ABSTRACT
Chimbu have lived for thousands of years in the highlands of New Guinea. Densely settled on steep hillsides and narrow valleys, they had been discovering, adapting, inventing, modifying, trading with and learning from neighboring peoples to develop to the Chimbu society of 1933. There were contacts with outsiders on the coast which had repercussions in social reaction and culture change in Chimbu before 1933. In the last years some few objects of western manufacture reached them through trade with neighboring mountain peoples. We cannot be sure of any direct contact with outsiders (see Willis 1969) until Leahy, who in his first (1931) exploration of the Eastern highlands discovered the Dunantina, Asaro and Bena valleys. Then the Taylor, Leahy and Spinks expedition was organized in 1933. Working westward through hitherto unknown regions, they reached the Chimbu area, north of the Wahgi, early in April and from that time onwards we can follow some kind of occasionally written record of the Chimbu.
