WI : Advanced pre-Hindu-Buddhist Indonesian Civilization(s) ?

Man, I just don't have any good excuse to bump it now, but I can't resist anymore.... :eek:

By the way, does OTL have any more good example of cultures that were based on orchardry and aquaculture ? Especially orchardry....
 
Bumping !

I've just PM'ed Jared, the writer of "Lands of Red and Gold", for informations. Here was mine post to him and his reply :

Ridwan Asher said:
I have been planning to make an Indonesian TL in which TTL Indonesia developed advanced urban civilization natively, instead of downloading from India for the every bits necessary to make advanced polities and gets Indianized in the process as was the case IOTL. The basis of my thinking to make this TL is obviously due to Indonesia's extreme abundance in domesticable plants, much more so than Australia which you have successfully "civilified" in your "Lands of Red and Gold" TL.

At first, I thought all I need was only a serendipity or two happening to result in domestication of several crops suitable as staple food sources. I've made a thread to ask for some opinions (the link in the siggy), and one actually suggested to have Indonesians to start with fruit orchardry, one very interesting suggestion that I was very convicned to go for, until I properly started to read your TL in Counter-factual.net, and found about the founder crop issue.

This has got me thinking, prior to advent of Austronesians, the previous proto-Papuan Australoids had been around for about 23 millenia, and never got to domesticate any single thing despite the abundance of domesticable crops everywhere in the country, far more than what Australia has, and more than the most other well off places have as well. Prior, I thought there simply would be no reason for these Australoids to never be able to shift into agriculture out or Indonesia's sheer biological wealth. Now this conception of mine has been shaken. But still I find it particularly amazing that a biosphere as large and rich as Indonesia appears to never had an indigenous plant species suitable to be founder crop candidate IOTL :)eek::eek::eek::eek:)

And it seems that Founder Crops must be either grains or tuber plants. I thought it would've been very cool if agriculture can actually be started with these cousins of breadfruit but now I'm not sure anymore. Fortunately we certainly aren't short of native edible tubers :) It's still bugs me though that Indonesia still seems to never had any native founder crop plant.... :(

So here is my question : what is it that sets the founder crops apart from the rest of domesticable plants ? Why do humans have to go through them in order to be able to shift from hunting-gathering to agriculture society ? Why cannot people domesticate other plants before at first domesticate the founder crops ? Is domesticating founder crops exceptionally easier compared domesticating other plants ? Why is that ?


Jared said:
Ridwan Asher said:
So here is my question : what is it that sets the founder crops apart from the rest of domesticable plants ? Why do humans have to go through them in order to be able to shift from hunting-gathering to agriculture society ? Why cannot people domesticate other plants before at first domesticate the founder crops ? Is domesticating founder crops exceptionally easier compared domesticating other plants ? Why is that ?

Founder crops is basically shorthand for a group of crops which, taken together, are enough to allow people to leave the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and take up a farming lifestyle, either part of the year or a full year. (There can be a hunter-gardener stage, probably, although that's not certain.)

In terms of being easier to domesticate, that's certainly part of it. They need to be ones where unconscious selection through human action is enough to change their genomes into a form which is usable by humans as a farming crop. The first farmers don't have any conscious examples of domesticable crops before them, of course, so the process of selection needs to start out as an unconscious action.

Another part is that the plants need to be able to be stored properly, and/or be available for harvest all year round. The big advantage of cereals is that, properly stored, they can be kept for years. Some tubers can be kept for a year or more, in the right conditions, but it depends on the tuber and the climate.

The third key thing is that the combination of plants, together, need to be able to sustain a complete diet. This is hard with a lot of plants, since plants are often rich in carbohydrates and sometimes fat, but are often poor in protein or other essential nutrients.

Getting these combination of things is often difficult, and the process of unconscious selection can also take a while before it turns plants into a useable form. Maize probably took several thousand years longer than the Old World before it grew into a form which was large enough (in combination with squash etc) to sustain a complete diet.

In LRG, I addressed it by the red yam working as a crop for hunter-gardeners, then having them borrow the aquaculture techniques of the *Gunditjmara (which did exist in OTL) to give them enough protein to settle down more or less permanently, and only then did they start on other crops.

In more general terms of domestication, remember that not a single culture anywhere in the world domesticated any crops before the end of the last Ice Age (technically, the start of the current interglacial period). Why this is so is a good question - presumably it has something to do with climatic instability during the Ice Age, although no-one's quite sure. Regardless of the reason, though, it means that the 20,000+ years that the Australoid peoples in New Guinea lived without domesticating crops is not really anything to take into account, one way or the other. It's only the time difference after the last interglacial ended that really matters.

With Indonesia in particular, a big problem with tropical climates is that food is very hard to store, since there's dampness and heat all year round, not to mention more insect and rodent pests. This is one reason that very few domestications started in the tropics - New Guinea is about the only one that's known for sure (and maybe West Africa). It's quite significant that New Guinean agriculture appears to have started in the highlands, though - cooler, easier to store food, and so on.

I don't know enough about the particular plants in Indonesia to know what combination of plants might work as founder crops, but they will need to manage all of the above issues.

Fruit orchard are unfortunately quite useless as founder crops unless there's a fruit which can be stored for a decent length of time, ie until the next harvest. Since most fruit trees only flower once a year, and keeping fruit edible in a tropical climate is nearly impossible without refrigeration, that's going to be tough.
 
Looks like we're stuck with tubers with rice possibly being introduced later. Can poultry and wild tubers sustain a horticultural society advanced enough to find rice/metal/domesticates?
 
Looks like we're stuck with tubers with rice possibly being introduced later. Can poultry and wild tubers sustain a horticultural society advanced enough to find rice/metal/domesticates?

I doubt it. The problem with Taro is that it has less than 1% protein. With Cereals we get 8-14, and an even larger amount with Pulse crops. What we would need is either rice or a better crop package.
 
Ridwan sent me a PM and asked to comment on Jared's response. To summarize, here are the challenges:

1) Do we have a good enough food package to provide enough nutrition (carbohydrates, protein, fat, sugar, and the various vitamins)?

2) Can the crops support a high enough yield to produce a sufficient surplus for a literate, advanced, civilization?

3) Can the food surplus be sufficiently stored until the next harvest to prevent famine given that the heat and moisture of the tropics lead to rot?

4) How do we deal with the issue of pests and insects that will eat the crops? Very tied into that last point.

I am very much out of my area of expertise here, but I'll give my comments on subsequent posts dealing with a single topic.
 
the food package

These are my ideas.

Carbohydrates - I think we have them covered in sago and bananas. Eventually, rice will replace them as the staple crop because it is very superior in terms of yield and taste.

Protein - Covered by meat (chicken and banteng cattle), fish, eggs

Fats - dairy, many of the same foods as proteins, coconuts

Sugar & Vitamins - covered by various fruits like banana, durian, and lots of other native fruits

So in theory, we cover nutrition.
 
crop yield

This is where my knowledge breaks down. People have brought up various obstacles like how much work is it going to take people to do this, how many harvests can be done in a year, etc.

In Java, there is native cattle in the region that can do work. So it's not impossible for that cattle to spread elsewhere if needed.

Some people have suggested that Hawaii is a good example of a similar food package society able to produce a fairly advance civilization. In my mind Hawaii wasn't developed enough to get to the level we need (there was no written language I think), but it does show an agricultural society was possible. With the greater land and less isolation of Indonesia we should still be good.

Also, unlike more temperate areas, I think the tropics - with their rain sunshine - allow more than one harvest a year. I don't know enough about these plants in general to do so, but it's something that can be looked into. With sago, banana, various tubers, and some other plants all providing carbohydrates, I think there is enough variety throughout the year to keep producing food at the level we need.
 
storage & insect spoilage

This is an area I know nothing about, but Jared has a very good point that cereals can be stored much better than fruits. However, we do have sago which should be able to be stored fairly long. Perhaps some of the tubers also fit into this category.

The main question I ask is that in areas where bananas, breadfruits, etc are a staple food, how do they store them? If they are a staple fruit, I imagine that the people who eat them already solved that problem, and that such solutions are within reach of fairly primitive societies (they don't need modern refrigeration or storage).

Is it storage that is raised or hanged off the ground? Is it a certain technique of pottery? A non-centralized system where each household stored their own food instead of a centralized silo? That there was enough ongoing harvests throughout the year that very long term storage was not needed? A changing system of meals where certain staple foods were eaten around harvest time, but other staple foods that could be stored longer used later? I have no idea. But this challenge must have been overcome by tropical societies once agriculture did develop.

So while I do not know the solution, I am sure one exists. Whether that is a solution that people in 2000-1500 BC are capable of, I don't know. But it's certainly something that they were capable of by AD 500.

I think a major reason is that many of these tropical plants or fruits are available all year round. Many should have multiple harvests throughout the year. And it's possible that one isn't limited to planting only at a certain time, but can be do so at many points. The sunshine and mositure work to our advantage when it comes to food production (as does Indonesia's rather rich volcanic soil) even though it limits us in terms of spoilage.

Someone who is an expert at agronomy and these kind of plants in particular will need to tell us.
 
overall

So I think these challenges can be theoretically overcome. I don't know how probably they are, but I think we are OK in terms of it being a possibility, even if only a slight one.

Since the exercise of this kind of alternative history is not a "hard" alternative, but more of a thought experiment, I think we have enough evidence we can build on.

The key is that we should be able to have multiple harvests for the year. Bananas, for example, can be harvested 2 or 3 times a year. And it may even be possible to "stage" production so that different fields are planted at different intervals so that while one field is between harvests, another is just ready to be harvested. That may eliminate the need to keep things stored for a very long time, unlike other areas which hard to rely on one big harvest each year and the possibility of drought in the future.
 
The main question I ask is that in areas where bananas, breadfruits, etc are a staple food, how do they store them? If they are a staple fruit, I imagine that the people who eat them already solved that problem, and that such solutions are within reach of fairly primitive societies (they don't need modern refrigeration or storage).
The Polynesians stored breadfruit (and maybe taro too, I'm not sure) by cooking and burying the pulp underground, where it would ferment and could be eaten many months later. I believe the same thing is done with Ensete, a relative of the banana that produces a starchy tuber, in Ethiopia. A similar practice occurs in parts of Indonesia (correct me if I'm wrong, Ridwan), but instead of breadfruit, durian is fermented. The Polynesians had many different sources of carbohydrates as well. Breadfruit, taro, and bananas have already been mentioned, but they also had arrowroot and later, sweet potato. The importance of sugarcane as a carb source can't be forgotten either. A society with most of these crops has something to eat for the entire year, since each type can be grown and harvested multiple times a year and they ripen at different times.

How are we to even domesticate Bananas and breadfruit? Wouldn't that require grafting?
Bananas produce genetically identical offshoots that can be dug up and planted elswhere: they are monocarpic (each stem flowers once then dies) so they can't be grafted anyway. Breadfruit is naturally seedless, but can also be propagated with suckers that grow off the roots. There is a seeded form of breadfruit that grows easily from seed.
 
These are my ideas.

Carbohydrates - I think we have them covered in sago and bananas. Eventually, rice will replace them as the staple crop because it is very superior in terms of yield and taste.

Protein - Covered by meat (chicken and banteng cattle), fish, eggs

Fats - dairy, many of the same foods as proteins, coconuts

Sugar & Vitamins - covered by various fruits like banana, durian, and lots of other native fruits

So in theory, we cover nutrition.

I have some comments/suggestions on these crops: You seem to have forgot breadfruit, which is an incredibly productive carbohydrate, as well as sugarcane and toddy palm.

Now, as for fiber, I suggest bananas as a source, complemented by coir (from coconuts). Cloth could also be provided from fish and cattle leather.

Protein would probably be mostly provided by aquaculture and chickens, with a minority coming from inefficient cattle, which would be mostly limited to a use as draft animals.

The fats section is good, as is the sugar & vitamins section.
 
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Really interesting idea here! Unfortunately I know almost nothing about the topic. Still I'll follow this closely and contribute where I can. :D
 
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