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The development of Sahul agriculture with Australia as bystander

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

D. E. Yen
D. E. Yen*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2424 Maile Way, Honolulu HI 96822, USA
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Abstract

The distribution of food-plants—both potential and actually exploited — reflects the natural history of contact across the seas and through the region, often long before Pleistocene times. The later and the human contribution has to be discerned from varied lines of evidence. The inventive process of early domestication leading to cultivation in the Sahulian north (New Guinea) was not a part of plant adaptation in the south (Australia). Neither did species diffusion result in adoption of agriculture or stimulation towards domestication among the Aboriginal hunter-gatherers.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 69 , Issue 265 , 1995 , pp. 831 - 847
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1995

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