Indigenous people of New Guinea

The language families in Ross's conception of the Trans-New Guinea language family

Ethnologue's 14th edition lists 826 languages of Papua New Guinea and 257 languages of Western New Guinea, a total of 1083 languages, with 12 languages overlapping. They can be divided into two groups, the Austronesian languages, and all the others, called Papuan languages for convenience. The term Papuan languages refers to an areal grouping, rather than a linguistic one. So-called Papuan languages comprise hundreds of different languages, most of which are not related.[5]

Papuans in the Yahukimo Regency, Highland Papua, Indonesia

The following indigenous peoples live within the modern borders of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Austronesian-speaking (AN) groups are given in italics.

In a 2005 study of ASPM gene variants, Mekel-Bobrov et al. found that the Papuan people have among the highest rate of the newly evolved ASPM Haplogroup D, at 59.4% occurrence of the approximately 6,000-year-old allele.[9] While it is not yet known exactly what selective advantage is provided by this gene variant, the haplogroup D allele is thought to be positively selected in populations and to confer some substantial advantage that has caused its frequency to rapidly increase.

Main Y-DNA Haplogroups of Papuan people are Haplogroup MS, Haplogroup P and Haplogroup C1b2a; a significant minority belong also to Haplogroup O-M175.[10]

Based on his genetic studies of the Denisova hominin, an ancient human species discovered in 2010, Svante Pääbo claims that ancient human ancestors of the Papuans interbred in Asia with these humans. He has found that people of New Guinea share 4%–7% of their genome with the Denisovans, indicating this exchange.[11]

Phylogenetic position of the Papuan lineage among other East Eurasians.

Phylogenetic data suggests that an early Eastern Eurasian or "eastern non-African" (ENA) meta-population trifurcated, and gave rise to the Australo-Papuans, the Andamanese Onge / AASI, as well as East/Southeast Asians, although Papuans may have also received some gene flow from an earlier group (xOoA), around 2%,[12] next to additional archaic admixture in the Sahul region.[13][14]

According to one study, Australo-Papuans (such as the indigenous people of New Guinea and Aboriginal Australians) could have either formed from a mixture between an East Asian lineage and lineage basal to West and East Asians, or as a sister lineage of East Asians with or without a minor basal OoA or xOoA contribution.[15]

People reached Sahul (the geological continent consisting of Australia and New Guinea) around 50,000 years ago. Rising sea levels separated New Guinea from Australia about 10,000 years ago. However, Aboriginal Australians and Papuans had diverged genetically much earlier, around 40,000 years BP. Papuans are more closely related to Melanesians than to Aboriginal Australians.[16]

• Aboriginal Australians
• Indigenous Australians
• Koteka Tribal Assembly
• List of ethnic groups of West Papua
• Malagasy people (Africa)
• Moluccans (to the west of New Guinea)
• Negrito (Southeast Asia)
• Papua conflict
• Proto-Australoid
• Stéphane Breton (filmmaker)
• Torres Strait Islanders between New Guinea and mainland Australia (including the Meriam people, whose language family is otherwise found in New Guinea)

• Media related to People of Papua at Wikimedia Commons