New Guinea

Bách khoa toàn thư mở Wikipedia

New Guinea, nằm ở phía bắc Australia, là hòn đảo lớn thứ 2 thế giới, bị tách biệt khỏi lục địa Úc khi khu vực này được biết đến với tên gọi Eo biển Torres bị ngập lụt thiên niên kỷ thứ 5 trước Công Nguyên. Tên gọi Papua từ lâu đã đồng hành với hòn đảo này. Nửa phía tây hòn đảo là hai tỉnh của Indonesia là Papua và Tây Irian Jaya, còn nửa phía đông là lục địa của đảo quốc độc lập Papua New Guinea.

Với độ cao 4.884 m, Puncak Jaya (đôi lúc được gọi là núi Carstensz) khiến cho New Guinea là đảo có đỉnh cao nhất thế giới, khối đất cao thứ 1 thế giới trong Danh sách các đảo xếp theo điểm cao nhất.

[sửa] Phân chia về mặt hành chính

Đảo New Guinea được chia gần như hai phần bằng nhau theo chiều bắc-nam

New Guinea

Phần tây của đảo (Irian trong tiếng Indonesia), tọa lạc tại 141°E độ kinh đông, (ngoại trừ một phần nhỏ của lãnh thổ phía đông của Sông Fly thuộc về Papua New Guinea) trước đây là thuộc địa Hà Lan và ngày nay được hợp nhất vào các tỉnh Indonesia:
- Tây Irian Jaya (Irian Jaya Barat) with Manokwari as its capital
- Papua (formerly Irian Jaya) with the city of Jayapura as its capital. A proposal to split this province into Central Papua (Papua Tengah) and East Papua (Papua Timur) has not been implemented.

(See also Western New Guinea, which refers to the entire western half of New Guinea)

The eastern part forms the mainland of Papua New Guinea, which has been an independent country since 1975. It was formerly a territory governed by Australia.

[sửa] Con người

Cư dân Papua New Guinea

Dân số hiện tại của đảo này vào khoảng 6,9 triệu người (kể cả hai nửa đảo).

Many believe human habitation on the island has been dated to as early as approximately 40,000 BP^[1], and first settlement possibly dated back to 60,000 years ago has been proposed. The island is presently populated by very nearly a thousand different tribal groups and a near-equivalent number of separate languages, all falling into one of two groups, the Papuan languages and the Austronesian languages. The separation was not merely linguistic; warfare among societies was a factor in the evolution of the men's house: separate housing of groups of adult men, from the single-family houses of the women and children, for mutual protection against the other groups. Pig-based trade between the groups and pig-based feasts are a common theme with the other peoples of southeast Asia and Oceania. Most societies practise agriculture, supplemented by hunting and gathering.

The great variety of the island's indigenous populations are frequently assigned to one of two main ethnological divisions, based on archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence: the Papuan and Austronesian groups.

Current evidence indicates that the Papuans (who constitute the majority of the island's peoples) are descended from the earliest human inhabitants of New Guinea. These original inhabitants first arrived in New Guinea at a time (either side of the Last Glacial Maximum, approx 21,000 years ago) when the island was connected to the Australian continent via a land bridge, forming the landmass known as Sahul. These peoples had made the (shortened) sea-crossing from the islands of Wallacea and Sundaland (the present Malay Archipelago) by at least 40,000 years ago, subsequent to the dispersal of peoples from Africa (circa) 50,000 years ago.

A church in Western New Guinea

The ancestral Austronesian peoples are believed to have arrived considerably later, approximately 3,500 years ago, as part of a gradual seafaring migration from Southeast Asia, possibly originating in eastern China. Austronesian-speaking peoples colonised many of the offshore islands to the north and east of New Guinea, such as New Ireland and New Britain, with settlements also on the coastal fringes of the main island in places.

Human habitation of New Guinea over tens of thousands of years has led to a great deal of diversity, which was further increased by the later arrival of the Austronesians and the more recent history of European and Asian colonisation. This process has been accelerated by the transmigration programs and conscious policies enacted by successive Indonesian governments, which over recent decades has encouraged the resettlement of as many as one million immigrants to western New Guinea, predominantly from the islands of Java, Madura, and Bali.==Liên kết ngoài các web tiếng Anh==

Tọa độ: 5°20′S 141°36′E