why I can't stop thinking about Papua New Guinea and what I think everyone should know about it
When you talk about Papua New Guinea, people may say, oh, is that the place where:
Why I saved this
New Guinea's highlands were home to roughly a million people entirely unknown to the outside world until an Australian gold prospector stumbled onto them in 1930 despite 10,000 years of continuous agriculture (independently invented) and zero genetic or linguistic mixing with coastal populations a few hundred kilometers away. The essay traces how trade goods (shells, sweet potatoes) crept in over centuries while ideas and language never did, because plants can pass between hostile, non-communicating neighbors in a way that knowledge can't.