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Originally published in Science Express on 19 June 2003
Science 11 July 2003:
Vol. 301. no. 5630, pp. 180 - 181
DOI: 10.1126/science.1086677
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Perspectives

Also see the archival list of Science's Compass: Enhanced Perspectives

ANTHROPOLOGY:
Enhanced: New Guinea: A Cradle of Agriculture

Katharina Neumann

Agriculture is believed to have been developed independently in several different places. New Guinea has long been proposed as one of these sites, but evidence has been equivocal. In her Perspective, Neumann discusses recent evidence that several important crops, including the banana, were first domesticated in New Guinea. She highlights the report by Denham et al., who show that agriculture developed gradually over several thousand years and that the banana has been cultivated in New Guinea since at least 7000 years ago.

The author is at J.W. Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt, D-60329, Germany. E-mail: k.neumann{at}em.uni-frankfurt.de

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Agricultural emergence and transformation in the Upper Wahgi valley, Papua New Guinea, during the Holocene: theory, method and practice.
T. Denham and S. Haberle (2008)
The Holocene 18, 481-496
   Abstract »    PDF »
Geography, biogeography, and why some countries are rich and others are poor.
D. A. Hibbs Jr. and O. Olsson (2004)
PNAS 101, 3715-3720
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »


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