Journey into the Stone Age

David Davies 1969 published book covers both British (Australian) Administered Territories of Papua and New Guinea (as it was at the time of writing) and formerly Dutch, then Indonesian New Guinea (again at the time of writing. These are now Papua New Guinea and West Papau (the former an independent country, the later a part of Indonesia).

This is a relatively short book at 190 pages, and I considered the first half very good, trending to 4 or possibly 5 stars if it was sustained. Unfortunately it lost it's consistency and the second half was somehow less engaging than the first. There was also an unfortunate and necessary tendency to repetition in this book - which the author picked up on and mentioned a few times himself, so not sure why it couldn't have been eliminated at editing. I don't just mean the times the text reads “as I expand on in chapter X”, but full sentences replicating information previously offered. There are perhaps circumstances where reinforcement was warranted, but I did find this irritating as a reader.

But so as not to dwell on the negatives - Davies writes a well rounded anthropological study of the tribal people around Wabag in the PNG highlands. He remains settled in a village for the first half of the book before heading across the border to West Papua, and then the chapters take on a themes rather than events - by which I mean there is a chapter on air surveys, one on some stone monoliths, then a chapter on a particular valley, one on penis gourds and one on the complexities of religion.

One interesting aspect which recurs through the book, one I have not heard of before, or seen mention of since, is the authors suggestion of ‘first people' who lived before the tribal Papuans and are considered ‘high culture'. These are people associated with intricate stonework (ancient mortar and pestles are found and predate the Papuan tribal people), a discovered ruin of a lost city, pottery shards, a discovered 2000 year old millstone (matching Egyptian finds), stones which are discovered in the Highlands which match Egyptian maces (also very similar to Incan maces). As well as Egypt, Davies also associates these first people with the Middle East or Northern India. This topic doesn't really go beyond speculation and the suggestion of future research, but it was interesting. A quick google brought up nothing to suggest there is anything to this.

Another minor annoyance was the lack of photographs - in this edition (Travel Book Club) there are none, but the author frequently mentions in the text the large number of photos he takes and what he takes them of - which sound incredible. Perhaps they are provided in the original Robert Hale edition, as it is common enough that they are not reproduced in the book club editions.

4 stars to start, but it wasn't sustained and so ends at 3 stars.