The Chimbu are an ethnic and linguistic group that inhabit, Koro, and Wahgi valleys in Papua New Guinea’s hilly central highlands. They reside in steep mountains between 1,400 and 2,400 meters above sea level, with a moderate temperature.
They live in Simbu Province, which covers 6,500 square kilometers and has a population of roughly 180,000 people. Archaeological evidence from the Chimbu area and other upland locations suggests habitation as far back as 30,000 years ago, possibly with agriculture developing 8,000 years ago.
According to legend, the Chimbu tribes originated at Womkama in the Chimbu Valley, when a supernatural man chased away the husband of the first couple living there and fathered the ancestors of the current Chimbu tribal groups. The term “Chimbu” was given to the people by the first Australian explorers in 1934 who heard the word “Simbu” (an expression of a pleasant surprise in the Kuman language) exclaimed by the locals when they first met.
The Chimbu have used dancing and body paint to scare adversaries and gain a psychological advantage over the years. Their opponents are led to believe that the Chimbu are not human and possess magical abilities by painting their bodies in white clay and ash. Today, Chimbu/Bugamo dancers paint bones and skulls on their bodies to prepare for a festival, for music and dance rather than for tribal war.
Before Christianity, there was no organized priesthood or worship in the indigenous Chimbu religion. The sun was regarded as a major fertility spirit. Respect for ancestral spirits was essential, and they were appeased through the sacrifice of pigs for the general welfare of the living.
The Chimbu live traditional lives, looking after their pigs and crops, and most of their houses are oval or rectangular, with dirt floors, low thatched roofs, and walls woven from flattened reeds. With pigs being by far the most important domesticated animal to the Chimbu, there is the pig ceremony (bugla ingu), the largest exchange ceremony at which hundreds or even thousands of pigs are slaughtered, cooked, and distributed to friends and affines.
Infants and children of both sexes are cared for primarily by their mothers and other sisters, however, by age 6 or 7, boys move in with their fathers if they live in a separate men’s house.
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