Aneme Jungle

Aneme belongs to the forested country of southeastern New Guinea, within Melanesia, the Pacific subregion stretching from New Guinea to Fiji. Papua New Guinea forms one of its four independent countries. This broad setting helps place the dense forest zone among coasts, mountain ranges and island chains rather than as an isolated patch of wilderness.

Human settlement in Melanesia is ancient. Under the southern dispersal model, people moved from Africa along southern Asia between roughly 50,000 and 100,000 years ago; the first migration into Sahul, then a landmass joining New Guinea and Australia, occurred more than 40,000 years ago. Some communities settled the region that is at that time New Guinea and developed enduring connections between forest, river and coast.

Much later, Austronesian migrants arrived, probably between 4000 and 3000 BC. They settled mainly along the north coast of New Guinea and on islands to its north and east, meeting the older Papuan-speaking populations already established across the region. Southeastern New Guinea's forests therefore belong to a landscape of great antiquity, crossed by communities speaking many languages and shaped by both long inland settlement and later maritime exchange.