Could New Guinea have had a cradle of civilization?

Gabingston

Kicked
Funny, the next update for my TL involves New Guinea. Aside from that tidbit, I'm not sure. The New Guinean highlands might be too isolated and dissimilar climatically to the surrounding tropical lowlands for civilization to get a real start, but there is speculation that bananas and sugar cane both originated in New Guinea, so there was clearly some contact with the outside world.
 
It could happen. Say that a village strong in agriculture, plenty of chickens, pigs and crops got a larger than normal population. They then spread their dominance through the neighboring villages either through trade, conquest, intermarriage, alliance or all of them becoming the dominant culture. This eventually spreads to the coastline and to neighboring North Australia. They develop seaworthy canoes and by the arrival of the Polynesians their culture is strong enough to influence them. We know that Melanesians and Polynesians intermingled in the past, look at Fiji.
 
IIRC there's a semi-domesticated animal that's kept as pets/food by certain tribes in PNG that's kind of monkey-looking, but for the life of me I can't remember the name.
 
IIRC there's a semi-domesticated animal that's kept as pets/food by certain tribes in PNG that's kind of monkey-looking, but for the life of me I can't remember the name.
realistically, you're probably thinking of a tree kangaroo (i have no idea which animal you're referring to, but i know that tree kangaroos live in New Guinea and they may as well be called "marsupial monkeys" instead)
 
The trouble with New Guinea being a true cradle, in the sense where civilization develops there and then its norms and technology diffuses to surrounding regions, is that I don't really see it being outwardly focused. It is almost certainly going to find its start in the highlands, and if states consolidate from there it seems like they would be pretty focused on those highlands. It's agricultural technology would not function in the surrounding lowlands, so its primary relationship with the lowlands would be one of exploitation, using its surplus population to wage war and tributize the lowland tribes and make them send goods that cannot be easily procured in the highlands to them.

This could change, since we have about the same amount of time to play with as we did with Eurasian agricultural civilization, so conceivably an agricultural toolkit more workable to the surrounding lowlands could well develop, either as an innovation of the highlanders to colonize it and extract tribute more effectively or as an indigenous development of the lowlanders by example as highland society trickles down to them. But as a general rule all New Guinean civilizations will probably be less dynamic then their Eurasian counterparts simply by virtue of lacking easy access to a free flow of ideas and technology as occurred on the continent.

And this is all without knowing the answer to the most basic question that should inform all speculation about this topic: Why DIDN'T New Guinean highland agriculture blossom into "high civilization"?
 
The trouble with New Guinea being a true cradle, in the sense where civilization develops there and then its norms and technology diffuses to surrounding regions, is that I don't really see it being outwardly focused. It is almost certainly going to find its start in the highlands, and if states consolidate from there it seems like they would be pretty focused on those highlands. It's agricultural technology would not function in the surrounding lowlands, so its primary relationship with the lowlands would be one of exploitation, using its surplus population to wage war and tributize the lowland tribes and make them send goods that cannot be easily procured in the highlands to them.

This could change, since we have about the same amount of time to play with as we did with Eurasian agricultural civilization, so conceivably an agricultural toolkit more workable to the surrounding lowlands could well develop, either as an innovation of the highlanders to colonize it and extract tribute more effectively or as an indigenous development of the lowlanders by example as highland society trickles down to them. But as a general rule all New Guinean civilizations will probably be less dynamic then their Eurasian counterparts simply by virtue of lacking easy access to a free flow of ideas and technology as occurred on the continent.

And this is all without knowing the answer to the most basic question that should inform all speculation about this topic: Why DIDN'T New Guinean highland agriculture blossom into "high civilization"?
Luck?

The ancestors of Aztecs turned a crappy, barely edible grass into world's most important crop. Guys on South America gave us potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava and quinoa

Anyone familiar with potential domesticates n Papua New Guinea?
 
Someone should inform the natives that they lacked civilization.
I know the relativist argument about "civilization" is technically correct, but it's unhelpful in this instance. It's obvious what the OP means by "cradle of civilization"- a relatively urbanized, socially stratified, literate area with agriculture and politically centralized entities like Mesoamerica, the Andes , Mesopotamia, the Indus River Valley, etc.

The natives of New Guinea developed the technology and lifestyle that was suited for their environment, but they very clearly did not resemble civilizations like Sumeria or the Olmecs and couldn't really be described as a cradle of civilization.
 
The trouble with New Guinea being a true cradle, in the sense where civilization develops there and then its norms and technology diffuses to surrounding regions, is that I don't really see it being outwardly focused. It is almost certainly going to find its start in the highlands, and if states consolidate from there it seems like they would be pretty focused on those highlands. It's agricultural technology would not function in the surrounding lowlands, so its primary relationship with the lowlands would be one of exploitation, using its surplus population to wage war and tributize the lowland tribes and make them send goods that cannot be easily procured in the highlands to them.

This could change, since we have about the same amount of time to play with as we did with Eurasian agricultural civilization, so conceivably an agricultural toolkit more workable to the surrounding lowlands could well develop, either as an innovation of the highlanders to colonize it and extract tribute more effectively or as an indigenous development of the lowlanders by example as highland society trickles down to them. But as a general rule all New Guinean civilizations will probably be less dynamic then their Eurasian counterparts simply by virtue of lacking easy access to a free flow of ideas and technology as occurred on the continent.

And this is all without knowing the answer to the most basic question that should inform all speculation about this topic: Why DIDN'T New Guinean highland agriculture blossom into "high civilization"?
Only that?
How about volcanos close by. Like civilization ending type. Krakatau, tambora to name a couple. Lots of earthquakes.

Also its an island, though not always In geologic history.

So let's define cradle of civilization. No humans are African in origin. So unless you get more human type tribes in that region too Compete then. Well.. Then is what it is.

Now if we are talking where things really take off.. Okay let's go back say 20k years.. It's an island.. Let's go back 75k.. Still an island with a neighbor island that almost wipes out humanity.

Just not a great location for long term stability as well as the time involved with spreading civilization via canoe..

Loom at the migration maps. Humans on foot covered a fair amount of space pretty quickly when they decided to bail from. Africa. They also out muscled all other primates along the way or screwed them into the gene pool.

Could a great civilization sprout up there. Yes. Could it spread.. Yes.. Could d it do it quickly that's the question. Or if it does it slowly does it move in directions that the children build on their parents wealth and expand say into China.. Siberia.. Maybe cross over into North America.

When are you expecting this cradle gig to start? That would help answer alot of questions to pinpoint either how 1. Humans started.. Or 2. How civilization took off and spread
 
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Only that?
How about volcanos close by. Like civilization ending type. Krakatau, tambora to name a couple. Lots of earthquakes.

Also its an island, though not always In geologic history.

So let's define cradle of civilization. No humans are African in origin. So unless you get more human type tribes in that region too Compete then. Well.. Then is what it is.

Now if we are talking where things really take off.. Okay let's go back say 20k years.. It's an island.. Let's go back 75k.. Still an island with a neighbor island that almost wipes out humanity.

Just not a great location for long term stability as well as the time involved with spreading civilization via canoe..

Loom at the migration maps. Humans on foot covered a fair amount of space pretty quickly when they decided to bail from. Africa. They also out muscled all other primates along the way or screwed them into the gene pool.

Could a great civilization sprout up there. Yes. Could it spread.. Yes.. Could d it do it quickly that's the question. Or if it does it slowly does it move in directions that the children build on their parents wealth and expand say into China.. Siberia.. Maybe cross over into North America.

When are you expecting this cradle gig to start? That would help answer alot of questions to pinpoint either how 1. Humans started.. Or 2. How civilization took off and spread
I just don't buy that volcanoes or geologic instability alone are reason enough to preclude the emergence of a cradle of civilization, at least in the case of New Guinea. Sure there are some big volcanoes nearby, but the same applies to the entire Pacific Rim which was host to some tremendous civilizations.

And it being an island, again, I don't think really precludes the prospect of being a cradle of civilization. Most of the vital developments in other cradles occurred within a comparable total land area, but in the long run lack of connection to a continent would indeed retard any New Guinean civilization's development snce it won't have as easy of access to trade and new technologies.

Not sure what exactly you mean by "No humans are African in origin." Typo?

New Guinea was not an island either 20,000 nor 75,000 years ago, it was directly connected to Australia. And the eruption of Taupe some 75,000 years ago is not really relevant to the development of societies tens of thousands of years later, which is what we're interested in here.

On the whole, I find your entire post extremely confusing, not really sure what your point is.
 
Luck?

The ancestors of Aztecs turned a crappy, barely edible grass into world's most important crop. Guys on South America gave us potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava and quinoa

Anyone familiar with potential domesticates n Papua New Guinea?

Recent findings are showing that the Cassowary was being raised, probably for consumption some time in the pleistocene at least as early as 18000 years ago. It seems to me that with the domesticated crops the reasons a 'high' civilisation did not occur in New Guniea must have been gographical and climatical (and changing climate conditions too).
There was a talk on the paper a week or to ago on bbc radio 4 and they talked about whether these chicks were being domesticated, though tamed would seem more likely, the way peccaries or tapirs are among some amazonian peoples.
 

Recent findings are showing that the Cassowary was being raised, probably for consumption some time in the pleistocene at least as early as 18000 years ago. It seems to me that with the domesticated crops the reasons a 'high' civilisation did not occur in New Guniea must have been gographical and climatical (and changing climate conditions too).
There was a talk on the paper a week or to ago on bbc radio 4 and they talked about whether these chicks were being domesticated, though tamed would seem more likely, the way peccaries or tapirs are among some amazonian peoples.
18,000 years ago certainly would have been pre-agricultural, since the New Guineans developed agriculture around the same time as everyone else seems to have, ~10,000 years ago at the end of the Ice Age. How long did this potential cassowary-taming culture exist? If it died out before the emergence of agriculture in the highalnds, perhaps this could be the POD; the practice survives long enough (or is re-discovered) to coexist with agriculture. The resultant boost in protein, as well as the manifold material goods that can be derived from birds, leads to a more durable civilization. From here, with the example of one domesticated or semi-domesticated species, highlanders try their hands at other domesticates. Things snowball from there.
 
Humans originated in Africa,
When they leave places like North Africa, the middle east, black sea, Anatolia, Europe are first stops to settle in. You can follow those cradles in some order.

Next up what we consider cradles are based on western mindset.
Egypt, sumaria, Middle East/persia, Greece, Rome, Northern Europe, USA

Where as others might go Middle East, India, etc

China had a vast culture, as did south east Asia.

One group looks at a cradle as the roots of said culture. We look at southern Europe/north Africa and the Middle East. China may only look at China.. India may only look at India.

It's all view point

In this case new Guinea could assuredly be a base for Civilization in the region including Australia even to South East Asia.

But ask the Minoans about volcanos and civilization ending type events on an island / region.



I just don't buy that volcanoes or geologic instability alone are reason enough to preclude the emergence of a cradle of civilization, at least in the case of New Guinea. Sure there are some big volcanoes nearby, but the same applies to the entire Pacific Rim which was host to some tremendous civilizations.

And it being an island, again, I don't think really precludes the prospect of being a cradle of civilization. Most of the vital developments in other cradles occurred within a comparable total land area, but in the long run lack of connection to a continent would indeed retard any New Guinean civilization's development snce it won't have as easy of access to trade and new technologies.

Not sure what exactly you mean by "No humans are African in origin." Typo?

New Guinea was not an island either 20,000 nor 75,000 years ago, it was directly connected to Australia. And the eruption of Taupe some 75,000 years ago is not really relevant to the development of societies tens of thousands of years later, which is what we're interested in here.

On the whole, I find your entire post extremely confusing, not really sure what your point is.
 
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