This forum established after an incident of witch hunts and tracing attempts was observed to occur against students who spoke out on a topic others wanted silenced, on another forum. Our site is dedicated to those students.
>

VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, [7] ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 17:45:35 01/29/00 Sat
Author: Anonymous
Subject: The signicance of the Kuk Valley in the WHP
In reply to: 's message, "The signicance of the Kuk Valley in the WHP" on 00:32:23 01/27/00 Thu

Thanks for your interesting posting.
Good comments.

Maybe its time to get paleobotanists involved. They might give us a further clue to what was cultivated by examining pollens from these areas. If they used seed generating plants then perhaps some seeds should still be preserved in the soil. The melanesian agriculturalists however, used sucklings or tubers for planting, unlike the Asians and Americans natives, who used seeds. Therefore, what ever was cultivated at Kuk had to have been domesticated in New Guinea and readily transplanted. This points to the the taro, some species of yams or bananas, all of which are native to New Guinea.

Intricate drainage patterns sprung up in several parts of the world at about the same (geological) time. In some places they were used to remove excess water, in others to retain or introduce water; much as is done today with modern machinery. In still other areas they were used as barriers during fights.

Thus the Kuk system was used for drainage while those at Yonki were used to retain mositure. The biggest ditch is five meters wide and four meters deep and has been traced for three Kilometers to its outfall. Smaller ditches feed into this bigger so whoever dug it clearly ubderstood basic hydrology. This large ditch has been dated at 6000 years old. Others go back to 9000 years and my guess is that these systems were constructed in repsonse to the increased precipitation brought about by global warming, as the ice retreated fruther north towards the polar regions.
The increase in prepcipitaion occurred golbally because even the Sahara desert was wettest during this time, 4000 to 9000 years ago, then began to revert to desert ever since.

Moreever, the drains at Kuk show evidence of abandonment and resumption, possibly related to volcanic eruptions, whose ashes have been found in these ditches. Perhaps these eruptions reduced the population level sufficiently for there to be less need to maintain a highly efficeint food production system.Or perhaphs it merely drove the inhabitants away.

The Yonki terraces were natural to begin with, but have been cut into a desired shape, with and the base levelled as if to plant something. Given the long dry season in this part, these terrace would have rainfall collected runoff and retained moisture in the soil. This is not entirely dissimmilar to what is practised in the arid regions of the world in order to encourage the regeneration of native flora.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-8
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.