Hamtai

The Hamtai are the largest of the Angu or Änga peoples, once called the Kukukuku, who hold the cold high valleys of the Kratke Range where the Eastern Highlands, Morobe and Gulf provinces meet. Their tongue, also known as Kapau or Watut, is the most populous of the Angan family of Trans–New Guinea languages and splits into the Wenta, Howi, Kaintiba and Hamtai dialects.

Although short in stature, the highlanders were dreaded by the farming villages of the lower valleys for their sudden armed raids, and in the chill mountain air they dressed in grass skirts and cloaks of beaten bark.

The Aseki district in Hamtai country is also the home of their distinctive smoked mummies, a custom maintained for centuries before outside contact reached the mountains, in which ancestors' bodies were preserved on cliff sites above the villages.