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Date Posted: 03:00:14 01/29/00 Sat
Author: Anonymous
Subject: Corrections/additions. A bit about how agriculture came about
In reply to: 's message, "The signicance of the Kuk Valley in the WHP" on 00:32:23 01/27/00 Thu

I didn't see this article. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Your comments about the weaknesses of that article are spot on.

I'm not sure if all aspects of this early agriculture are clear to others who might visit this forum. I'll elaborate a little bit. These drainage ditches were not for kaukau, because it is the original taro cultivars, not kaukau, that is most dependent on water. Also, these ditches are many thousands of years older than when kaukau first came into the highlands. Kaukau is from the New World, and Portugese explorers in the 1500's are the most likely source of kaukau reaching New Guinea shores. The kaukau wouldn't have reached the highlands until probably at least a hundred or more years later.

New Guinea's forests aren't quite as easy to hunt and gather in, compared to tropical forests of the continents. There just aren't that many fruits and nuts available that evolved for large animal use. Why? Because compared to the continents, New Guinea's tropical forests don't have many large animals. So that put more pressure on people to find an alternative to hunting and gathering, and that might be an important reason why agriculture appeared in New Guinea before any other known place in the world. The environment put more pressure on people to do things differently.

There is evidence in many highland places of very early agriculture, including Kainantu area. We only have Wahgi valley as our piece of evidence, but it probably was occurring in many other places. However, parts of the country that had periodic drought would be the kind of environment that would more favour irrigation systems. Destroying the valley forests makes water more problematic during the dry season too. Generally it's hard to make lowland valleys into kunai (unless they are alluvial soil valleys where the trees become quite stressed during dry season, and thus are easier to burn and eliminate), compared to highland valleys. Plants grow slower in the highlands, so it's easier to keep the plants down with periodic fire, compared to the lowlands.

The Kuk area bigman you're talking about is Onga. What a great story, and if you'll recall, Andrew Strathern did nothing more than just translate Onga's own story, to make that book! Onga was still alive in the early 1990's although he would have to be dead now. THERE was a leader, a real leader. Puts our current leaders to shame, doesn't it?

Your comments about civilisation and agriculture are very perceptive. Consider this possibility: the introduction of kaukau allowed a completely different system to develop in the highlands than what occurred when people made those drainage ditches and were kaukau dependent. It allowed pigs to be grown in abundance, and would have completely changed the wealth and exchange system. Mind you, this all would have had to have happened in less than the last 400 years. The highlands population would have probably increased rapidly following the introduction of kaukau. That would have caused more land shortage, and more fighting. In other words, the fighting which seems to be traditional may have flowed out of a change in society which took place only a few hundred years ago.

Those are just my thoughts and you are right. More people should know about this great thing about PNG history and it should be further investigated. The National Museum sells a poster showing the archeological sites in their bookstore.

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