Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Papua New Guinea: Last of the Cave People
National Geographic ^ | February 2012 | Mark Jenkins

Posted on 02/13/2012 6:52:51 PM PST by SunkenCiv

But for the glow from the campfire, it is impenetrably dark. Never are there stars, as if that would be too much to hope for. Instead, beyond the rock overhang, it's pouring, waves of water relentlessly slapping the giant fronds of the jungle. It always seems to rain at night here in the mountains of Papua New Guinea. This is why Lidia and what's left of her people, the Meakambut, seek refuge in rock shelters -- they're dry. Located high in the cliffs, sometimes requiring a treacherous climb up vines, caves are also natural fortresses that once protected the Meakambut from their enemies: headhunters and cannibals and bride stealers. But that was generations ago. Now their enemies are less violent yet no less deadly: malaria, tuberculosis.

Pasu shoos away Biyi, their hunting dog, and sits down by the fire. He smooths his leaf loincloth and rests Lidia's head in his lap. She peers up at him wanly. Pasu gravely tells his brother John to ask us if there is anything we can do.

We -- a team from National Geographic -- have unwittingly walked into a crisis. Our plan, to follow the Meakambut, one of the last cave-dwelling, seminomadic peoples in Papua New Guinea, through their mountainous homeland, has been eclipsed by the present emergency. A member of our team, trained as an emergency medical technician, examines Lidia and discovers that her lungs are filled with fluid, her heart is thrumming at 140 beats a minute, and her temperature is 104. He determines that Lidia likely has a life-threatening case of pneumonia and gives her double doses of antibiotics and Tylenol.

(Excerpt) Read more at ngm.nationalgeographic.com ...


TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: godsgravesglyphs; papuanewguinea
Photograph by Amy Toensing

Papua New Guinea: Last of the Cave People

1 posted on 02/13/2012 6:52:57 PM PST by SunkenCiv
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]


"We have caves in our country too, we just don't live in 'em, A-holes!"

A-holes!

2 posted on 02/13/2012 6:54:27 PM PST by SunkenCiv (FReep this FReepathon!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Renfield; StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; decimon; 1010RD; 21twelve; 24Karet; ...

 GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach
Thanks Renfield.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.


3 posted on 02/13/2012 6:55:24 PM PST by SunkenCiv (FReep this FReepathon!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: SunkenCiv

Is Lothar home?


4 posted on 02/13/2012 6:55:30 PM PST by Jonty30 (What Islam and secularism have in common is that they are both death cults.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SunkenCiv

Oh oh.....oooohhhhhh!!


5 posted on 02/13/2012 6:59:17 PM PST by Larry Lucido (My doctor told me to curtail my Walpoling activities.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: SunkenCiv

Fascinating! My Father spent a year in Papua New Guinea during WWII while in the Army Air Corps and always wanted to return. He took me to see “The Sky Above, Mud Below” in the theater back in 1960 or so. He was actually planning a trip back there in the late 1980s when a heart attack took him from us.


6 posted on 02/13/2012 7:03:01 PM PST by Inyo-Mono (My greatest fear is that when I'm gone my wife will sell my guns for what I told her I paid for them)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SunkenCiv

I miss that poor, blaspheming, bastard, Sam Kinison. Oh, to know what he would have said about Obama!


7 posted on 02/13/2012 7:32:36 PM PST by vladimir998
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: SunkenCiv

Really liked that Lidia lived. Poor people, but as for their promise:

“We, the Meakambut people, will give up hunting and always moving and living in the mountain caves if the government will give us a health clinic and a school, and two shovels and two axes, so we can build homes.”

they can go on into the 21st century and not go the way of the dinosaur.


8 posted on 02/13/2012 8:21:39 PM PST by Beowulf9
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: vladimir998

What Sam Kinnison would say about Obama couldn’t even be printed on paper because it would burn up at he went along.

He was a human verbal flamethrower and we loved every second of it. Made George Carlin seem like an amateur.

I think he did the starving Ethiopians/comb routine and one about women and comparing them to whitewashing a fence. Absolutely rude, crude, lewd and pee-in-the-pants hilarious.


9 posted on 02/13/2012 8:31:05 PM PST by MadMax, the Grinning Reaper
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: SunkenCiv

I was fortunate enough to work in the highlands of PNG. It is without a doubt the most fascinating place I have been on all the seven continents.

I wish I could go back there and a whole bunch of other places!


10 posted on 02/13/2012 8:48:31 PM PST by Sequoyah101 (Half the people are below average.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SunkenCiv

11 posted on 02/13/2012 8:54:11 PM PST by dfwgator (Don't wake up in a roadside ditch. Get rid of Romney.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: dfwgator

VCR, CRT TV, probably incandescent lamp.

Just what you’d expect in a cave.


12 posted on 02/13/2012 9:13:01 PM PST by UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide (REPEAL WASHINGTON! -- Islam Delenda Est! -- I Want Constantinople Back. -- Rumble thee forth.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: Sequoyah101

I worked at the Grasberg mine on a three-month project. It is a beautiful place (well, not the mine so much...). The local people were pretty cool. The locals that I worked with at the mine were hard workers.

The mine had taken over the main village and made another village for them with half-way modern buildings, etc. They used the modern school, but I heard a lot of them ended up building and living in their traditional huts again!

We worked on the far outskirts of the mine - it snowed on us three times. One time, while snowing, a family of locals came walking down the trail dressed in shorts, t-shirts, the wife in a skirt. All barefoot. Each carrying a small net bag.

Our local helper spoke with them for a bit. I asked him how far was the next village in the direction that they had come (up and over the pass at 15,000 feet where we were at.) It was almost 20 miles!


13 posted on 02/13/2012 9:19:25 PM PST by 21twelve
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: 21twelve

Few years back on a “last flight before snowing in” flight from Timmons, sat next to a Geologist who was headed back to Grasberg. He had some neat “natives” stories. PNG and Grasberg always my “Dream Project”..... someday.


14 posted on 02/13/2012 10:16:15 PM PST by X-spurt
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: SunkenCiv

Interesting read. Thanks!


15 posted on 02/13/2012 10:22:27 PM PST by rawhide
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: dfwgator; UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide

I’ve always liked that one. Brace yourselves though, Far Side is verboten on FR, copyright complaint, probably because Larsen’s a left-wing bigot. One Google search for “The Far Side” will easily illustrate why. And selective complaints about copyright weaken not only the individual copyright, but the entire copyright act.


16 posted on 02/14/2012 7:17:04 PM PST by SunkenCiv (FReep this FReepathon!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: Larry Lucido; vladimir998; MadMax, the Grinning Reaper

“Tell them I’ll be back as soon as I can PLAY THE PIANO AGAIN!”


17 posted on 02/14/2012 7:17:49 PM PST by SunkenCiv (FReep this FReepathon!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Jonty30

Hill if I know. /rimshot!


18 posted on 02/14/2012 7:18:03 PM PST by SunkenCiv (FReep this FReepathon!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: Inyo-Mono; Beowulf9; Sequoyah101; 21twelve; X-spurt; rawhide

Thanks!


19 posted on 02/14/2012 7:19:15 PM PST by SunkenCiv (FReep this FReepathon!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson