Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea is a country north of Australia.

It is on half of a giant island, plus many small islands. The capital city is Port Moresby. It is by the sea.

New Guinea is the second largest island in the world. Papua New Guinea covers its eastern half; the western half belongs to Indonesia. The country also includes big islands such as New Britain, New Ireland and Bougainville, and hundreds of small islands and atolls.

The 2024 census counted 10,185,363 people, and most live in villages in the countryside. The capital, Port Moresby, is on the south coast by the Coral Sea. People have lived on these islands for about 40,000 years.

Papua New Guinea stretches from just south of the equator to the Torres Strait, which separates it from Australia's Cape York Peninsula. The mainland's border with Indonesian Papua runs almost straight along longitude 141° E, curving briefly to follow the Fly River; the mainland reaches about 820 km north to south along it.

The National Statistical Office's 2024 census, whose final figures Prime Minister James Marape launched in November 2025, counted 10,185,363 people. Britannica describes the main post-independence challenge as governing many hundreds of diverse, once-isolated local societies as one nation. The great majority live in rural areas; Port Moresby and Lae are the largest cities.

Port Moresby is the capital city.

Up in the mountains, people grow gardens in green valleys. At a place called Kuk, people have farmed for thousands of years.

Port Moresby, the capital, faces the Coral Sea, and Lae is a big port on the Huon Gulf. In the Highlands, towns such as Goroka and Mount Hagen hold famous yearly shows with music, dancing and colorful decorations.

In the Western Highlands lies Kuk, a swamp where people have worked the land almost without stopping for at least 7,000 years. About 6,500 years ago, people there began real farming, growing bananas, taro and yams. Kuk became a World Heritage Site in 2008.

Port Moresby, on the Coral Sea, and Lae, on the Huon Gulf, are the largest cities; most towns grew up around colonial harbors or, inland, flat land for airstrips. The National Museum and Art Gallery in Waigani holds a major ethnographic collection, and annual shows at Goroka and Mount Hagen draw many participants.

UNESCO's Kuk Early Agricultural Site (2008) is 116 ha of swamp at 1,500 m in the western highlands. Excavation shows wetland reclamation worked almost continuously for 7,000 and possibly 10,000 years, and an independent leap from plant exploitation to agriculture around 7,000–6,400 years ago, based on bananas, taro and yams; from about 4,000 years ago people drained the wetland with ditches dug with wooden tools. Kuk is one of the few places with evidence of independent agricultural development.

Tall mountains run down the middle of the big island.

There are volcanoes and rainforests. Big rivers wind to the sea. Warm reefs ring the islands.

Papua New Guinea's mountains and volcanoes formed where two huge pieces of Earth's crust, the Australian and Pacific plates, push into each other. The Highlands run through the middle of New Guinea, rising to Mount Wilhelm, 4,509 meters, the highest point. High above, nights can be frosty.

Rainforest covers much of the lowlands, and mangroves and sago palms line the coasts and rivers. Steep slopes and very heavy rain wash away so much soil that rivers like the Sepik and Fly carry huge loads of mud to the sea. New Guinea was joined to Australia by land until the sea flooded the Torres Strait about 8,000 years ago.

Britannica attributes the country's dramatic relief to the collision of the northward-moving Australian Plate with the westward-moving Pacific Plate. South to north: the stable Fly-Digul plains; a belt of harsh karst country around the Kikori River and Lake Kutubu; the Highlands, above 4,000 m, peaking at Mount Wilhelm (4,509 m) in the Bismarck Range, with fertile upland basins enriched by volcanic ash; and an unstable volcanic arc through New Britain, New Ireland and Bougainville.

Steep slopes, very heavy rain and instability give some of the world's highest erosion rates, rivaling the Himalayas, so short rivers carry enormous sediment; 820 km from its mouth the Fly is only 18 m above sea level. Lowlands average 30–32 °C maximum; frosts are common above 2,100 m. Primary rainforest covers much of the island up to about 1,000 m, giving way to oak, beech and pine and, above about 2,000 m, moss forest with tree ferns and orchids.

Birds-of-paradise have amazing, bright feathers.

Big cassowaries walk in the forest. Tree kangaroos climb trees. Fish swim on the coral reefs.

Papua New Guinea has almost no large mammals, but it is full of birds, reptiles, freshwater fish and marsupials, animals that carry their babies in pouches. About 40 kinds of birds-of-paradise live here, famous for their dazzling feathers and dances. The biggest animals are cassowaries, huge birds that cannot fly, and crocodiles.

Because New Guinea was once joined to Australia, it shares animals with it, such as tree kangaroos and echidnas. The country bans the export of birds-of-paradise to protect them, and divers come from far away to see its coral reefs.

Britannica notes a rich variety of reptiles, marsupials, native freshwater fishes and birds but almost no large mammals, which assisted the evolution of some 40 species of birds-of-paradise. The largest animals are cassowaries and crocodiles. The former land bridge to Australia explains shared marsupials, tree kangaroos and echidnas; animals have evolved in isolation since rising seas covered it at the end of the last ice age.

The export of birds-of-paradise is banned, hunters may use only traditional weapons, and exports of other birds, butterflies and crocodile skins are strictly regulated. National parks include Lake Kutubu (reptiles, birds, butterflies) and McAdam (birds-of-paradise, cuscus, echidnas). The bird-of-paradise photo was taken at a bird park in Bali, and the cassowary and echidna photos in Australia.

People speak more than 800 different languages here!

Many people also speak Tok Pisin to understand each other. Families grow sweet potatoes, taro and yams. People play rugby and football.

More than 800 different languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea. To talk across so many languages, many people use Tok Pisin, which mixes local languages with English and some German. English is used in government and business, and Hiri Motu is another official language.

Most families live in villages and grow much of their own food. In the Highlands, people grow sweet potatoes called kau kau in neat gardens, while islanders grow yams, taro and bananas. Coffee is grown in the Highlands too. Music, dancing and the hourglass-shaped kundu drum mark big events, and rugby, football, cricket and netball are popular sports.

Britannica counts more than 800 indigenous languages in two radically different groups: about 200 related Austronesian languages, mostly on coasts and islands, and about 550 non-Austronesian (Papuan) languages, mainly inland, with small speech communities; Engan, Melpa and Kuman each have more than 100,000 speakers. Tok Pisin, a creole of indigenous grammar, some German and increasingly English, is the lingua franca; English and Hiri Motu are also official.

The clan is the main unit of social organization, and the wantok system of obligations follows migrants to towns. About one-third of people are under 15. Subsistence farming supplies much of the food; Highlanders rely on kau kau, sometimes grown in compost mounds or checkerboard drained gardens, and smallholders grow high-quality Arabica coffee. Most people are at least nominally Christian, many also keeping traditional beliefs. Rugby and football lead in sports, and PNG has taken part in the Olympics since 1976.