Papuan Sentence Examples

Previous to the existence of the strait, and across its site, there poured into Australia a wealth of Papuan forms. Along the Pacific slope of the Queensland Cordillera these found in soil and climate a congenial home.

Again, while they differ physically from neighbouring races, while there is practically nothing in common between them and the Malays, the Polynesians, or the Papuan Melanesians, they agree in type so closely among themselves that they must be regarded as forming one race.

For the Tasmanians in many ways closely approximated to the Papuan type.

How did the Tasmanians with their Papuan affinities get so far south on a continent inhabited by a race so differing from Papuans?

Why should a Papuan type be found in what was certainly once a portion of the Australian continent?

It is difficult to believe that they at first arrived in such numbers as at once to overwhelm the Papuan population.

In the north of Australia there are traces of Malay and Papuan blood.

The Papuan Subregion, chiefly New Guinea with its dependencies, the Timor group of islands, the Moluccas and Celebes.

That they were not indigenous, but had displaced an earlier Melanesian or Papuan race, the true aborigines, is certain.

If earlier immigrants from Samoa or other eastern Pacific islands arrived they must have become absorbed into the native Papuan population - arguing from the absence of any distinct tradition earlier than that "of the six canoes."

The extraordinary ruined fortifications found, and the knowledge of the higher art of war displayed by the Maoris, suggest (what is no doubt the fact) that there was a hard fight for them when they first arrived, but the greatest resistance must have been from the purer Papuan inhabitants, and not from the half-castes who were probably easily overwhelmed.

There is the true Kei Islander, a Polynesian by his height and black or brown wavy hair, with a complexion between the Papuan black and the Malay yellow.

There is the pure Papuan, who has been largely merged in the Kei type.

A large part of the surface is covered with virgin forest, consisting of screw-pines, palm trees, tree ferns, canariums, &c. The fauna is altogether Papuan.

They consist of the Sirani or Christian descendants of the Portuguese, of Malays, with a Papuan element, Galela men from the north of Halmahera, immigrants from Celebes, with some Chinese and Arabs.

The most recent lists record over 500 species as found in the Papuan area, and of these between 50 and 60 genera are peculiar to it.

The species of birds so far described from it number 178 (referable to 38 families), of which 74 are peculiar to it, though closely allied to Papuan forms. It contains, however, no Paradiseidae.

Ceratochelys insculpta of the Fly river, a chelonian peculiar to New Guinea, is remarkable in having its nearest affinities (as have the Papuan tortoises) with South American species.

But the Torres Straits islanders are employed by Europeans in the pearl shell fishery, and are good labourers; and in some of the Kei and Aru Islands the Papuan inhabitants form orderly Christian communities.

By an agreement of 1879 the sultan exercises authority over some parts of Halmahera, the Papuan Islands, the western half of New Guinea and the islands in Geelvink Gulf.

Whether the two families have a common ancestor in the negritos of Malaysia and the Indian archipelago, or whether Papuan and Negrito are alike branches of an aboriginal African race, is a problem yet to be solved.

The traditions of many of the Polynesian islanders refer to a black indigenous race which occupied their islands when their ancestors arrived, and the black woolly-haired Papuan type is not only found to-day in Melanesia proper, but traces of it occur throughout Polynesia and Micronesia.

The Micronesians then are probably of Malay stock much modified by early Polynesian crossings, and probably, within historic times, by Papuan and even Japanese and Chinese migrations.

The Javan Pithechirus has the thumb opposable, while the Papuan Chiruromys has the tip of the tail naked above and prehensile.

In the typical Australian and Papuan Hydromys, locally known as water-rats, the molars originally have transverse ridges, the enamel folds between which form cutting edges whose sharpness depends upon the degree to which the teeth have been worn, while the large hind feet are webbed.

The probable geological connexion with New Guinea would account for the Papuan character of the fauna of the Solomons, which form the eastern limit of certain Papuan types.

Of birds, several parrots and other genera are characteristically Papuan and are unknown east of the Solomons.

The Solomon islanders are of Melanesian (Papuan) stock, though in different parts of the group they vary considerably in their physical characteristics, in some islands approaching the pure Papuan, in some showing Polynesian crossings and in others resembling the Malays.

In some islands are people of obvious Papuan blood, while in others are Polynesian or Malayan tribes.

The natives, still mainly independent of their nominal Dutch and Portuguese rulers, are divided into many hostile tribes, speaking as many as forty distinct Papuan and Malayan languages or dialects.

Owing to the admixture of the Polynesians with the Papuans in Fiji some authorities have thought the first settlement was in those islands, and that the settlers were eventually driven thence by the Papuan occupiers.

Their hair is dark brown or black; smooth and curly, very different from the frizzly mop of the Papuan or the lank straight locks of the Malay.

In the interior is found a peculiar race which is held by some to be Papuan.

The interior is occupied by the aborigines, a people of Papuan stock.

They practise tattooing, and show Papuan influence by distending the ear-lobes by the insertion of wooden disks.

The dingo was, however, almost certainly brought from Asia by the ancestors of the modern natives; while the Papuan pig is also in all probability a human introduction, very likely of much later date.

The natives are of Papuan type, and practise cannibalism.

The pure Papuan seems to be confined to the north-western part of New Guinea, and possibly the interior.

The typical Papuan is distinctly tall, far exceeding the average Malay height, and is seldom shorter, often taller, than the European.

The Papuan woman, who is, as a rule, more modest than the Polynesian, is the household drudge, and does the greater part of the outdoor work, but the man assists in clearing new gardens and in digging and planting the soil.

The Papuan varies his vegetable diet with the flesh of the wild pig, wallabi and other small animals, which are hunted with dogs.

The male Papuan is usually naked save for a loin-cloth made of the bark of the Hibiscus, Broussonetia and other plants, or a girdle of leaves.

The Papuan loves personal adornment and loses no chance of dressing himself up. His chief home-made ornaments are necklaces, armlets and ear-rings of shells, teeth or fibre, and cassowary, cockatoo, or bird of paradise feathers - the last two, or a flower, are worn through the septum of the nose.

With his head encircled by a coronet of dogs teeth, and covered with a network cap or piece of bark-cloth, the septum of the nose transfixed by a pencil of bone or shell, and perhaps a shell or fibre armlet or two, the Papuan is in complete everyday attire.

The Papuan comb is characteristic. This is a long piece of bamboo split at one end into prongs, while the other projects beyond the forehead sometimes two feet or more, and into it are stuck the bright feathers of parrots and other birds.

Nearly all Papuan houses are built in Malay fashion on piles, and this not only on the coast but on the hillsides.

Papuan weapons are the bow and arrow (in the Fly River region, the north and north-east coasts); a beheading knife of a sharp segment of bamboo; a shafted stone club - rayed, disk shaped or ball-headed (in use all over the island); spears of various forms, pointed and barbed; the spear-thrower (on the Finsch coast); and hardwood clubs and shields, widely differing in pattern and ornamentation with the district of their manufacture.

The Papuan bow is rather short, the arrows barbed and tipped with cassowary or human bone.

The Papuan numerals extend usually to 5 only.

The Papuan languages or dialects are very numerous, owing, doubtless, to the perpetual intertribal hostility which has fostered isolation.

The following are some broad characteristics of the Papuan languages.

The natives are Melanesians, resembling their Papuan kinsmen of eastern New Guinea, and are a powerful well-formed race.

Unlike their Papuan relatives, the islanders are unskilled in carving and pottery, but are clever farmers and fishermen, constructing ingenious fishing weirs.

The natives are of the Papuan type, but show signs of mixed origin.

The Fijians are a people of Melanesian (Papuan) stock much crossed with Polynesians (Tongans and Samoans).

They occupy the extreme east limits of Papuan territory and are usually classified as Melanesians; but they are physically superior to the pure examples of that race, combining their dark colour, harsh hirsute skin, crisp hair, which is bleached with lime and worn in an elaborately trained mop, and muscular limbs, with the handsome features and well proportioned bodies of the Polynesians.

Turning from the natives of Australia, and from African races of various degrees of culture, to the Papuan inhabitants of Melanesia, we find that mythological ideas are scarcely on a higher level.

In almost all the gates of hell are guarded by fierce beasts, and in Ojibway, Finnish, Greek, Papuan and Japanese myths no mortal visitor may escape from Hades who has once tasted the food of the dead.

They had coarse, short, woolly hair and Papuan features.