Family way of the Papuans. Shocking traditions and customs of the Papuans, which not everyone will understand

New Guinea attracts the attention of research groups with the unusualness of their way of life. In addition, the customs and customs of modern tribes have a long history - this is how their ancestors lived, and this is what is interesting for ethnographic expeditions.

Features of the life of the people of New Guinea

The number of people living in one yard-family reaches 40 people. Their dwelling is a house made of grass and bamboo on stilts - this is how the Papua tribe saves themselves from a possible flood. Men produce fire in the usual way for them - by friction. The people of Papua rarely eat meat - the pig is considered a domestic animal and is protected, but sometimes it falls into the fire. They also hunt snakes and couscous rodents. Cultivation of a garden is also not alien to the Papuans; the main tool of labor is a digging stick. They grow sweet potatoes, yams. Papuans have two meals a day. Chewing a mixture of leaves, betels is a common activity for the Papuans - it intoxicates and calms.

family customs

At the head of the tribe are elders who enjoy authority, and their decision is considered the last. If he dies, his body is smeared with a drug, wrapped in leaves - this is how he is prepared for smoking. The body is smoked for several months - a mummy is obtained. Such a custom was among the ancestors of modern Papuans. It meant the life of an elder after. On holidays, a seated mummy was present at the celebration. Now such a mummy is considered a relic, because. modern nations do not know the secret of its creation.

The female age for marriage is 11 to 14 years. The marriage decision is made by the elder. On the eve of the wedding, the bride's parents receive matchmakers who give them betel. Relatives of both parties must also agree on the price of the bride. On the appointed wedding day, the groom with his tribe goes to the bride. The custom of redeeming the bride is also present in this culture. Sometimes the bride is kidnapped. The Papuans are also considered wedding flowers, it is in the outfit of such flowers that the bride is dressed up. In addition, they hang on her, which make up the ransom amount. Next comes the wedding feast.

Interestingly, the bride who left her tribe does not take her things - they are divided among members of the community. Men live separately from women and children. Polygamy is also possible. In some places, a woman is generally forbidden to approach. Women are assigned the usual role of housekeeping, and their duty is also considered to be the collection of coconuts and bananas. After one relative, a woman is cut off one phalanx of her finger. The wearing of beads weighing 20 kg, which a woman wears for 2 years, is also associated with relatives.

Husband and wife retire to separate huts. Intimate relationships are free, adultery is allowed.

Girls live next to their mothers, and boys, upon reaching the age of seven, move on to men. The boy is brought up as a warrior - a piercing of the nose with a sharp stick is considered an initiation.

The Papuans believe in nature. Far from civilization, they adopt the experience of their ancestors and pass it on from generation to generation.

The Papuans brought the traveler breadfruit, bananas, taro, coconuts, sugar cane, pork, and dog meat.

Miklukho-Maclay gave them scraps of cloth, beads, nails, bottles, boxes, and the like, treated the sick, and gave advice.

Once, people from the neighboring islands of Bili Bili arrived on two large pirogues, brought coconuts and bananas as a gift, and, saying goodbye, invited the white man to their island, showing with gestures that they would not kill or eat him.

Among the locals, Miklukho-Maclay was known as the "man from the moon." In dealing with the natives, he always adhered to the rule of keeping his promise. Therefore, the Papuans have a saying: "Maclay's word is one."

Another wise rule of conduct was never to tell the natives an untruth.

Life and customs of the Papuans

In those days, the Papuans of the Maclay Coast did not know the use of metals and were in the stage of the Stone Age; knives, spearheads and various tools they made of stone, bone and wood.

However, they had a highly developed agricultural culture: they burned patches of rainforest, cultivated the land carefully, surrounded the site with a sugar cane fence to protect against attack by feral pigs.

The main cultivated plants of these places are yams, taro and sweet potatoes, which, in boiled or baked form, are the main food of the Papuans. On the plantations one could also find sugar cane, bananas, breadfruit, beans, tobacco and other plants. Coconut palms are planted around the huts; they bear fruit throughout the year.

A favorite dish of the Papuans is the flesh of a coconut scraped off by a shell, poured over with coconut milk; it turns out something like porridge. The preparation of coconut oil was not known to the inhabitants of the Maclay Coast.

Meat food among the Papuans is a rarity; dogs, New Guinean pigs, chickens are bred for meat. They also eat fish, marsupials, large lizards, beetles and mollusks.

Usually the husband prepares food separately for himself, and the wife for herself and for the children. Husband and wife never eat together. The food is specially prepared for the guest and the leftovers are handed at parting.

But having salt, they use sea water instead.

“They also have a substitute for salt in dried trunks and roots washed ashore by the tide. Worn for many months at sea, these trunks are heavily saturated with salt. The Papuans dry them for several days in the sun and set them on fire. Even warm ashes are eagerly eaten by the Papuans - it is, indeed, quite salty. Or they drink a decoction of caterpillars, spiders and lizards in sea water.

An intoxicating drink is prepared from a special type of pepper. To do this, the leaves, stems, and especially the roots are chewed and then spit out into the coconut shell with as much saliva as possible. Then some water is added, filtered through a bunch of grass and the filtrate is drunk. A glass is enough to get drunk. Women and children are strictly forbidden to drink keu, as this drink is called. Key is the kava of the Polynesians.

Pigs and dogs were kept as domestic animals; dog meat was a favorite food. The dishes of the local Papuans consisted of clay pots and wooden dishes; coconut shells were also in great use.

The main tool with which the Papuans made their buildings, boats, utensils, is a stone ax, a flat polished stone with a pointed blade. In some places, instead of stone, they used a massive shell of a clam of a tridacna. “The natives, with their light axes, with a blade of no more than five centimeters, easily cut down tree trunks half a meter in diameter, and also carve fine patterns on the shafts of their spears,” Miklukho-Maclay wrote. Knives were made from animal bones and also from bamboo. As weapons, they used wooden throwing spears about two meters long, a bow with arrows one meter long, and slings.

For the first time, our traveler introduced the inhabitants of the shores of the Astrolabe Bay to iron. As early as the end of the 19th century, the Russian word "ax" was used by all the natives of the coast to designate an iron ax, in contrast to a stone one.

The coastal Papuans did not know how to make fire and used burning or smoldering firebrands to keep the fire going. Those who lived in the foothills extracted the fire with a cord using friction.

Men, especially on holidays, painted their faces with red or black paint. Men, and sometimes women, are tattooed, burning scars on the body. Women wear many necklaces made of shells, dog teeth, and fruit pits.

The Papuans lived in small villages in huts made of bamboo or wood, with steep roofs. Some huts were decorated with images of human figures of both sexes, made of wood. One such figure (“telum”), brought by Miklukho-Maclay, is stored in the Ethnographic Museum of the Academy of Sciences.

Maclay Coast Papuans marry early; as a rule, they have one wife and morally lead a very strict life. Marriage among the Papuans is exogamous; this means that a man can only marry a woman of a different kind. The consent of the mother or mother's brother is required for marriage. Miklukho-Maclay describes a courtship ceremony in one of the villages. The uncle from the maternal side gives the groom a slandered tobacco leaf. The groom puts some of his

hair, wraps it up and, having smoked up to half, passes it to the girl. If she lights a cigarette butt or accepts it, giving it away with a fishbone needle, this means her consent to marriage. When they take a wife from a distant village, they perform the ritual of forcible kidnapping of the bride.

Parents are very attached to children. At home, all daily chores are performed by women.

The dead are buried, buried in the ground in the same huts where they live.

There were no tribal or elected chiefs on the Maclay Coast.

The language of the Papuans of the Maclay Coast was not difficult to learn, and the traveler soon mastered the Papuan language to such an extent that he could freely communicate with the inhabitants of neighboring villages. This required knowledge of approximately three hundred and fifty words. Miklukho defines the total number of words in the Papuan language of this region as 1000.

It should be borne in mind that our traveler did not have any translators or dictionaries. To this we must add that almost every village on the Maclay Coast has its own dialect, and in order to understand the inhabitants within an hour's walk from the residence of Miklukha, it was necessary to take an interpreter.

The number of inhabitants around the Gulf of the Astrolabe Miklouho-Maclay estimated at 3500-4000 people.

Return from the first trip

On December 19, 1872, the clipper ship "Emerald" came for Nikolai Nikolayevich. One sailor from the Vityaz was assigned to this ship, who had already visited New Guinea in 1871, when the Vityaz was taking Miklouho-Maclay. Here's how the meeting with the traveler went.

“It was not without internal excitement that we approached the bay of the Astrolabe. Is Maclay alive or not? The majority had long since excluded Maclay from the list of the living, since some time ago it was printed in one of the Australian newspapers that a single merchant ship entered the Astrolabe and found only Wilson alive...

The main occupation is manual farming in the tropical zone. Secondary - hunting and gathering. Pig breeding plays an important role. The main crops are coconut, banana, taro, yams.

At present, due to European influence, the Papuans are employed in the mining industry, they work as drivers, sellers, clerks. A layer of entrepreneurs and farmers is being formed. 50% of the population is employed in subsistence farming.

Papuan villages - 100-150 people each, are compact and scattered. Sometimes it is one long house up to 200 m. The family has 5-6 plots of land in different stages of maturation. Every day, one area is weeded, and the harvest is harvested on the other. The harvest is kept on the vine, taking products for 1 day. Joint work.

In every village, an important place is the buambramra - the public house.

Tools:

ax, made from agate, flint or tridacna shell;

dongan - a sharp sharpened bone, it is worn on the arm, plugged into a bracelet, fruits are cut with it;

bamboo knife, cuts meat, fruits, stronger than dongan.

hagda - throwing spear, 2 m, made of solid heavy wood;

servaru - a lighter spear, with a bamboo tip, which usually breaks and remains in the wound, decorated with feathers and fur;

aral - bow, 2 m long;

aral-ge - an arrow, 1 m long, with a wooden tip;

palom - an arrow with a wide bamboo tip, more dangerous;

saran - an arrow on a fish;

yur - a throwing spear with several points;

clubs and shields.

The clothes of the Papuans consisted of a belt, for men red, for women - in red and black stripes. Bracelets were worn on the arm (sagyu) and on the legs (samba-sagyu). In addition, the body was decorated with objects threaded through the holes, kekee (in the nose) and bul (in the mouth). Of the things, bags were used, yambi and goon - small, for tobacco and small items, they were worn around the neck, and a large bag on the shoulder. Women had their own, women's bags (nangeli-ge). Belts and bags are made from bast or fibers of different trees, the names of which are not in Russian (tauvi, mal-sel, yavan-sel). Ropes are made from nug-sel wood fibers, and anchor ropes are made from bu-sel wood. The resin of the Gutur tree is used as an adhesive.

The food of the Papuans is mainly vegetable, but pork, meat of dogs, chickens, rats, lizards, beetles, mollusks, and fish are also consumed.

Products: munch - coconuts, moga - bananas, dep - sugarcane, mogar - beans, kengar - nuts, baum - sago, keu - a drink like cava. In addition to these, there are a number of fruits whose names have no analogue in Russian - ayan, bau, degarol, aus. All fruits are usually baked or boiled, including bananas. The breadfruit is not held in high esteem, but is eaten.

New Guinea is called the "island of the Papuans". Translated from Indonesian papu-va —"curly".
The Papuan tribes are indeed dark-haired and curly.
The island is drowning in tropical forests; It's hot and humid, with rain almost every day.
In such a climate, it is better to stay high from the muddy and wet ground.
Therefore, in New Guinea there are almost no dwellings standing on the ground: they are usually raised on piles and can even stand above the water.
The size of the house depends on how many people will live in it: one family or a whole village. For the village build houses up to 200 meters long.
The most common type of building is a rectangular house with a gable roof.
Piles usually raise the house two to four meters above the ground, and the tribe kombaev generally prefers a height of 30 meters. Only there, probably, they feel safe.
All Papuan houses are built without nails, saws and hammers, with the help of a stone ax, which is masterfully wielded.
Building a pile house requires good technical skills and knowledge.
Longitudinal logs are laid on the piles, transverse beams on them, and thin poles on top.
You can get into the house along a log with notches: first, into a kind of front hall, more like a “veranda”. Behind it is a living room, separated by a bark partition.
They do not make windows, the light penetrates from everywhere: both through the entrance and through cracks in the floor and walls. The roof is covered with sago palm leaves.

all pictures are clickable

The most amazing dwelling of Papuan owls is a tree house. This is a real technical masterpiece. Usually it is built on a large tree with a fork at a height of 6-7 meters. The fork is used as the main support of the house and a horizontal rectangular frame is tied to it - this is the foundation and at the same time the floor of the house.
Frame posts are attached to the frame. The calculation here must be extremely accurate so that the tree can withstand this design.
The lower platform is made from the bark of the sago palm tree, the upper platform is made from the boards of the kentian palm tree; the roof is covered with palm trees
leaves, instead of the walls of the mat. A kitchen is arranged on the lower platform, and simple home belongings are also stored here. (from the book "Dwellings of the peoples of the world" 2002)