Thank you very much for the information, John.
[John]
> The Book was "A Time to Plant and a Time to Uproot: A History of
> Papua New Guinean Agriculture" Edited by Donald Denoon and Catherine
> Snowdon, published by the Institute for Papua New Guinean Studies,
> Port Moresby. Amongst indigenous cultivars included in the
> Australasian Vavilov zone are sugar cane (Saccharum sp.), sago
> (Metroxylon sp.), one variety of taro (Colocasia sp.), the yams
> (Dioscorea bulbifera, hispida, nummularia and pentaphila)
> Australomusa bananas (Australomusa sp.), possibly coconuts (Cocos
> nucifera), Pandanus nuts (Pandanus sp.) and a varity of local crops
> (eg. pitpit (Setaria palmifolia)) not widely known outside of the
> South East Asian region to where they were introduced from New Guinea
> deep in the past, including Amaranthus sp. Rungia, Oenanathe.
[Alexander]
As far as I understand, this zone doesn't include Australia. Right?
[J]
> This
> has led Ethnobotanists to suggest (before the discovery of recent
> evidence at Kuk and the Solomons) "the extent to which plants
> indigenous to the island (of New Guinea) are cultivated in gardens
> here makes it reasonable to suggest that agriculture could have begun
> in New Guinea independently of South East Asia." (p35)
[A]
And what is your personal opinion, John?
Are there 2 independent zones in the Indopacific region (somewhere in
Indochina and in New Guinea)?
Or the Indochina center is a secondary one, a kind of "subsidiary" for the
PNG center?
Or modern Papuans and Melanesians are not direct descendants of those who
dealt with the taro starch 28,000 BP?
I think that we should start from the model "every cultivar has been
domesticated only once".
[J]
> This forms part of the eastern subdivision of the Indo-Malesian
> Floral Region, the richest in plants useful to humankind. The very
> diversity of cultivars when compared with other areas of known biotic
> potential (eg. the Americas, the Middle East etc) suggests a far
> greater depth of cultivation than these other regions, a depth
> extending well back before the end of the last Ice Age. The fact
> that we now have evidence of domesticates going back 25-28,000 years
> ago, gives some length to the depths of time we are considering.
[A]
Such time depth could help us to explain the unique language superfamilies
density in PNG. If the process of the divergention started so early and none
of branches had a serious technological advantage to press out the
neighbours, the picture should be as complex as we see.
[J]
> Unfortunately plant materials survive poorly in the trops and it is a
> lot harder to recognise domesticated crop remains in this part of the
> world (when compared to the arid-grains of the Middle East). In any
> case, it seems that a complete dependence upon cultivation such as we
> see in the Middle East from 8,500 BP onwards, never occurred in this
> region.
[A]
And what about many modern (say, just before the Europeans came) Papua
groups? Can you imagine them without gardens and pigs?
[J]
> In any case,
> the priority currently given to the seed and grain crops in the
> Middle East as the first cultivars may be in need of a recent
> revision fairly soon.
[A]
What do you mean? A non-cereals (based on roots) phase in the Near East
agriculture?
But it is a non-equatorial zone, so an analogy might here not work.
Alexander