The 'sleeping giant' hypothesis and New Guinea's place in the prehistory of Greater Near Oceania

Linguists studying the Austronesian languages claim to demonstrate a human migration out of southern China, Taiwan or the northern Philippines that transformed the peoples and cultures of the Pacific. However, while local conditions favored divergence in customs, ways of speech and physical appearance during the Pleistocene, by 6,000 years ago New Guineans and their neighbors east and west were in the throes of major environmental changes. These changes may have profoundly affected how intimately people were in touch with one another near and far in the ancient voyaging corridor between Asia and the Pacific that flows just off New Guinea's northern coastline.