Implications of the Kuk research
The multidisciplinary evidence from Kuk has established the New Guinea region as an early centre of agricultural development and plant domestication. This research has led to the development of a contingent approach to early agriculture; namely, interpretations of early agriculture need to be developed in terms of the practices and resources in different regions of the world, rather than according to a ‘one size fits all' template.
Such an approach has more general applicability and can assist with characterizing current chronological and geographic disparities between the evidence for plant domestication and cultivation in some regions of the wet tropics, such as the lowland neotropics.[1029]The research at Kuk also has far-reaching implications for understanding the long-term history of regions beyond New Guinea. Foremost among these, the cultivation of bananas at Kuk c. 7,000-6,400 years ago has provided a geographic and chronological anchor for genetic and phytogeographic interpretations of the domestication and dispersal of most significant cultivar groups of this plant.[1030] These interpretations track west from New Guinea, around the Indian Ocean, and terminate in West Africa over 2,000 years ago.[1031] Similar geodomestication pathways have yet to be reconstructed for other New Guinea domesticates, including breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis), sago (Metroxylon sagu), sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum), and some taro and yam varieties.
The westward dispersal of vegetatively propagated plants from New Guinea, such as those listed above, indicates dispersal under forms of cultivation that are currently undocumented archaeologically.[1032] Plants dispersed across a mosaic of landscapes in island Southeast Asia that included forms of cultivation. The exact timing and cultural associations of these dispersals are uncertain, as are the forms of agriculture with which they are associated.
The eastward dispersal of these plants from New Guinea and the forms of agriculture with which they are associated are clearer, because they are associated with the colonization of Remote Oceania. However, the historical processes through which plant domesticates from New Guinea became important subsistence and commercial crops across vast regions of the wet tropics in the Old World, as well as parts of the New World, remain to be elicited.Plants have also dispersed eastwards from Southeast Asia and been incorporated into cultivation practices in the highlands of New Guinea in the distant past. The wax gourd and probably the bottle gourd were grown in the highlands at least 2,000 years ago. Additionally, in the mid twentieth century, kudzu (Pueraria lobata), an Asian domesticate, was reported to be grown in parts of the highlands.[1033] Consequently, plant movements into and out of the New Guinea region are nothing new. Similar processes have been ongoing for millennia. These plant movements have the potential to shed considerable light on inter-regional connections during the Holocene, as well as subsequent transformations in cultivation practices and social life.