Human world
“In the beginning there was nothing except water,
and the land came out of the water.”
Saliki of Balimo Village, Papua New Guinea;
(from a song on the origins of the Gogodala people)
The ocean dominates life in most of Oceania. Islands are often small, and the distances between them can be vast. Because each island’s resources were limited, Islanders exchanged things such as food and raw materials to survive.
Good trading depended on friendly relations between people from different islands and on maintaining these social relationships. The exchange of specially made objects helped to do this by developing social bonds between people.
This situation changed when Europeans arrived, but some older ways have survived.
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