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Date Posted: 00:32:23 01/27/00 Thu
Author: Anonymous
Subject: The signicance of the Kuk Valley in the WHP

How many of you who read Peter Korugl's story in the National, Highlands Bulletin (01/26/2000) entitled "The ancient drainage system uncovered - Rewriting history" thought that we were short changed for what should have been a rather interesting piece of history on what is now a world renown archaeological find in the Kuk valley? Well I do and think PK could have researched existing materials on the Kuk agricultural drains and provide the details missing from his last story. Professor Stratherm an anthropologist then based in the highlands had a film done on one Kuk Valley Bigman (can't recall his name) also featured the 9-10,000 year drainage system in the 3 hour film documentary. UPNG had for a while being sending archaeology students to the Kuk Valley for field study and reports can be found in the Sir Somare Library.

Now what is the significance of the Kuk Valley find? Well we know the highlanders are excellent farmers, and the system of drains is still practiced today throughout the Waghi valley and up to the city of Hagen. In fact anyone travelling along the old highlands highway, baksait long Banz igo na kamaut long Ogelbeng would see a major drainage barret acrooss the Waghi Valley. I presume the colonial administartion got the idea from the locals.

PK thinks that we cannot learn from this ancient drainage system, since "we have no record, written or otherwise, to tell us anything else about the Highlands in those days." He then pose questions about the existence of tribes, if they fought amongst themselves with what weapons, whether they lived in houses and traded. Well this much is of interest to me because many of PK's questions could easily be explained from further study of the Kuk Valley agricultural tradition. Kuk Valley easily rivals other ancient agricultural systems as in Tehuacan in Mexico, in Mesopotamia along the Tigris valleys and many others. We know of course what followed were the great civilizations of Babylon and the Aztec empire and so forth.

I am recall that in my undergraduate archaeology course I was told two preconditions of civilizations are formal social organization, often part of some religious belief system and agriculture. In the case of the Kuk valley agriculture system it was quite extensive and advanced, which means there was much more to draining the swamps to cultivate kaukau and other vegetables. Such an operation required to initially plan, then remove the soil and then maintain the passages from weeds must have required some high level of organization. Even the tools used to excavate the soil required fair amount of engineering ingenuity. They lived in houses possibly organized in a compound and close to the fields. Did they fight, probably defended themselves, but a society involved in large scale agriculture would not have had the time to wage long drawn out wars.

I gather in a follow up on this story PK will do us service by researching the Kuk agriculture tradition more thoroughly and run it for the public. Several Minj academics at UPNG and the agricultural department could throw some light into this interesting piece of history. The Kuk finds should not be mentioned in passing, because it means more to PNG. It is part of a history that was repeated around the globe thousands of years ago. It has scientific and historical significance.

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