ABSTRACT
Until very recently there were few demographic data on Papua New Guinea. The first comprehensive national census was not undertaken until 1980 and the only subsequent national census in 1990 was incomplete and inaccurate. Early population data were gathered by census patrols, but there is virtually no information on population change until the 1960s. Fragmentary historical records show that in some places there were population declines in the years after contact, but probably not on the scale that occurred elsewhere in the Pacific. Only in the tiny western islands of Manus was there a virtual extinction of populations (Cilento 1928), but a slow and steady population decline occurred in parts of New Ireland, where malaria and gonorrhoea were the principal causes of the decline (Scragg 1954), and subsequently in some parts of the highlands (Bowers 1971). More recently there were declines in societies contacted only in the 1970s and 1980s (Jenkins 1987). The ‘fatal impact’ that followed contact has therefore been quite widespread.
