Editing History of Papua New Guinea (section)

==European contact==
{{More citations needed section|date=May 2021}}
[[File:Thevenot - Hollandia Nova detecta 1644.png|thumb|350px|A typical map from the [[Golden Age of Dutch cartography|Golden Age of Netherlandish cartography]]. [[Australasia]] during the Golden Age of Dutch exploration and discovery (ca. 1590s–1720s): including [[New Guinea#European contact|Nova Guinea]] ([[New Guinea]]), [[New Holland (Australia)|Nova Hollandia]] ([[mainland Australia]]), [[Van Diemen's Land]] ([[Tasmania]]), and [[New Zealand place names|Nova Zeelandia]] ([[History of New Zealand|New Zealand]]).]]
When [[Europe]]ans first arrived, inhabitants of New Guinea and nearby islands, whose technologies included bone, wood, and stone tools, had a productive agricultural system. They traded along the coast (mainly in pottery, shell ornaments and foodstuffs) and in the interior (exchanging forest products for shells and other sea products).

The first known Europeans to sight New Guinea were probably [[Portuguese people|Portuguese]] and [[Spanish people|Spanish]] navigators sailing in the South Pacific in the early part of the 16th century. In 1526–1527 the Portuguese explorer [[Jorge de Menezes]] accidentally came upon the principal island and is credited with naming it "Papua", after a [[Malay language|Malay]] word for the frizzled quality of [[Melanesia]]n people's hair. The Spaniard [[Yñigo Ortiz de Retez]] applied the term "New Guinea" to the island in 1545 because of a perceived resemblance between the islands' inhabitants and those found on the [[Guinea (region)|African Guinea]] coast.

Although European navigators visited the islands and explored their coastlines thereafter, European researchers knew little of the inhabitants until the 1870s, when Russian anthropologist [[Nicholai Miklukho-Maklai]] made a number of expeditions to New Guinea, spent several years living among native tribes, and described their way of life in a comprehensive treatise.

[[File:British flag raised on new guinea annexed by queensland.jpg|thumb|British flag raised in Queensland 1883]]