Knowledge of world history is unevenly distributed: we know a great deal about some places, yet almost nothing about others. Until recently, many parts of the world had no written language, meaning there are no written historical sources either. In some regions, this circumstance coincides with a climate that causes natural materials to decay rapidly, which means there are few clues for archaeological research. We therefore know little about the ancient history of such places.

One such place is West Papua. Much (and much of importance) could be written about West Papua’s recent history,  but the region’s ancient history remains largely hidden, even though human habitation there dates back tens of thousands of years.

Historical linguistics

Nevertheless, we can unravel aspects of ancient history in areas where written and material sources do not go back further than a few years. The key to this lies in historical linguistics. Where people live, language is spoken.