Kombai

The Kombai are a Papuan people of the South Papua rainforest interior, in the Mappi and Boven Digoel river country. Their name comes from khoba, meaning people, and their Kombai language forms the Kombai-Wanggom branch of the Greater Awyu family.

They live in patrilineal clans, each holding a forest territory called mburu with sweet-potato and banana gardens, sago swamps and pig-hunting grounds with dogs; fish are stunned with root poison in dammed streams.

Their most distinctive custom is building treehouses: the sacred ramo dumo of the clan elder stands at the territory's centre, guarded by bowmen, tall walina serve as men's lookouts, and low ibena houses serve women in childbirth and sago-grub feasts binding neighbouring clans. Like other interior Papuans, they descend from populations established on the island long before Austronesian seafarers reached its coasts around 1500 BCE.