PAPUA NEW GUINEA, FLAG OF

diagonally divided red-black national flag featuring a yellow bird-of-paradise and the Southern Cross constellation. The flag's width-to-length ratio is 3 to 4. In the 20th century the two territories finally linked in Papua New Guinea were administered by the Germans, British, and Australians. The colonial governments had no official symbols of local relevance, although a proposed coat of arms for German New Guineanever adopted because of Germany's involvement in World War Ifeatured a bird-of-paradise. In 1962 a local flag also incorporated a bird-of-paradise. That original design, used by a sports team, was green and featured a naturalistic bird rendition near the hoist. Later the colonial administration developed a vertical tricolour of blue-yellow-green as a possible future national flag. The Southern Cross appeared in the form of five white stars on the hoist stripe, and a white silhouette bird-of-paradise was represented on the green stripe. The stars were reminiscent of those in the Australian national flag. Islanders were not enthusiastic about the proposal, but the government received a draft design from a young student, Susan Karike, that found widespread support. The bird-of-paradise and constellation were retained, although the former was yellow instead of white. The flag background was changed radically: two colours, red and black, were chosen because they are featured extensively in local art and clothing. The diagonal division gave better balance to the design and made the flag unique. The national parliament recognized the flag on March 11, 1971, and its usage was extended to ships registered in Papua New Guinea when the country became independent on September 16, 1975. Whitney Smith History The peopling of New Guinea Relatively little archaeological work has been carried out in New Guinea. On the basis of current evidence, it has been postulated that parts of New Guinea were occupied as early as 50,000 years ago. Remains of swamp-drainage channels and other water-management works indicate the existence of intensive agriculture on the island around 7000 BC. The intensity and length of time of human occupation of the Highlands are evidenced by the extent of man-made landscapes in the region. These discoveries are made even more interesting by the fact that the sweet potato, the present staple crop of the region, does not seem to have arrived in the area from the Americas until 300 or 400 years ago. It is presumed that taro was the earlier staple, as it still is in some isolated Highlands basins such as that at Telefomin. The colonial period Malay and possibly Chinese traders took spoils and slaves from New Guinea for hundreds of years. The first European visitor may have been Jorge de Meneses, who possibly landed on the island in 152627 while en route to the Moluccas. The first European attempt at colonization was made in 1793 by Lieutenant John Hayes, a British naval officer, near Manokwari, now in Irian Jaya. The Dutch, however, claimed the western half of the island as part of the Dutch East Indies in 1828; their control remained nominal until 1898, when their first permanent administrative posts were set up at Fakfak and Manokwari. Captain John Moresby of Great Britain surveyed the southeastern coast in the 1870s, and European planters had moved onto New Britain and New Ireland by the 1880s. By 1884 the southeastern quadrant of New Guinea had been established as a British protectorate, and in the same year the German New Guinea Company began its administration of the northeastern quadrant. Despite early gold finds in British New Guinea (after 1906 administered by Australia as Papua), it was in German New Guinea, administered by the German imperial government after 1899, that most early economic activity took place. Plantations were widely established in the islands and around Madang; labourers were brought from the Sepik River, the Markham Valley, and Buka Island. German New Guinea was taken over by Australia as a mandated territory of the League of Nations in 1921, after World War I. It remained administratively separate from Papua, where the protectionist policies of Sir Hubert Murray (lieutenant governor of Papua, 190840) did little to encourage colonial investment. The discovery in the 1920s of massive gold deposits at the Bulolo River and Edie Creek in the mandated territory increased the disparity of colonial impact in the different regions. In the early 1930s an even greater discovery was madenearly 1,000,000 people previously unknown to Europeans were contacted in the Highlands basins of the Australian mandate. At first, the Highlanders were utilized as a massive new source of labour for the coastal plantations, a role they continue to play. At the end of World War II, however, the growing of Arabica coffee by small landholders spread rapidly throughout much of the Highlands. Cacao also was rapidly adopted as a plantation and smallholder crop in the islands and around Madang. In 1945 Australia combined its administration of Papua and that of the mandate into the Territory of Papua and New Guinea, with the common capital at Port Moresby, on the south coast of Papua. From 1946 Australia administered the mandate of New Guinea as a United Nations trust territory. Despite the general lack of economic development in Papua, its one large town of Port Moresby grew rapidly and attracted large numbers of migrants, particularly from the poorer areas.