From Domestication Histories to Regional Prehistory: Using Plants to Re-evaluate Early and Mid-Holocene Interaction between New Guinea and Southeast Asia

Abstract

Emerging records of plant distributions and domestications for three carbohydrate-rich plants indicate highly complex histories of social interaction between New Guinea and Island Southeast Asia during the early and mid-Holocene. Phytogeographic, morphological, molecular and archaeobotanical evidence suggests variable histories of domestication: for Musa bananas is complex and involved inter-regional hybridisation between species and subspecies; for taro (Colocasia esculenta) suggests regional isolation of wild populations and separate domestications; and, for the greater yam (Dioscorea alata) is suggestive of initial domestication of an unknown wild-type in the New Guinea region with subsequent widespread dispersal of sterile clones.

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