Scientific goals of the Cruz Mayor Expedition 2008

Papua New Guinea and Australia were some of the first places of the earth to be inhabited by the human being, and that occurred 60,000 years ago approximately, during the Late Pleistocene.  Nowadays  few archaeological sites date from such antiquity and for this reason our knowledge about the origins of humanity are very rudimentary. Nevertheless, there exists some regions in the interior of the Papua New Guinea island, close to the location where we are  carrying out our works, which were inhabited between 45,000 and 50,000 years ago, maybe even before.

Our explorations and research are made in the mountains in the interior of the upper region of the Kariwari River and Arafundi River, in the Province  of Western Sepik, which in ancient times shaped the slope area on the North of the island. An area, which in those days, must have been  very rich in marine and terrestrial resources,  because in front of it was a vast seaboard which embraced thousands of squared kilometers, of  low depth , covered by coralline islands and that today conforms the alluvial swampy plain where the Sepik River is set in, with  1,216 kilometers of length.

We know some places of this ancient coast were inhabited 40,000 years ago and, from there departed the first inhabitants that peopled all those nearby islands located facing this old sea, as are the Bismark archipelago and New Ireland, between 35,000 and 30,000 years ago. Afterwards, 20,000 years ago, this area was peopled by groups of  hunters-gathers which were characterized by a great mobility and they were exploiting a vast variety of marine and earthly resources. The majority of the seafood that  they consumed came from the fringe delimited by the extreme tides and the mangrove that covered these coastal areas and which offered a great variety of nourishment. In spite of not having discovered an early site in the area we work in, our recent archaeological findings  shed new light on their presence.

Due to the importance of these findings, and to the fact that probably some of these places might have served as housing or ritual and sacred places to the first inhabitants of the area, we intend during the current years to lead the following research:

1.- To locate, register and find systematically this caverns and rocky eaves in the tributaries of the Kariwari River and to inventory the archaeological artifacts that are present there, such as: wood sculptures, ceramic funerary urns, etc.,  together with its cave paintings.
2.-  To obtain samples of the paint using non destructive methods, with the goal of determining the composition of the painting, its provenance, its genetic traces where it applies and its antiquity.
3.-  To perform an archaeological prospection of the township associated to these places, to determine the temporary antiquity  of them.
4.- To perform an inventory of the surrounding flora and fauna, as well as the most important caves.   
5.- To register all the ethnographic information about the Yimas and the  Awim, related with their usages of these places which they considered sacred. We know that they were used until halfway through the last century like "haus tamberan", or "house of spirits" and in them several rituals related with their initiation ceremonies were held. They don't remember who made those drawings, apparently more ancient ,  but they consider them sacred and pointed that it was in one of those places in which the gods originated the human race that later populated  these prairies.
6.- To pick up all the ethno-botanic information from the Yimas and the Awim people, with the goal of knowing their traditional uses for their plants in medicine and in their system of believes.