GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL - Cloverport Independent Schools

3 4 6 • GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
complex picture. In appearance, they are variably intermediate between
highlanders like Wiwor and Indonesians like Achmad, though on the average
considerably closer to Wiwor. For instance, my friend Sauakari from
the north coast has wavy hair intermediate between Achmad's straight hair
and Wiwor's coiled hair, and skin somewhat paler than Wiwor's, though
considerably darker than Achmad's. Genetically, the Bismarck and Solomon
islanders and north coastal New Guineans are about 15 percent
Austronesian and 85 percent like New Guinea highlanders. Hence Austronesians
evidently reached the New Guinea region but failed completely
to penetrate the island's interior and were genetically diluted by New
Guinea's previous residents on the north coast and islands.
Modern languages tell essentially the same story but add detail. In
Chapter 15 I explained that most New Guinea languages, termed Papuan
languages, are unrelated to any language families elsewhere in the world.
Without exception, every language spoken in the New Guinea mountains,
the whole of southwestern and south-central lowland New Guinea, including
the coast, and the interior of northern New Guinea is a Papuan language.
But Austronesian languages are spoken in a narrow strip
immediately on the north and southeast coasts. Most languages of the Bismarck
and Solomon islands are Austronesian: Papuan languages are spoken
only in isolated pockets on a few islands.
Austronesian languages spoken in the Bismarcks and Solomons and
north coastal New Guinea are related, as a separate sub-sub-subfamily
termed Oceanic, to the sub-sub-subfamily of languages spoken on Hal¬
mahera and the west end of New Guinea. That linguistic relationship confirms,
as one would expect from a map, that Austronesian speakers of the
New Guinea region arrived by way of Halmahera. Details of Austronesian
and Papuan languages and their distributions in North New Guinea testify
to long contact between the Austronesian invaders and the Papuan-speaking
residents. Both the Austronesian and the Papuan languages of the
region show massive influences of each other's vocabularies and grammars,
making it difficult to decide whether certain languages are basically
Austronesian languages influenced by Papuan ones or the reverse. As one
travels from village to village along the north coast or its fringing islands,
one passes from a village with an Austronesian language to a village with
a Papuan language and then to another Austronesian-speaking village,
without any genetic discontinuity at the linguistic boundaries.