Indigenous people of New Guinea

Papuans

Dani people from the central highlands of Western New Guinea, Indonesia
Total population
14,800,000
Regions with significant populations
Papua New Guinea and Western New Guinea, Indonesia, Australia
Languages
Languages of Papua In Papuan New Guinea: Tok Pisin, Hiri Motu, Unserdeutsch and English In Indonesia: Papuan Malay and Indonesian
Religion
Christianity, Traditional Faiths
Related ethnic groups
Other Melanesians, Ambonese, Moluccans, Aboriginal Australians, Malagasy people

The indigenous peoples of Western New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, commonly called Papuans,^[1] are Melanesians. There is genetic evidence for two major historical lineages in New Guinea and neighboring islands: a first wave from the Malay Archipelago perhaps 50,000 years ago when New Guinea and Australia were a single landmass called Sahul and, much later, a wave of Austronesian people from the north who introduced Austronesian languages and pigs about 3,500 years ago. They also left a small but significant genetic trace in many coastal Papuan peoples.

Linguistically, Papuans speak languages from the many families of non-Austronesian languages that are found only on New Guinea and neighboring islands, as well as Austronesian languages along parts of the coast, and recently developed creoles such as Tok Pisin, Hiri Motu, Unserdeutsch, and Papuan Malay.^[2][3][4]

The term "Papuan" is used in a wider sense in linguistics and anthropology. In linguistics, "Papuan languages" is a cover term for the diverse, mutually unrelated, non-Austronesian language families spoken in Melanesia, the Torres Strait Islands, and parts of Wallacea. In anthropology, "Papuan" is often used to denote the highly diverse aboriginal populations of Melanesia and Wallacea prior to the arrival of Austronesian-speakers, and the dominant genetic traces of these populations in the current ethnic groups of these areas.^[3]