People on the island of New Guinea began farming, practising arts and crafts and making complex tools around the same time as their European and Asian counterparts.
Agriculture emerged in different parts of the world around 10,000 years ago, when the climate became favourable for planting crops. In Europe and Asia, this spurred the development of complex cultures as more and more people started living together around farms.
Archaeological records show that people in New Guinea began farming around the same time as their Eurasian counterparts, planting yams, bananas and other local crops. But until now, there hasn’t been convincing evidence that this kickstarted an equivalent cultural movement.
Ben Shaw at the University of New South Wales in Australia was scouting for archaeological sites in Papua New Guinea, the eastern half of the island, in 2016 when residents of a village called Waim approached him to tell him they had found some “really weird-looking stone tools” and a stone carving of a human face with a bird on top that might be of interest.
Shaw followed them back to Waim, which sits halfway up a steep mountain in Jiwaka Province. “I didn’t have a lot of time so I decided to just dig one hole before it got dark,” he says. “Halfway through that hole I found the bottom half of a beautifully shaped stone pestle – I was beside myself with excitement.”
Shaw and his colleagues decided to conduct a proper excavation of the site. They uncovered a wealth of artefacts, including part of a stone carving of a face, two stone pestle fragments, a fire-lighting tool, an ochre-stained rock with cut marks, and axe fragments. Radiocarbon dating of charcoal buried with the artefacts revealed they were between 4200 to 5050 years old.
The pestle fragments still had bits of yam, banana, sugarcane and nuts stuck to them, suggesting they were used to grind up food. The researchers learned that the ochre-stained rock was a traditional tool for dyeing organic fibres after showing it to people in Waim.
The stone artefacts were made using stones from nearby quarries and the axes were in various stages of production, suggesting they were made onsite rather than being brought in by visitors from South-East Asia, Australia or other neighbouring areas. It is known that people from South-East Asia did migrate to New Guinea – bringing what is known as Lapita culture – but not until about 1000 years later.
This means that symbolic culture and sophisticated craftsmanship must have developed of its own accord in New Guinea, says Shaw. “It’s been argued that social complexity didn’t come with agriculture in New Guinea but now we’ve identified similar leaps and bounds as seen in Europe and Asia,” he says. The transition to agriculture to complex culture may have been a more widespread human pathway than once thought, he says.
The researchers are now planning to conduct additional excavations around New Guinea to see if they can find more clues about how cultural practices emerged in the country.
Journal reference: Science Advances, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aay4573
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