History of Papua New Guinea - European Contact

European Contact

When Europeans first arrived, inhabitants of New Guinea and nearby islands – while still relying on bone, wood, and stone tools – had a productive agricultural system. They traded along the coast, mainly in pottery, shell ornaments and foodstuffs, and in the interior, where forest products were exchanged for shells and other sea products.

The first Europeans to sight New Guinea were probably the Portuguese and Spanish navigators sailing in the South Pacific in the early part of the 16th century. In 1526–27, the Portuguese explorer Jorge de Menezes accidentally came upon the principal island and is credited with naming it Papua, a Malay word for the frizzled quality of Melanesian hair. The term New Guinea was applied to the island in 1545 by a Spaniard, Yñigo Ortiz de Retez, because of a resemblance between the islands' inhabitants and those found on the African Guinea coast.

Although European navigators visited the islands and explored their coastlines thereafter, little was known of the inhabitants by Europeans until the 1870s, when Russian anthropologist Nicholai Miklukho-Maklai made a number of expeditions to New Guinea, spending several years living among native tribes, and described their way of life in a comprehensive treatise.