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The prehistory of Papua New Guinea can be traced to about 50,000–60,000 years ago, when people first migrated towards the Australian continent.The written history began when European navigators first sighted New Guinea in the early part of the 17th century.
Archeological evidence suggests that humans arrived on New Guinea around 50,000 years ago. [3] These Melanesian people developed stone tools and agriculture. Portuguese and Spanish navigators sailing in the South Pacific entered New Guinea waters in the early part of the 16th century and in 1526–27, Jorge de Menezes came upon the principal island "Papua".
Papua New Guinea [note 1] [13] [note 2] is a country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean north of Australia. It has a land border with Indonesia to the west and neighbours Australia to the south and the Solomon Islands to the east.
Archeological evidence suggests that humans arrived on New Guinea at least 60,000 years ago. These Melanesian people developed stone tools and agriculture. Portuguese and Spanish navigators sailing in the South Pacific entered New Guinea waters in the early part of the 16th century and in 1526–27, Don Jorge de Meneses came upon the principal island, which the locals called "Papua".
The unification of Western New Guinea with Papua New Guinea was official Australian government policy for a short period of time in the 1960s, before Indonesia's annexation of the region. [43] Generally, proposals regarding federation with Papua New Guinea are a minority view in the freedom movement.
German New Guinea (German: Deutsch-Neuguinea) consisted of the northeastern part of the island of New Guinea and several nearby island groups and was the first part of the German colonial empire. The mainland part of the territory, called Kaiser-Wilhelmsland , became a German protectorate in 1884.
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 ...
During World War I, Australian forces seized German New Guinea, which in 1920 became the Territory of New Guinea, to be administered by Australia under a League of Nations mandate. The territories under Australian administration became collectively known as The Territories of Papua and New Guinea (until February 1942).