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a way somewhat reminiscent of the ancient embayment.
One of the enduring questions surrounding
the human element of the Sepik–Ramu basin
transformation is that of the cultural evolution
of peoples who are known to have inhabited the
country for at least 40,000 years and who lived
as agriculturists in the nearby Highland region
at the time of the Sepik–Ramu inland sea. Archaeological
evidence suggests that the predecessors
of today’s Sepik–Ramu population were
coastal dwellers who lived in a manner similar
to that of peoples along the North Coast of New
Guinea. When and how they adapted into riverine
societies, with commensurate change of diet,
housing, and ritual—a process that clearly has
occurred—remains to be understood.
It is often thought that before contact with
Westerners, indigenous Pacific cultures existed
in a state of static tranquility. This narrative was
formed in the immediate aftermath of the early
voyages to Tahiti and the surrounding Polynesian
isles in the eighteenth century, and variations
of this theme continued both in the common
imagination and in later nineteenth-century
scholarly discourse. In fact, the human condition
was and is no different in the Pacific than anywhere
else in the world. Conflict and resolution,
trade and exchange, and migration and travel
were just as integral to Pacific societies—those
of the Sepik–Ramu among them—as they were
for any others.
According to Donald Laycock, who engaged in
pioneering linguistic studies in the Sepik–Ramu
region in the 1960s and 1970s, there were at that
time more than 200 languages and around 2,000
settlements for a population of about 250,000.
Localized variants of the primary Sepik linguistic
family, known as Ndu, are spoken by the Iatmul,
Abelam, and Boiken, which are the largest
groups in the Middle Sepik region. Traditionally,
there was no central authority among the peoples
of the Sepik–Ramu, as the patriarchal societies
were organized around leadership stemming
from each local clan’s “big man.” Families
in these small social units were centered around
houses built of wood and thatch, fashioned with
refined tools of stone, since metal-making was
unknown in the pre-contact Pacific. The genders
were largely separated, with the woman living
with their children in individual houses, and the
men living in the centralized men’s house, always
a structure of imposing stature. Entry into
the adult world was by initiation, both for boys
and girls. Some of the most important rite-ofpassage
ceremonies, both secret and public, included
music from sacred flutes, masked dances,
ritual tattooing, and the transmission of arcane
knowledge largely rooted in the traditions of the
ancestors.
Although the vast Sepik–Ramu region encompasses
so many language groups, the speakers
of which made artworks ranging from the finely
naturalistic to the highly abstract, there are uni-