It is believed that 50, 000 years ago, the first inhabitants of Papua New Guinea arrived and that they were most likely migrants from the Indonesian archipelago. These migrants arrived in several waves, and the land that they encountered had a remarkable effect on cultural development. Due to New Guinea's terrain, which is marked by imposing mountains and extremely rugged territory, different population groups developed in virtual isolation. Each group developed its own language and culture; a development that gives Papua New Guinea the most diverse and fascinating cultural landscapes in the world.

The first contact with the island by Europeans occurred in the early 16th century, when the Portuguese explorer Jorge de Meneses sighted the country and named it Ilhas dos Papuas (Land of the Fuzzy-Haired People). However, it wasn't until the mid-1800's that European missionaries and traders began to settle on the island, and even those few settlers limited their presence mostly to the accessible coastal areas. Over the next several decades Papua New Guinea was claimed by the Germans, the British, and the Dutch, but it came under the control of Australia after World War One. The inland Highland region, thought to be too inhospitable for habitation, wasn't even explored until the 1930s. Astoundingly, European explorers in search of gold, instead discovered over one million people, living in fertile mountain valleys and in cultures that hadn't changed since the Stone Age. By the 1960s there had emerged a significant independence movement in the country, and in 1975, after a brief period of internal autonomy, Papua New Guinea declared its full independence.

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