Arandai Jungle

The Arandai jungle lies on the southern side of the Bird's Head of western New Guinea, behind the shore of Bintuni Bay, the inner bay of Berau Gulf. The bay is a long inlet with extensive marshes and one of the largest mangrove forests in the world, and the land behind it is a maze of rivers, swamp and dense tropical forest through which travel went by water rather than along any road.

The people of this country spoke Arandai and its close relatives Kemberano and Dombano, a cluster of related local varieties along the rivers rather than a single people with a fixed boundary. Their neighbours lay across the sea routes of the Papuan coast, which the sultans of Tidore claimed as tribute-paying shores, and forest products from the Bird's Head reached the spice-trading ports of the Moluccas by way of coastal canoe traders.