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New Guinea
The world's second-largest island, a wall of rainforest and glaciated peaks
North of Australia lies an island of staggering wildness and diversity, the second-largest on the planet and arguably the most biologically and culturally rich. New Guinea rises from steaming coastal swamps to glaciers near the equator, its rugged spine crowned by peaks higher than any in Australia or Europe. Within its rainforests live tree kangaroos, birds of paradise and thousands of species still being catalogued, while its valleys shelter hundreds of distinct human cultures speaking more languages than any comparable place on Earth.
New Guinea covers roughly 785,000 square kilometres and is divided politically down the middle: the western half forms the Indonesian provinces of Papua, while the eastern half is the independent nation of Papua New Guinea. A great central cordillera runs the island's length, culminating in Puncak Jaya at 4,884 metres, the highest island peak in the world and one of the few equatorial summits still bearing glaciers. The island sits where the Australian and Pacific plates collide, throwing up mountains, feeding volcanoes and shaking the land with frequent earthquakes. Vast lowland rivers like the Sepik and Fly wind through some of the largest intact rainforest left on Earth.
New Guinea may be the most linguistically diverse region in the world, home to well over 800 languages, a fragmentation born of rugged terrain that kept communities isolated for millennia. Agriculture arose independently in its highlands some nine thousand years ago, among the earliest anywhere. Western contact came late and unevenly, and parts of the interior were unknown to outsiders until the twentieth century. Today the island wrestles with the pressures of logging, mining and a warming climate, even as its forests remain a frontier of scientific discovery.