fore language has three distinct dialects and is the southernmost member of the East Central Family, East New Guinea Highlands Stock, Trans–New Guinea phylum of Papuan languages.[2]

In the 1950s the neurological disease kuru was discovered in the South Fore. The local tradition of ritual cannibalism of their dead had led to an epidemic, with approximately 2,700 deaths from 1957 to 2005.[3]

  1. ^ Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student’s Handbook, Edinburgh
  2. ^ Fore World Culture Encyclopedia
  3. ^ Michael P. Alpers (2008). "The epidemiology of kuru: monitoring the epidemic from its peak to its end". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 363 (1510): 3707–3713. doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0071. PMC 2577135. PMID 18849286.