Sidestep: Papuan songs of Giants

Papua New Guinea being a country with approximately 850 languages. They have so many languages as they very rarely mixed or interberd, unlike Polynesia. Therefore their individual stories are regarded as ‘pure’ in that sense. The area we focus on in this post is one so remote, most did not come into contact with Europeans until the 1930’s. And these stories (via song) are very old. Inhabitants of Papua may have been there 50-60,000 years... as long as the Sentinelese in the Andaman Islands.

The area is the Pangia district where the Wiru and the Duna regarded the ability to sing these songs (Pikono) as a specialized skill and highly valued. No instruments or dance accompanies the performance who is usually seated.

The main plots and characters of Duna sung pikono are very informative about the ‘cannibal giants’ (auwape), the ‘pikono boys’, and ‘beautiful women’. The cannibal giants were the first human-like beings to inhabit the earth, but were not fully human. (this is very similar to the Biblical account of how giants came to be - so who did the Wiru hear it from?). The story-world of pikono is located in the ancestral past at a time when the cannibal giants and full-fledged humans of the present form were both alive, albeit in different zones. Mediating between these two kinds of beings is the figure of the payame ima, ‘Female Spirit’ who typically takes the form of a beautiful young woman and acts as a guardian to the pikono boy, helping him defeat the cannibal ogre and grow into mature manhood. Most pikono tales involve a journey undertaken by one or more of the boys, who encounter obstacles and struggle to overcome them. Even the pikono boys fight among themselves, pitting brother against brother, a good one is nurtured by the Female Spirit, and the other a bad one, who teams up with the cannibal giants. One giant has a name - Auwape.

The pikono people and the cannibal giants are enemies so they don’t live together. However the pikono boys fight amongst each other as well. But later when they want to fight the cannibal giants, they will join together. A detailed description of a beautiful woman or a battle and suchlike only occurs in pikono.

The Duna (Yuna) people of Lake Kopiago in Papua New Guinea’s Southern Highlands Province live in a mountainous, forested area that is scored by streams and lakes. Residents build their dwellings on hillsides or within valley pockets at altitudes ranging from 4,000 to 6,500 feet above sea level. The region is impressive for its limestone outcrops and sinkholes. The landscape’s ashen stony images were (and continue to be) a source of mythological narratives about races of giant cannibalistic ancestral beings whose ossified remains were transformed into limestone. The limestone crannies and caves have provided homes for the secondary burial of human remains and the secluded dwellings for forest spirits.

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The point of this post being... yet another story (albeit one which is sung) of giants that are part human, cannibals, and are not good (therefore seen as evil). This is from a race of people only discovered in the 1930's, who have legends like other races in every corner of this planet, and their legends existed long before Western ideas and biblical teaching were ever brought to them.

Why is this? Considering all humans are supposed to have come from one region, Africa - (evolution) or Mesopotamia (creation), these stories must have come from a single source at one time.