The Lost World of  Irian Jaya by Robert Mitton __________________________________________________ Summary  A few weeks before he died, Bob Mitton explained that he wanted to write this book 'to make the beauty and intriguing variety of Irian Jaya more generally known'. He saw a great urgency for the publication of a book such as this. He felt that the part of the world he considered 'the nearest to paradise' and which had flourished so splendidly for so long in isolation, was now disintegrating, largely because of that isolation, because little was known about what made Irian Jaya unique and what made the forces that were conspiring to bring about its destruction.  Bob Mitton did not have a vested interest in Irian Jaya or a professional axe to grind; he simply loved the country and its people. He was also a serious observer who was able to call on skills from various disciplines to help him to study and record what he saw. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of this remote and startling Indonesian province: its botany, geology, geography, history, prehistory, art, and anthropology. During the six years he spent in Irian Jaya, he lived, worked and travelled all over the province He was said to be a fund of knowledge of Iran Jaya and what had been published about it; his overall knowledge, with its unusual interdisciplinary base and wide geographic range, was said to be unique. In notes, letters, diaries and, above all, photographs, he compiled a unique document of his experiences of the cultures and environments of the five distinct groups living along the Balim (Baliem) River, a particularly remote part of the world. Indeed, at that time, there were still groups of people who had never seen Europeans or Indonesians; still groups living a Stone Age style of existence; and still people who were head-hunters and cannibals. With political, social, and technological changes coming so rapidly, many of the cultures Mitton observed are now disintegrating, and his record is a sad but enthralling and irreplaceable portrait of a people and region that will never be quite the same again. Book Condition Brown cloth boards with gilt title on spine. Pencilled notes on half-title page rubbed out. First edition. Colour and monochrome illustrations. Minor wear; lower board corners very slightly worn; back cover bumped on top edge with a couple of marks (see pics). Clean text throughout, very good in mylar protected dust wrapper. Please check pictures and don't hesitate to ask if you have any queries! 47