Lots of curious comments in this thread but I thought the following was worth giving a response;
Didn't those peasants wear the bones of the ancestors through their noses, and caper around naked apart from ferret pelts and strings of ritual turnips? Especially at harvest, when they howled barely understandable spontaneous invocations to the rain gods?

Ferrets weren't common in PNG (neither were turnips; I don't think either is present there yet) and so didn't appear in traditional PNG cultural expressions but their counterparts (pigs' teeth, bird plumage and various plant parts) certainly did. And the Motu could, up to a few years ago, recount the details of their ancestral lineages back for at least 1200 years, with some aspects corroborated by dating volcanic eruptions scientifically.

While the first white fellas to see them might have considered the Motu ignorant, subsequent experience has taught us otherwise. That experience could be brought to bear on our understanding of peasants wear[ing] the bones of the ancestors through their noses, and caper[ing] around naked apart from ferret pelts and strings of ritual turnips? Especially at harvest, when they howled barely understandable spontaneous invocations to the rain gods?

Cheers, Rowan