Linguistic prehistory in the New Guinea area

Abstract

New Guinea is one of the most linguistically complex areas in the world with more than 740 Papuan and 250 Austronesian languages identified so far. Recent research into the relationships between these languages has enabled the construction of a schema for the migration of peoples into New Guinea and the consequent effects on the existing languages. The earliest peoples to enter New Guinea some 60,000 years ago, spoke Australoid languages and these are spoken still by Australian Aborigines. The first migration into New Guinea, of people speaking Papuan languages, may have started 15,000 years ago. This overlaid the Australoid languages and, in turn, was modified by the second Papuan language migration which began perhaps 10,000 years ago. A third and main Papuan language migration occurred between 5000 to 4000 years ago and again overlaid many of the the existing languages or resulted in movements of older languages to new areas. Contemporaneously with the third Papuan language migration, speakers of Austronesian languages were moving eastwards along the north coast of New Guinea and out into the Western Pacific. This was followed by a second migration of Austronesian speakers moving back westwards onto the north eastern areas of New Guinea about 4500 years ago.