Papua New Guinea is an island nation in Oceania and the second largest island in the world after Greenland, located north of Australia and south of the Equator. It has been an independent country since 1975. It is one of the most rural regions in the world, with only 18% of the total population living in cities. The country is also one of the most unexplored in the world, both culturally and geographically.

The island was first recorded in 1526 by Portuguese navigator Jorge de Meneses, who called it "Ilhas dos Papuas" – the land of the curly-haired people. In 1545, Spanish explorer Íñigo Ortiz de Retes circumnavigated the island and named it New Guinea, because he believed its inhabitants resembled those of Guinea in Africa. The colonists and their cartographers believed they had explored the entire island and were certain that a single mountain range ran through its interior.

Huli tribe

The stories that circulate about the region are many: about “wild cannibals” dressed in feathers and straw, about the “last cannibals”. The belief in a primitive way of life, which seems to come from the depths of centuries, can easily mislead. However, the myth is sometimes far from reality.

yannis psilakis