As it says in the title, why didn't New Guinea develop an advanced civilisation like those in Eurasia and the Americas? It was among the first places on earth to develop agriculture, it's relatively large, it has an OK crop package and it's pretty fertile.
 
not sure it has OK crop package, it appear as highland civilization only. there are story of people die of starvation if they don't brought enough food, because jungle isn't nutritious. Its crop package probably too limited to unite the island. There are even ethnic difference between coastal and highland.
 
Wasn't another problem with New Guinea that it's rough terrain (multiple mountain ranges covered with jungle) basically isolated every valley from the outside world, I mean it had the largest amount of language families per square kilometre in the whole world.

Also apparently the idea of a New Guinean civilization was already discussed here. (I accidentally stumbled on it while wondering whether anybody already had fallen on the idea of them adopting slash-and-char agriculture.)
 
Wasn't another problem with New Guinea that it's rough terrain (multiple mountain ranges covered with jungle) basically isolated every valley from the outside world, I mean it had the largest amount of language families per square kilometre in the whole world.

This. Each valley was basically on its own, and the lack of exchange and scale was definitely not conducive to further civilization development.
 
The terrain is really, really rugged. Steep mountain ridges isolate clans in their valleys, thick, hyper-tropical jungle making travel very difficult. Remember those documentaries, 'Lost Land of the...' ? In one, the expedition was trying to reach the temperate montaine forest above similar jungle. IIRC, it was taking them up to an hour to clamber each hundred metres of slope.

I've read that the Japanese lost an army into the mountains. The well equipped force headed South into the ranges, lost radio contact. They were not attacked or ambushed, the jungle just swallowed them.

To show how difficult the terrain, IIRC, an early orbital radar pass found an entire mountain range and valley complex which had gone un-noticed, un-mapped...
 
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