Why I can't stop thinking about Papua New Guinea over at Not not Talmud. This is not an expert come to explain PNG to us, but a guy who was just curious, did some research, and passes it along. The way life should be, I think.
I knew the PNG Highlands were isolated and discovered late, but not that isolated, and that late.
This all changed shortly after Australians found gold in New Guinea in 1926 and started mining the surrounding territory. Looking for more gold, an intrepid Australian named Mick Leahy decided to venture as far inland as he could — making progress up the never before penetrated mountains.
To cut the story very short, in 1930 Leahy accidentally stumbled into the eastern edge of the highlands, only to find that the highlands were not empty mountains, but rather lush green valleys with no malaria and with roughly a million people living in them.
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I found the used book only on Alibris for nearly $100, but it's possible to set up a free account at The Internet Archive and borrow it digitally: https://archive.org/details/firstcontact00conn/page/n13/mode/2up
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