How successful could a New Guinean civilization be?

How successful could New Guinea have been?

  • As successful as most of Africa (small underdeveloped kingdoms)

    Votes: 64 64.6%
  • As successful as the Middle East (an early center of civilization, later surpassed)

    Votes: 24 24.2%
  • As successful as China and India (a persistent center of civilization)

    Votes: 5 5.1%
  • As successful as Europe (world hegemony)

    Votes: 6 6.1%

  • Total voters
    99
Okay, you seem to have some severe historical myopia in your poll here, but that's okay. I find that many here are Eurocentric. First of all, how exactly are you measuring being "surpassed" in terms of civilization? The Middle East was the seat of several significant civilizations all the way up until WWI. It was never really "surpassed" as a center of a civilization, merely as a center of industry, which is kind of a crappy measure of civilization. Secondly, while Africa did end up at a technological disadvantage and under European suzerainty, for the vast majority of its history, quite a few African states were neither small nor underdeveloped compared to the rest of the world. Mali, Great Zimbabwe, the Somali sultanates, Ethiopia, Zanzibar, Sokoto--the list goes on. It shows either great ignorance or willful regionalism to ignore these.

As for New Guinea, the above are quite correct. The terrain causes many problems, especially in terms of diversifying groups.

As others on here seem to have eyeglasses coloring their vision with "we're all unique and good in our own way" view of seeing history and that is just as incorrect as a Eurocentric viewpoint of civilizations. There are hierarchies of development, they don't go in a straightline or proceed in an evolutionary manner in each state's history, but there are different strata in history. A good non-biased, non-western, and actually China as an example oriented book outlining the development of statehood around the world is The Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama. The pendulum swings both ways and you're just as guilty of bias and being wrong as those people when you inflate the abilities of other regions just to make a point.
 
As others on here seem to have eyeglasses coloring their vision with "we're all unique and good in our own way" view of seeing history and that is just as incorrect as a Eurocentric viewpoint of civilizations. There are hierarchies of development, they don't go in a straightline or proceed in an evolutionary manner in each state's history, but there are different strata in history. A good non-biased, non-western, and actually China as an example oriented book outlining the development of statehood around the world is The Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama. The pendulum swings both ways and you're just as guilty of bias and being wrong as those people when you inflate the abilities of other regions just to make a point.
That poll is an extremely generalized, simplistic and wrong summary of most of the world.
 
Generally speaking crops are abandoned when they are no longer calorically efficient and/or a new crop is recognized as more efficient.

However preceived prestige of a particular food can have it persist in a society if there is an excess of labour and calories in other foods allowing a community to carry out its cultivation.

Or a cultural shift occurs leading to the adoption of foods perceived as prestigious often times the foods of conquering peoples.

Also to that last question imo, yes.
Hmm, I think something can be done with this. So maybe what we need are a selection some sort of perceived prestige crops, propagated by later seafaring new comers in order to bring New Guinea and the Pacific closer together. The scenarios I have in mind still require a lot of work though.
 
Oryza rufipogon, O. officinalis, O. meridionalis and O. australiensis are the species of rice I'm referring to.
Oryza rufipogon and O. officinalis have a range across the Indomalaya ecozone and north Australia while O. meridionalis and australiensis seem specific to north Australia. O. rufipogon is important since it may be the ancestor of O. sativa, judging from this study,
http://m.pnas.org/content/108/20/8351
titled: Molecular evidence for a single evolutionary origin of domesticated rice.
Both Oryza sativa and O. rufipogon have been bred together to resist diseases like rice blast and stem rot. As for the reason for adding rice, I figured one more food source would help a bit. However, given my limited knowledge, this is just speculation on my part.

Alas, I know nothing on the soil ecology of New Guinea and the changes it may need to make terra preta viable. I feel that more productive and sustainable agriculture could help reduce the chance of collapse from soil exhaustion, though some reorganization is likely to happen at some point. I guess

Can this pre Lapita Southern Floodplain Culture that includes the Torres Strait islands mesh with the OTL Lapita to create a unique variant encompassing the Arafura sea?

I suppose that makes sense regarding the rice. And terra preta was just an idea, since it seems to have arisen under highly specific conditions--I don't know if the New Guinea lowland is necessarily suitable for it, although I think the lowlands are still the best opportunity for a New Guinea civilisation thanks to easy trading links with Southeast Asia. Terra preta would only help it out. Which incidentally goes both ways, since the New Guineans can contribute sugarcane much earlier than OTL no doubt, which will have colossal butterflies in the Middle East and Europe.

I've sadly not read enough beside the basics on the Lapita culture, but from what I know, it's obvious that they'll be influenced and pass on a huge legacy to the Pacific. The Arafura Sea is a natural cultural zone, as well as the east coast of Australia down to the temperate areas where tropical agriculture is impossible.

I think another thing that deserves attention is how a New Guinea civilisation (or more precisely, more successful and organised) might affect the historic migrations from New Guinea to places like Timor. IIRC, the migrations were stopped by other migrations from Southeast Asia, but how far could these New Guineans get if more organised?
 
Hmm, I think something can be done with this. So maybe what we need are a selection some sort of perceived prestige crops, propagated by later seafaring new comers in order to bring New Guinea and the Pacific closer together. The scenarios I have in mind still require a lot of work though.
I really can't think of anything an early sea faring rice cultivating Papua could gain from Lapita that they wouldn't have already.

But yeah whatever course of action you take just keep studying up on the lands and peoples you want to write about.
 
I agree with those who feel this poll is unreasonable.

With the right changes, many regions, including New Guinea, could have had better agricultural packages, more domesticates, more advanced technology, and more centralized states. However, the structure of comparisons here doesn't leave any room for nuance. A more urban and agriculturally developed New Guinea civilization would probably not resemble China, the Middle East or Africa because quite simply it isn't geographically like any of those places.
 
I suppose that makes sense regarding the rice. And terra preta was just an idea, since it seems to have arisen under highly specific conditions--I don't know if the New Guinea lowland is necessarily suitable for it, although I think the lowlands are still the best opportunity for a New Guinea civilisation thanks to easy trading links with Southeast Asia. Terra preta would only help it out. Which incidentally goes both ways, since the New Guineans can contribute sugarcane much earlier than OTL no doubt, which will have colossal butterflies in the Middle East and Europe.

I've sadly not read enough beside the basics on the Lapita culture, but from what I know, it's obvious that they'll be influenced and pass on a huge legacy to the Pacific. The Arafura Sea is a natural cultural zone, as well as the east coast of Australia down to the temperate areas where tropical agriculture is impossible.

I think another thing that deserves attention is how a New Guinea civilisation (or more precisely, more successful and organised) might affect the historic migrations from New Guinea to places like Timor. IIRC, the migrations were stopped by other migrations from Southeast Asia, but how far could these New Guineans get if more organised?
I think that New Guinean derived languages and cultures would be dominant as far as the Wallace line at the very least. IMO they could come to encompass the whole Indonesian archipelago, but this is dependent on the age of both the Austronesian and Papuan migration. If the New Guinean-North Australia migration is early and robust enough, I can't see anyone being strong enough to dislodge them. Metallurgy and draft animals would have to be transported by sea and they would be encountering an already populous and maritime farming people. They would at best set themselves up as elites but more likely be absorbed into the indigenous population.
 
Wow. There seems to be a strong deterministic tendency on this forum, isn't there? Particularly geographic determinism.

I think an important point of note is that the OP didn't specify a POD, or even an earliest date. With a distant enough POD I think almost anything would be possible.

Yes, the highlands ecoregion dominates New Guinea, but there are significant areas of tropical savanna on the southern coast. Surely, with a distant enough POD, one could envision a dominant culture developing there? Then, expanding into the mountains? Heck, didn't the chicken get first domesticated in New Guinea? So they certainly have a history of making some significant developments. And there have been other mountain civilizations, after all, though granted I think ones in jungle mountains are thin. But no one seems to doubt that e.g. he Inca had immense potential (which was snuffed by the Spanish, of course).

I voted China/India equivalent, given a distant POD. As successful as Europe might be hard, just because of Europe's history as a sick Darwinian political environment that led to some rather fast advances in more modern times. But frankly even that might be possible.
 

Zachariah

Banned
Wow. There seems to be a strong deterministic tendency on this forum, isn't there? Particularly geographic determinism.

I think an important point of note is that the OP didn't specify a POD, or even an earliest date. With a distant enough POD I think almost anything would be possible.

Yes, the highlands ecoregion dominates New Guinea, but there are significant areas of tropical savanna on the southern coast. Surely, with a distant enough POD, one could envision a dominant culture developing there? Then, expanding into the mountains? Heck, didn't the chicken get first domesticated in New Guinea? So they certainly have a history of making some significant developments. And there have been other mountain civilizations, after all, though granted I think ones in jungle mountains are thin. But no one seems to doubt that e.g. he Inca had immense potential (which was snuffed by the Spanish, of course).

I voted China/India equivalent, given a distant POD. As successful as Europe might be hard, just because of Europe's history as a sick Darwinian political environment that led to some rather fast advances in more modern times. But frankly even that might be possible.

I'd agree. I'd vote for a fifth option though, considering the geographic and tribal situation- that of New Guinea having the potential to be as successful as, or even more successful than Japan. New Guinea got off to an early start with regards to agriculture, had a massive gene pool very early on, and has massive reserves of all the minerals and natural resources which you'd want at every single stage of civilization (from timber and founder crops, to gold, silver and platinum, to tin and copper, to nickel and iron, to coal, oil and natural gas, to titanium, chromium, cobalt and uranium). New Guinea could have easily gone all the way, perhaps even to the extent where successor cultures could have been contenders to go on and achieve world hegemony in the same manner as the Europeans did IOTL, in the same way that Japan was a major contender.
 
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Zachariah

Banned
BTW, if you want a founder crop with massive potential, one which was never really exploited IOTL, why not give Psophocarpus tetragonolobus, aka 'Asbin' a try? Recently “discovered” by scientists and the Western World, it's been called a "miracle plant" with “exceptional merits”; a “supermarket on a stalk” which grows well anywhere in the hot, humid tropics. Almost all parts of the plant can be eaten, and all parts of the plant have high food value, especially when it comes to protein. It's also exceptionally resistant to damage from insects, pests and diseases. Basically, it's arguably an even better alternative to the potato; with similar tuber yields to wild potatoes, of 5.5 to 12 tonnes per hectare, along with the added bonuses of edible leaves and seed pods (unlike the inedible potato)- the beans themselves offer yields of over 4 tonnes per hectare, higher than the yields of soybeans (and with greater nutritional value than soybeans to boot, including 41.9% protein content in comparison to soybeans' 39.6% protein content). And as members of the rhizome family, they can fix nitrogen from the air, enabling them to grow in extremely poor quality soils and to improve soil quality for other plants.
It's arguably the best possible founder crop around which was never really adopted or exploited to anywhere near its potential IOTL, in spite of having been eaten since prehistoric times by the people of the Sepik River basin. And if they had, then New Guinea could have easily supported a higher population density than the similarly mountainous island of Honshu- equating to a population of i.r.o 1.5M during its equivalent of the Jomon period, and up to 15M during its equivalent of the Yayoi period (perhaps with the Sa Huynh serving as the analogues to the Yayoi peoples- but arriving and propelling New Guinean civilization into the Iron Age around 500 years prior to Yayoi doing so in Japan IOTL). From there, well, you'd have New Guinean civilization as a near-perfect Japan analogue- at this stage in its own development, i.r.o. 250CE (comparable to TTL's New Guinea i.r.o 250 BCE), Early Chinese historians described 'Wa', their name for Japan at that stage, as a land of hundreds of scattered tribal communities.
Archaeological evidence also suggests that frequent conflicts between settlements or statelets broke out in the period- society was characterized by violent struggles, with many excavated settlements having defensive moats or being built at the tops of hills. Headless human skeletons, discovered in Yoshinogari, are regarded as typical examples of finds from the period. In the coastal area of the Inland Sea, stone arrowheads are often found among funerary objects. Third-century Chinese sources reported that the Wa people lived on raw fish, vegetables, and rice served on bamboo and wooden trays, clapped their hands in worship (something still done in Shinto shrines today), and built earthen-grave mounds. They also maintained vassal-master relations, collected taxes, had provincial granaries and markets, and observed mourning. Then, you have the centuries of consolidation, with tribes evolving into clans, and a Papuan equivalent of the Yamato court coming into being. And from there, the sky's the limit.
 

Zachariah

Banned
I recommend Plectranthus sp as a potato analog in highland climates at about 1.8kg per plant. It can be cool tolerant and there is already a tuber centered horticultural system.

I would also highly recommend that with any tuber crop added to this proposed civilization compost mounds specifically "kanaparo mondo" should be put in place and the abandonment of stadard trench culture to further intensification.

What do you think of the potential of Psophocarpus tetragonolobus, aka 'Asbin' (to the Sepik peoples) then? A plant native to the Sepik river valley (the ideal place for a major New Guinean civilization with links to the outside world to establish a large population base), which is effectively the wild potato, soybean and spinach combined into a single plant, with higher yields and higher protein content in all departments. It isn't cold tolerant at all, mind you, but you don't need cold tolerance in the regions that a New Guinean civilization would be expanding into. You'd need high resistance to heat, humidity, disease and pest species, as well as the ability to grow in and to improve extremely nutrient poor soils, and the ability to succeed in drier climates with sufficient irrigation. Asbin ticks all of those boxes, and it's already started to be grow abundantly throughout South and South East-Asia, by farmers in the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Thailand and Sri Lanka, with the crop well on its way to becoming a staple crop across the region- all this in spite of the fact that it was only 'discovered' by the Japanese occupation forces in the region during WW2, a mere 70 years ago. Imagine how different things could have been, how much more widespread it might have been, if the plant had been exploited and adopted on a larger scale more than 2000 years earlier?
 
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I'd agree. I'd vote for a fifth option though, considering the geographic and tribal situation- that of New Guinea having the potential to be as successful as, or even more successful than Japan. New Guinea got off to an early start with regards to agriculture, had a massive gene pool very early on, and has massive reserves of all the minerals and natural resources which you'd want at every single stage of civilization (from timber and founder crops, to gold, silver and platinum, to tin and copper, to nickel and iron, to coal, oil and natural gas, to titanium, chromium, cobalt and uranium). New Guinea could have easily gone all the way, perhaps even to the extent where successor cultures could have been contenders to go on and achieve world hegemony in the same manner as the Europeans did IOTL, in the same way that Japan was a major contender.
Resources are a fat lot of good if you don't have the know how to use them. For that you need as large a population as you can feed because that gives you more intellectuals. Euro-Asia has the advantage because you essentially have a population band running from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Also, you need energy and the earliest non-human form which are bovines and horses., none of which live on New Guinea.
 

Zachariah

Banned
Resources are a fat lot of good if you don't have the know how to use them. For that you need as large a population as you can feed because that gives you more intellectuals. Euro-Asia has the advantage because you essentially have a population band running from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Also, you need energy and the earliest non-human form which are bovines and horses., none of which live on New Guinea.
And I've cited evidence that New Guinea has indigenous native crops which can indeed feed massive populations, and generate those required numbers of intellectuals. The lack of horses and bovines would indeed be a minor stumbling block, but the Japanese managed to make do without domesticating them until the 5th century. And horses could easily have gotten introduced by humans later on, and made a niche for themselves on the island, in the same way that boars did after they arrived at least 6000 years ago.
 
A successful New Guinean civilisation could just import the required animals from Indonesia anyway. I'd expect the water buffalo to be in particular useful.
 
The lack of horses and bovines would indeed be a minor stumbling block, but the Japanese managed to make do without domesticating them until the 5th century. And horses could easily have gotten introduced by humans later on, and made a niche for themselves on the island, in the same way that boars did after they arrived at least 6000 years ago.
Not a minor stumbling block. A major one. The Amerindians managed without bovines and horses until the 15th centuries then got cleaned out by those who had them. As for a niche, just if they can reach the highlands. Slight problem, the rain forest. Humans can barely move through it without great effort. A open country creature like the horse that lives off grass is going to equal or greater trouble.

A successful New Guinean civilisation could just import the required animals from Indonesia anyway. I'd expect the water buffalo to be in particular useful.
Yes, if they can get to the coast. Same problem as above, the rain forest.
*****
For those are are not aware, it was not known by Europeans or Asians that there was an agricultural civilisation on the New Guinea highlands until the 1920s. That is because the rain forest is low in forageable food and and in order to travel through it travellers have to cut paths as they go. Europeans and Asians had been landing on the coast for hundreds of years so if either they had not penetrated the rain forest or if they had not come back there must be very good reasons. Reasons such as physical difficulty or if a few stranger turn up then top them in case they are a threat.
 

Zachariah

Banned
Not a minor stumbling block. A major one. The Amerindians managed without bovines and horses until the 15th centuries then got cleaned out by those who had them. As for a niche, just if they can reach the highlands. Slight problem, the rain forest. Humans can barely move through it without great effort. A open country creature like the horse that lives off grass is going to equal or greater trouble.

Seems you don't appreciate just how big New Guinea is, or the levels of ecological diversity on the island.
new_guinea_ecoregions_map.gif

Yes, the central range sub-alpine grassland zone (turquoise) would indeed be the most suitable environment for horses. But for bovines? The water buffalo- or, rather, the swamp buffalo, as the species is known in South East Asia- resides primarily in freshwater swamp forest, and lowland rain forest. Now, look at the ecological map of New Guinea. What is most of the coastline?

Yes, if they can get to the coast. Same problem as above, the rain forest.
*****
For those are are not aware, it was not known by Europeans or Asians that there was an agricultural civilisation on the New Guinea highlands until the 1920s. That is because the rain forest is low in forageable food and and in order to travel through it travellers have to cut paths as they go. Europeans and Asians had been landing on the coast for hundreds of years so if either they had not penetrated the rain forest or if they had not come back there must be very good reasons. Reasons such as physical difficulty or if a few stranger turn up then top them in case they are a threat.

Which is the main reason why Psophocarpus tetragonolobus, the proposed ideal founder crop for such a civilisation, is so ideal. It's native to the Sepik region, and it's been used by the Sepik peoples for centuries before the Europeans arrived. Here's a map of Papua New Guinea:

png-map_1_-919x633.jpg

You see where the Sepik region is? Well, this crop is widespread, and grows wild across practically the whole of East Sepik- all the way up the Sepik River's drainage basin, and even along the coasts, from Wewak all the way to Awar in the adjoining Awar province. And here's a map of the Sepik river, which is navigable all the way up to Ambunti. Local villagers have lived along the river for many millennia, and the river has formed the basis for food, transport and culture.

sepik-river-01-800.jpg

The most populous grouping of the Sepik peoples is that of the Iatmul- taken from their name for single clans. The Iatmul are not a centralized tribe. They never act politically, socially, or economically as a single unit; villages are autonomous. People tend to self-identify not as Iatmul or, as they sometimes say, Iatmoi, but in terms of their clan, lineage, village, or sometimes just the colonial-era regional term, Sepik. IOTL, this was the first region of Papua New Guinea, on the west side of the island, which Malay traders routinely visited and interacted with, from the mid-15th century onward. And it was by way of this region that steel axe-heads were introduced at this time, traded into the Highlands from the coast. These developments saw huge population increases, and an increase in war, slave-trading and head-hunting.

In Iatmul legend, the original condition of the world was a primal sea. A wind stirred waves, and land surfaced. A large pit opened (according to the Iatmul, this primal pit is located near the Sawos-speaking village of Gaigarobi, in the middle of the map above), and out emerged the first generation of ancestral spirits and culture-heroes. The ancestors then embarked on a series of mythic-historic migrations. Where they trod, land appeared. Along these routes, the ancestors created the world through naming. Literally, they named all the features of the world into existence—trees, mountains, stars, winds, rains, tributaries, villages, actions, virtually everything in the world. These ancestral spirits' names are totemic, and they're claimed by specific patrilineal groups (clans, lineages, and branches)- seen as possessing divine essence, these form the basis for their religious system. Each clan's headed by a patriarch, who performs sacred rites to the clan's ancestral spirit to ensure the long-term welfare of the clan.

Now, compare this belief system, and this society, with that of Japan at the same stage in Honshu's path to civilisation, in the first 600 years after the introduction of iron. In the Yayoi period, as detailed previously, Japan was also a land of hundreds of scattered tribal communities, rife with inter-tribal warfare, with defensive settlements becoming increasingly common, along with both slave-trading and head-hunting (as evidenced by the headless human skeletons from this period which are routine archeological finds). Then, as in the Sepik region today, the Japanese, aka 'Wa' peoples, lived on fish and vegetables. And really, how is the Iatmul belief system any different from that of historical 'Kashinto'?

If the peoples of New Guinea been propelled into the Iron Age at the same time that the Filipinos had, and had the swamp buffaloes introduced at the same time, by the Sa Huyun or whoever else it was who introduced iron bloomeries and these animals across the Philippines- between 1000BC and 200AD- then the Sepik region would have been the first region where these new arrivals, settlers and traders via the Philippines, would have arrived and set foot in New Guinea. And this founder crop, this social set-up and way of life, this belief system- IMHO, it's just about the best tropical Japan analogue you could possibly hope for. And if it had been propelled into the Iron Age around 1800 years earlier, as Japan was? Well, why couldn't this region have given rise to a Japan-analogue civilization, with one clan emerging as the most powerful of all, establishing its own Imperial Court of clan patriarchs, and then going on over the course of several centuries to extend its dominion over the entire Sepik and Madang regions (making it roughly the same size as, or even larger than, the territory under the dominion of the Yamato court by the end of the Asuka period)?
 
OK, this is rather interesting now. If these lowland tribes form into a nation strong enough to exert their will across most of the island, there's little stopping them from heading southwards. The Maori themselves were Polynesian settlers, so the Iatmul empire might settle New Zealand first and if they so desire dominate Australia, though I am unsure what sort of shipbuilding tech they'd be likely to get access to prior to encountering the Polynesians. There are a lot of islands in Indonesia which have been mostly isolated throughout their histories, so I'd presume there's not been major naval powers that headed east of Bali prior to Europeans showed up in the far east.
 
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