NEW GUINEA, once considered a technological backwater, has been revealed as a birthplace of agriculture, an accolade shared only with a select few regions around the world. The independent emergence of agriculture in New Guinea also contradicts the widely held belief that plant cultivation inevitably leads to urbanisation and hierarchical societies.
鈥淚n New Guinea, there are very egalitarian societies and fairly dispersed settlements, but it has agriculture of as great an antiquity as anywhere,鈥� says Simon Haberle of the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, who was involved in the research.
Tim Denham of the ANU led a team that conducted a range of surveys designed to reveal the ancient ecology of Kuk swamp in the highlands of New Guinea. The oldest archaeological features found by the team were pits, holes and runnels consistent with planting, harvesting and drainage. Radiocarbon dating and analysis of insects, pollen and starch from sediments date these features to about 8000 BC. Evidence of more organised agriculture, including mounds of earth designed to aerate soils in poorly drained areas, date from about 5000 BC (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1086420).
Advertisement
Claims that agriculture originated in New Guinea have been made before, but never substantiated. Some researchers argue that the practice spread to the region from South-East Asia about 3500 years ago. But Haberle says the new findings confirm agriculture emerged in the island at about the same time as it began in other regions of the world, such as the Yellow river basin in China.
Katharina Neumann of the Institute for Pre and Proto-History at the University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany, agrees. 鈥淣ew Guinea has turned into one of the few pristine centres of early plant domestication,鈥� she says. The other accepted centres are in the 鈥渇ertile crescent鈥�, which covered much of what is now Iraq, as well as China, Mesoamerica, South America and the eastern United States (see Graphic).
The new findings support the idea that the warmer climate following the last ice age was the catalyst for agriculture. However, it conflicts with the assumption that urbanisation swiftly followed. Although towns and cities sprang up in other regions, the process did not occur in New Guinea. 鈥淭his suggests that alternative trajectories were possible,鈥� Haberle says.