Improving the Papuan agricultural package

I recently started reading Guns, Germs, and Steel and Diamond's recurring mentions of New Guinea have got me wondering: is there any way to expand or add to the agricultural possibilities for the native people of the island, to the point where the land could support larger and more organized societies than OTL?

Would rice find a niche for itself if introduced earlier? While I think the existing Papuan package contains a number of starches, none that I've seen mentions of are cereals like rice. New Guinea has a fairly diverse assortment of climates, so it seems like rice should be able to find a home somewhere?

Second, Diamond describes the Papuan diet as being poor in protein, though they seem to have had dogs, pigs, and chickens available to them. From what I can tell, New Guinea has no large native mammals in any way suitable for domestication, so they would need to be imported from Indonesia or other points west.

New Guinea is also home to several species of cassowary--maybe one of these could be added to the selection? (Wild cassowaries are apparently tamed on a fairly regular basis, but not bred in captivity.) I've seen a couple problems with this idea, though:

1. The cassowary diet appears to be more specialized than pigs or chickens, so raising cassowaries may not be as calorie-efficient. (On the other hand, if it's calories from protein that count, cassowary meat may help.)
2. Cassowaries are pretty dangerous, with a nasty kick to them. (Of course, wild pigs can be pretty dangerous too.)
3. Cassowary apparently doesn't taste very good. (Still, better than nothing, and it might be improved in a domestic breed over time.)

Any other thoughts or ideas along this general line? If there's someone out there with more background on the region, perhaps they could suggest some opportunities or routes for crop and livestock transmission?
 
I think the problem is that the highlands are almost totally isolated from the outside world. Thus even if crops get introduced to the lowland tribes there's hardly any way for them to make it to the highlands.
 
I think the problem is that the highlands are almost totally isolated from the outside world. Thus even if crops get introduced to the lowland tribes there's hardly any way for them to make it to the highlands.

Which is a bit of a problem, because if my understanding is correct, the highlands are where most of the native agricultural communities are, who would presumably be best able to adopt new crops. Hmm.

Is there anything that could force them out of isolation, other than extensive colonization by a foreign (most likely Western) power?

Alternatively, could a suitable crop package impel some of the groups to turn to farming, with trade and cultural diffusion between the coastal areas and the interior developing more gradually over time?

Or are the geographical barriers simply too great?
 

Cook

Banned
I haven’t read Guns, Germs and Steel but the climate in much of PNG is suitable for at least some strains of rice.

No-one is going to get anywhere relying on Cassowaries; they are highly aggressive, solitary birds that will fight others in their territory (and people).
 

PhilippeO

Banned
i read somewhere (probably untrue/anecdotal) that barrier between highland and coast is food availability. there is limited hunting opportunity in the forest surrounding highland. the earliest expedition have to hire many people to carry food (and food for food carrier itself) to cross the jungle.
 
Which is a bit of a problem, because if my understanding is correct, the highlands are where most of the native agricultural communities are, who would presumably be best able to adopt new crops. Hmm.

Is there anything that could force them out of isolation, other than extensive colonization by a foreign (most likely Western) power?

Alternatively, could a suitable crop package impel some of the groups to turn to farming, with trade and cultural diffusion between the coastal areas and the interior developing more gradually over time?

Or are the geographical barriers simply too great?

The trouble is purely geographical. The mountains of PNG are almost literally impassable. Remember- they were only discovered when someone flew over them in the 1930s.
 
With how remote the highlands are, how did people get there in the first place?

The Papuans have been there possibly since 40,000 BC. That's a long enough time to penetrate the interior. I think the issue is that while the central highlands themselves are fairly well suited to agriculture, there's that belt of almost impassable and inhospitable terrain between them and the lowlands. Thus people who settle there are less likely to ever have any contact with the people they left behind.

Also with regard to crops, since the highlands have a somewhat different climate, crops that are grown in the rest of the East Indies may not grow very well in the highlands even if they make it past the geographical barrier. If I have a variety of rice that grows well in the lowlands, even if some somehow makes it way up to the highlands it might not be suited to cultivation there.
 
Also with regard to crops, since the highlands have a somewhat different climate, crops that are grown in the rest of the East Indies may not grow very well in the highlands even if they make it past the geographical barrier. If I have a variety of rice that grows well in the lowlands, even if some somehow makes it way up to the highlands it might not be suited to cultivation there.

Definitely another factor to consider. This article states that a "wetland" type was most common in Indonesia--probably the most likely source for any introduced variety. It also has the following to say about differentiation in rice:

Such a process of differentiation and selection was aided by spontaneous mutations in a population or by chance outcrossing between adjacent plants or both. The process could independently occur at many new sites of cultivation and recur when environmental conditions or cultivation practices changed. Therefore, rich genetic diversity of a secondary nature could be found in areas of undulating terrain where the environmental conditions significantly differed within a small area. The Assam and Madhya Pradesh states and Jeypore tract of India, the island of Sri Lanka, and Yunnan Province of China represent such areas of remarkable varietal diversity (Chang 1985).

This suggests to me that suitable varieties could probably be developed, even with a relatively homogenous initial population, but I'm not sure what timeframe would be required. The same article suggests that rice arrived in Indonesia between 2000 and 1400 BC and spread from there to the Philipines by about 1000 BC, which may give some idea of the earliest date it could arrive in New Guinea. (Interestingly, the article suggests rice was not grown in New Guinea until the 19th century; I wish I could find their source on that one.)

Anyway, if we can get rice to New Guinea at about the same time as the Philipines (which may take some doing, in and of itself) that would give us at least a couple thousand years to spread it through the lowlands. And maybe, depending on how quickly local strains develop and how isolated the interior is, it might trickle up to the highlands.

I guess the next question would be about the seafaring capabilities of our putative rice-growers. How difficult is it to reach New Guinea by sea from what would have been the most populous/advanced parts of Indonesia at the time?
 
It should be noted the highlanders did eventually spread to the lowlands. Most New Guinea languages are in the "Trans New Guinea" language family, which seems to have had its ultimate origin in the highlands. Some of the languages even spread to parts of the Lesser Sunda islands - it seems the Papuans spread to the region shortly before the Austronesians got there, but not in enough time to consolidate.

Thus, it's not implausible, if a proper crop was found in one of the lowland areas, that the Papuan cultures could essentially replace the Austronesians, in terms of their general geographic dispersal.
 
I think the problem is that the highlands are almost totally isolated from the outside world. Thus even if crops get introduced to the lowland tribes there's hardly any way for them to make it to the highlands.
The sweet potato wasn't introduced until the 17th century at the earliest yet made its way into the highlands and became the staple food source for the people living there. Wetland rice cultivation would be nearly impossible in New Guinea without the construction of extensive terraces. Dryland rice or millet could be an alternative.
Thus, it's not implausible, if a proper crop was found in one of the lowland areas, that the Papuan cultures could essentially replace the Austronesians, in terms of their general geographic dispersal.
What do you mean by a proper crop? Besides grains, the Papuan crops are essentially identical to the Austronesian crop package. Though the Austronesian cultures started out having grains in the form of rice and millet, they were lost as the Austronesians moved east away from the Philippines and Indonesia. Taro, breadfruit, and bananas alone were all that was needed for the Austronesians to colonize the Pacific. Having a grain crop would not have enabled the Papuans to replace the Austronesians.
 
The sweet potato wasn't introduced until the 17th century at the earliest yet made its way into the highlands and became the staple food source for the people living there. Wetland rice cultivation would be nearly impossible in New Guinea without the construction of extensive terraces. Dryland rice or millet could be an alternative.

I hadn't realized the sweet potato was that recent an introduction. I'm not sure whether that's helpful or not in this scenario--on one hand, I feel like a diverse selection of crops would be best, but on the other hand maybe other introduced crops might be adopted more readily if they didn't have to compete with sweet potatoes.

I'm not sure how one would get millet to New Guinea--isn't it generally grown more in northern regions?

Another thought: are there any varieties of beans or other legumes with a long history of cultivation in neighboring regions that might be suitable for New Guinea?
 
The sweet potato wasn't introduced until the 17th century at the earliest yet made its way into the highlands and became the staple food source for the people living there.

Distribution of the sweet potato is up for debate. It may have been introduced well before that.
 
I hadn't realized the sweet potato was that recent an introduction. I'm not sure whether that's helpful or not in this scenario--on one hand, I feel like a diverse selection of crops would be best, but on the other hand maybe other introduced crops might be adopted more readily if they didn't have to compete with sweet potatoes.

I'm not sure how one would get millet to New Guinea--isn't it generally grown more in northern regions?

Another thought: are there any varieties of beans or other legumes with a long history of cultivation in neighboring regions that might be suitable for New Guinea?
The Austronesian package was already fairly diverse. For carbohydrates you have taro, millet, rice, bananas, sugar cane, yams, breadfruit, and coconut. Some Austronesian cultures also made use of sago and cycads. The package was a bit more limited on protein sources with only chickens, pigs, dogs, and water buffalo, but it was still fairly diverse. Millet was part of the original Austronesian crop package as they expanded from Taiwan. I'm not sure where it got left behind for other crops. The main Old World legumes that can be grown in the tropics that I can think of are soy, black eyed peas, lentils, jack beans, and a few others. Black eyed peas and jack beans are the best suited for equatorial climates, but black eyed peas originated in Africa and jack beans are American for the most part.

Distribution of the sweet potato is up for debate. It may have been introduced well before that.
Sweet potatoes may have been introduced into Polynesia before the European discovery of the New World, but I am fairly certain that the sweet potato was unknown in the rest of the Austronesian lands until the Spanish colonized the Philippines and brought the sweet potato there.
 
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