West Papua located in the west of New Guinea Island, the world’s second largest island. New Guinea is divided into two parts; the western half consists of two Indonesian Provinces, Papua (formerly Irian Jaya) and West Papua. On the northern part of the island is Papua New Guinea, an independent country since 1975.

Despite the fact that the history of Melanesian people is not fully documented, the earliest homo sapiens to set foot in Melanesia around 65.000 to 50.000 years ago. The climate at that time was very different from today, since the Earth had already been in an ice age for a thousand years. It means that the sea level was about 100 m lower than today. 

Back then, Indonesian Archipelago was joined. Forming a continental shelf, a southward extension of mainland Southeast Asia called Sunda Shelf. The Sunda Shelf is occupied by Indonesian islands of Sumatra, Borneo, and Java. The southeast part is the Sahul Shelf, the Shelfs are separated by the volcanic explosion. Sahul Shelf extends from the southeastern part of Halmahera to the northern coast of Australia, including the island of New Guinea. To reach the Sahul Shelf from Sunda Shelf, they need to cross the sea straits as wide as 100 kilometres.

West Papuan’s Ancestry

There are two races inhabiting Indonesian archipelagos. Mongoloids in the northern and western of Indonesia, and Austromelanesoid populates eastern and southern Indonesia. Their physical differences split the Indonesian ethnical group into two: Mongoloid as Malayans and Austromelanesoid as Papuans.

West Papua ancestors arrived in Papua approximately 70.000 years ago. The paleoanthropological evidence states that Africa is the birthplace of human race and it is where the evolution from hominid to homo sapiens takes place, according to head of Balai Arkeologi Yogyakarta (Yogyakarta Archaeology Board), Harry Widianto.

From around 100.000 – 300.000 years ago, these hominids migrated by moving along the shoreline of Africa to South East Asia. They travelled in groups, along the shorelines of Africa into Indonesia by two routes eastwards. The first route is from Asia mainland, southward into Sunda Shelf in which connecting Sumatera, Kalimantan and Java Island in modern time, then migrating and crossing Nusa Tenggara. The second route is from Kalimantan, roaming around to Halmahera, Raja Ampat, and Fakfak. These second route migrants are now called Melanesian.

Peter Bellwood in the Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago explains that Ancient Melanesia includes Sunda Shelf, Sahul Shelf, and Wallacea. The settlers in these regions are the ancestors of indigenous people in West Papua, Papua New Guinea and Australia.

Harry Widianto stated that the indigenous peoples in Papua today are the direct descendants of these settlers. Distinctive characteristics of these people are curly red hair in which still apparent today in people of Papua and Halmahera.

Retracing the Ancestors

In the closed sites such as natural grottos and caves, the evidence of homo sapiens exploration in Indonesia can be found in the form of prehistoric tools made out of stones dated from 45.000-20.000 years ago. According to Harry, these homo sapiens are the ancestors of Austromelanesoid and roamed around Indonesia’s islands since 15.000 years ago.

Melanesian population began their journey in their new territory of Papua New Guinea, and Bismarck Islands, located in north-eastern shore of New Guinea sea, Pacific Ocean, to South East of Australia. This population lived until 30.000 years ago, before migrating to Nusa Tenggara, Jawa, and Kalimantan in around 15.000-5.000 years ago. This population is now called Austromelanesoid.

Physical traits of Austromelanesoid are tall body height, oblong shaped small cranial structure, slightly sloped forehead and round temple. Austromelanesoid are suspected to be arrived earlier than Mongoloids. Mongoloids have smaller bodies, compared to Austromelanesoid. Larger cranial structure with rounder shape forehead, higher squarer-shaped temple, and overall have broader and wider facial shape.

Meanwhile, indigenous people of Alor Islands in Nusa Tenggara inherit most of the genetic traits of the Papuan (Austromelanesoid) and only inconsiderable amount of them speak Austronesia. Up until now they still use non-Austronesia or Papua Language as their daily language.

In conclusion, the indigenous peoples in West Papua are modern humans which arrived in Indonesia 70.000 years ago and inherit Austromelanesoid traits. These Austromelanesoids kept evolving and split into various groups and undergone changes in their cranial structures into smaller size compared to their first ancestors. In the meantime, East Indonesian people kept their physical appearances like their Austromelanesoid ancestors and some of them last until today.

Languages

The New Guinea island is mostly occupied by Papuan Languages speakers, the indigeneous people of the island. In linguistics, Papuan Languages is a term for the diverse non-Austronesian languages since there are many ethnic groups in Papua.

There are a total 1073 languages in the New Guinea Islands, including 257 languages of West Papua and 826 languages of country Papua New Guinea. The languages are divided into two groups; the Austronesian Languages along parts of the coast and Papuan Languages refer to hundreds of different languages from different ethnic groups.