The idea of New Guinea as a centre of early agriculture and plant domestication is, at first glance, strange and confronting.
The region does not seem to conform to global stereotypes of early agricultural development. Many of the supposed characteristics of ‘Neolithic' cultures, such as pottery, were not present at the time agriculture developed.
There was no cereal domestication; indeed, agriculture has traditionally been based on vegetative propagation rather than seed-based reproduction. Early agriculture in the New Guinea region also lacks many of the oft-associated, socially transformative aspects documented elsewhere, including large-scale and hierarchical political units, urbanism, and the so-called ‘rise of civilization'.Although New Guinea does not appear to fit traditional portrayals, multidisciplinary investigations at Kuk Swamp in the upper Wahgi valley have demonstrated that the island is a centre of early and, possibly, independent agricultural development.[978] The wetland at Kuk was periodically manipulated or drained for plant exploitation and cultivation throughout the Holocene. Claims for agriculture dating to c. 10,000 years ago are contentious, whereas evidence for the construction of mounds on the wetland margin and cultivation of bananas at c. 7,000-6,400 cal bp is robust. From approximately 4,500-4,000 years ago to the present, the wetland has been periodically drained, using ditches for cultivation. Other wetland sites with similar types of archaeological and palaeoecological evidence occur elsewhere in the highlands.[979]
Archaeological findings in the highlands corroborate genetic evidence indicating that New Guinea has been a significant centre of plant domestication. Several globally important subsistence and cash crops, including bananas and sugarcane, as well as possibly taro and yams, were initially domesticated in the New Guinea region.[980] Furthermore, the global significance of Kuk to agricultural history has been recognized: in 2008 it became Papua New Guinea's first UNESCO World Heritage Site.[981]