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Clues to the linguistic situation in Near Oceania

before agriculture

Malcolm Ross

1 Introduction

Near Oceania consists of mainland New Guinea, the Bismarck

Archipelago (New Britain, New Ireland and Manus), Bougainville and the

Solomon Islands. I divide Near Oceania into two regions which are

distinct in terms of their linguistic history. The first region is mainland

New Guinea. The second consists of the Bismarcks, Bougainville and the

Solomon Islands, which I refer to collectively as Northwest Island

Melanesia. All the larger islands of Near Oceania are mountainous, and

the highlands cordillera of the island of New Guinea, with peaks up to

nearly 5000 m, is particularly significant in the regionÕs settlement history

(see Map 1)



formed the land mass known as Sahul. Sumatra, Borneo and Java were

part of the extension of the Asian continent known as Sundaland.Bougainville, Choiseul, Santa Isabel and Guadalcanal formed a single

island known as Greater Bougainville (Map 1).

Insert Map 2 about here.

The prehistory of Near Oceania is conveniently divided into fourperiods (BP = before present):

1. Before 21,000 BP: settlement during the Pleistocene, before the Last

Glacial Maximum

2. 21,000Ð12,000 BP: the late Pleistocene, after the Last Glacial

Maximum

3. 12,000Ð3500 BP: early and mid Holocene4. from 3500 BP until European contact (1870Ð1965)

The Pleistocene was the period of the great Ice Ages, beginning around

1.8 million years ago and ending with the Younger Dryas, a short cold

period (roughly 13,400Ð12,000 BP) which followed a major retreat of the

i



1997:31Ð34, 61) interprets this as the beginning of what he calls wild-food

production, i.e. the deliberate tending of the forest environment byselective weeding or clearing and by transplanting, without the permanent

clearing of the forest which is entailed in agriculture and which

significantly alters the productivity patterns of the environment. In all

probability similar developments were occurring in New Guinea. In the

lowlands this included the initial domestication of the sago palm. Indeed,

foraging sedentism persists among a number of New Guinea communities

who depend on the sago palm for their starch intake. One may infer,

however, that such lifestyles only occurred in the coastal lowlands. In

Period 1, the grasslands of the central New Guinea Highlands were home

to megafauna, and there is archaeological evidence of seasonal hunting

and collecting (Evans & Mountain 2005), but the winter climate would

have been too severe for foraging. Early in Period 2, around 18,000 BP, asthe climate began to warm up, the highland grasslands were replaced by

dryland rain forest, principally Nothofagus (the Ôsouthern beechÕ), creating

an environment impossible for foragers except close to the forest edge

(Sillitoe 2002).

The early Holocene (Period 3), around 9000 BP, saw the beginnings of



territory is rather tempting. During this period, too, the distribution of sago

stands was probably extended by human intervention (Klappa 2006).


The 3500 BP boundary between Period 3 and Period 4 represents the

arrival from the west of Austronesian agriculturalists in Near Oceania (see

Map 4). There are Austronesian languages of the EasternMalayo-Polynesian in the west of New Guinea around the BirdÕs Head

and Cenderawasih Bay, but we have no archaeological evidence to date

their arrival. We can be reasonably certain, however, that speakers of the

language immediately ancestral to Proto Oceanic, itself the ancestor to allthe Austronesian languages of Oceania, arrived in the Bismarcks around

3500 BP. Early Oceanic speakers rapidly colonised NW Island Melanesia

and moved beyond it to Santa Cruz, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga

and Samoa. Later they occupied Micronesia and the rest of Polynesia, andalso gained toeholds on the offshore islands and coasts of New Guinea

itself. Our confidence about this history is based on a widely accepted

correlation of the Proto Oceanic language with the archaeologically salient

Lapita culture (Pawley 2003). Proto Oceanic marks the beginning of a

remarkable linguistic tale culture (Pawley 2005) but one that it is not



history outlined in ¤2 is fairly typical. All Neolithic transitions have

occurred during the Holocene, and the New Guinea transition isexceptional mainly insofar as it is early. The worldÕs first Neolithic

transition took place with the cultivation of rye and barley in the Natufian

culture of the Levant by about 10,400 BP (Bar-Yosef 2002). The taro- and

banana-based transition of the New Guinea Highlands occurred from

about 9000 BP, perhaps almost simultaeously with the beginnings of rice

agriculture in the Middle Yangtze and Huai Valleys around 8500 BP

(Jones 2002) and the cultivation of millet on the North China plain at

about the same time (Driem 2002). The New Guinea transition is also somewhat exceptional because of its

limited geographic expansion (it did not spread beyond New Guinea). This

was largely due to New GuineaÕs physical geography, but Harris (2002),

proposing a typology of Neolithic transitions, also notes that those whichare based on root crops rather than cereals and which lack a pastoral

(animal herding) component are less likely to expand.

For NW Island Melanesia Spriggs reconstructs a shift from mobile

foraging to foraging sedentism which occurred in Period 2, sometime after

20 000 BP (Spriggs 1997: 61Ð65) It seems that such a shift is a



history of the north Halmahera languages is less clear, but they are related

to languages of the BirdÕs Head (Voorhoeve 1987). Papuan languagesotherwise manifest no known relationship with any language outside Near

Oceania (despite GreenbergÕs 1971 proposed Indo-Pacific grouping).

There is no linguistic evidence that all Papuan languages are related to

each other. If we include isolates and small phylic groups, Map 5 shows22 seemingly unrelated phylogenetic units in New Guinea. The Papuan

languages in NW Island Melanesia provide another 8 such units (Map 6)(Ross 2001, 2005). New Guinea thus has the greatest phylogenetic

linguistic diversity on earth (Nettle 1999: 116Ð117,who notes that New

Guinea also has the greatest language diversity, i.e. the largest number of

different languages in a geographic area). I have suggested elsewhere that

there is some evidence of a deep phylogenetic relationship among some

Papuan groups. I return to this in ¤6.


The language map reflects the socio-economic history of Near Oceaniaand the effects of the different transitions to agriculture in New Guinea

and in NW Island Melanesia. Given that the focus of this paper is on the

l f f d th t th l tt bl



mountainous interiors of eastern New Britain and Bougainville do we find

small groups of contiguous Papuan languages. There is no evidence of aphylogenetic relationship among the eight groups, but there are

typological indicators that the Papuan languages of NW Island Melanesia

formed a linguistic area at the time of their first contact with Austronesian

speakers, and their length separation from one another has not eliminated

these typological signals (Ross 2001, Dunn, Reesink &Terrill 2002).5


The language map of New Guinea (Map 5) looks very different. Here,

Austronesian languages are hardly a significant feature. We know that ittook until 2000 BP for Austronesian-speaking communities to be

established along the south coast of New Guinea (Vanderwal 1973), and

that Austronesians probably occupied the offshore islands along the north

coast from 1600 ± 100 BP in the east to about 1200 BP in the SchoutenIslands further west (Lilley 1999:28, Lilley 2000:177, 187, In press). The

reasons for the slow speed of Austronesian settlement on mainland New

Guinea are probably rather complex, but one of them was certainly the

presence of well-established Papuan-speaking communities. As I noted

above it is possible that agriculture on part of the north coast predates its



spread of agriculture along the cordillera, across the RamuÐMarkham

divide into the mountains of the Huon Peninsula, and down the valleys ofthe cordilleraÕs southern flank towards the coast.

On this interpretation, the TNG family is an instance of farming-driven

language dispersal as predicted by Bellwood and RenfrewÕs

Ôfarming/language dispersal hypothesisÕ

(Renfrew

1991,

1992,

2000,

2002, Bellwood 1997, 2001, 2002), according to which the expansion of

many (but of course not all) of the worldÕs larger language families isattributable to a Neolithic transition. I suggested above that Highlands

agriculture may have begun somewhere to the south of the SepikÐRamu

inland sea. The archaeological evidence is consonant with this, as the

oldest signs of agriculture have been found at Kuk in the Western

Highlands Province. The linguistic evidence is also compatible with this

suggestion, as ceteris paribus we would expect the Proto TNG homelandto be located in the TNG familyÕs area of greatest internal phylogenetic

diversity, and this is roughly what we find: the putative homeland area lies

within the area of greatest diversity (Ross 2005: 34). The monolithic nature of the TNG family stands on Map 5 in stark

contrast to the utter heterogeneity of the large region along the north coast



The answer to the second half of Question 2 was also adumbrated

above. If the shores of the inland sea were the locus of the earliestcultivation of taro and bananas, then they would also have been relatively

densely populated and therefore unavailable to the Highlands

agriculturists. We know from the distribution of stone pestles and mortars

that there was significant early interaction between SepikÐRamu and

Highlands peoples (Swadling & Hide 2005), but the subsequent expansion

of the inland sea itself would have wiped out relevant archaeological

evidence. Today, the high population density of what was once the inland

sea is sustained by the lesser yam ( Dioscorea esculenta), but its

introduction postdates the introduction of taro to the Highlands. The

assumption of relatively dense population around the inland sea is thus

based on inference rather than direct evidence.

The inland sea area, however, is only a small part of the northernregion of diversity. A glance at Map 7, showing the locations of

present-day sago-dependent sedentary foragers (see ¤5 below), tells us that

many of these communities are located in the northern region to the west

of the former inland sea. That is, the environments they occupy are largely

swampy and unsuitable for agriculture. Allen (2005) shows that the Sepik



languages (Ross 2005: 30), which may be a remainder of a more

widespread region of Pleistocene diversity that was neither inundated bythe sea nor, because of its distance from the cordillera, occupied by TNG

speakers. Further east around the Gulf of Papua, the lowland coastal strip

is much narrower and more accessible from the cordillera. According to

the map, this strip, which consists of river deltas, is today TNG-speaking,

but it is worth noting that the TNG subfamilies include the Kiwai and

Eleman groups, which are only tentatively attributable to TNG.

5 Are there foragers in present-day Near Oceania?

I remarked in the introduction above that the conventional negative answer

to this question has itself recently been questioned. OneÕs answer isdependent on oneÕs definition of Ôhunter-gathererÕ.

As I noted above, in Period 2 (the late Pleistocene) there was a gradual

shift from mobile foraging bands to foraging sedentism (¤2), and variants

of foraging sedentism have persisted in various parts of the world without

evolving into agriculture (¤3). One such variant is represented by

sago-dependent communities in New Guinea. According to Roscoe



sago-dependent groups to occasional sago-users. In any case, even

intensive agriculturalists in New Guinea traditionally practised someforaging, with differing patterns on the coast and inland. Men hunt birds

and animals or go fishing at sea, and women gather seafood on the reef at

low tide, trap fish in rivers, and collect greens in the forest. Tending large

fruit trees (but not necessarily planting them) is also common practice. We

can therefore say that sago-dependent communities are at one extreme on

a cline of New Guinea traditional societies which more usually have

mixed forager/agriculturalist economies.

If we re-examine the regions of phylogenetic diversity (Map 5) in thelight of RoscoeÕs map of sago-dependent communities (Map 7), clear

patterns emerge. Table ! 1 lists the communities named on the map, 7 together with the phylogenetic group to which they belong and any

available grammar or dictionary.8 As Roscoe uses accepted languagenames for the groups, assigning them to phylogenetic groups is

straightforward. The phylogenetic groups are those presented in Ross

(2005).9 A consequence of RoscoeÕs use of language names is that he

perhaps inflates the number of sago-dependent societies, sometimes

naming closely related neighbouring groups separately, when the



terms they reflect the late Pleistocene situation: sedentary foragers whose

languages display phenomenal phylogenetic diversity. By Ôin generaltermsÕ, I mean that the situation of diversity among sedentary foraging

societies probably characterised the late Pleistocene; I assume that there

has been an ongoing process of phylogenetic groups splitting and

disappearing in the past 12,000 years, and that todayÕs languages cannot

tell us anything specific about the languages of the late Pleistocene. Thisassumption is supported by the fact that three Austronesian languages

appear in Table 1, their speakers apparently having switched from

agriculture in the face of an environment that encouraged dependence on

sago.

All the sago-dependent communities south of the cordillera, however,

speak TNG or possible TNG languages. As the discussion earlier

indicates, those in the west represent communities of TNG speakers whomoved down to the new coastline after the sea had receded, adapting their

lifestyle to their new environment.

At least some of the listed languages further east around the Gulf of

Papua speak languages of doubtful TNG provenance, here labelled

ÔPerhaps Trans New GuineaÕ This means that at the moment the evidence



that there is little or no enforcement of linguistic norms, and languages can

change fast.

Whether the few remaining non-TNG groups on the south coast and

the questionably TNG groups on the Gulf of Papua also reflect the late

Pleistocene situation is a question that has yet to be answered even

tentatively.

Although few Papuan languages survive in NW Island Melanesia, it is

noteworthy that on the two larger islands with several Papuan languages,

namely New Britain and Bougainville, there are signs of considerable

pre-Austronesian diversity, in that even among the few survivals we findtwo phylogenetically unrelated groups on each island. This is hardly

conclusive evidence, but it suggests that foraging sedentism may also have

been accompanied by extreme phylogenetic diversity in NW Island

Melanesia.

If I am right that the diversity of at least the New Guinea northern

region languages is attributable to time depth, then I am at least allowingthe inference that non-TNG families may be phylogenetically related, but

at a time depth too great for us to detect their relationships. As we are

l ki t di ifi ti hi h h b i i b f 12 000 BP



Sprachbund. As for the languages of the sedentary foragers of New

Guinea, comparative study of the available grammars and dictionarieslisted in Table 1 is a project that awaits a researcher, but the descriptive

coverage is sparse and patchy.



Table 1: Foragers of New Guinea, according to Roscoe (2005) _______________________________________________________________________

Family/ Language Subfamily Grammar Dictionary

_______________________________________________________________________

Sepik

Kaunga (Yelogu) Ndu (Laycock 1965)

Sawos ( Malinguat) Ndu (Laycock 1965)

Kwoma (Washkuk) Nukuma Kooyers 1974 Bowden 1997Alamblak Sepik Hill Bruce 1984

Bahinemo Sepik Hill

Bisis Sepik Hill

Bitara (Berinomo) Sepik Hill

Kaningara Sepik Hill

Kapriman Sepik Hill

Mari Sepik Hill

Sanio (Saniyo-Hiyewe) Leonhard (R.K. Lewis 1972,

Schultze S.C. Lewis 1972)_______________________________________________________________________

RamuÐLower Sepik

Chambri Lower Sepik

Karawari (Tabriak) Lower Sepik

Murik Lower Sepik Schmidt 1953

Yimas Lower Sepik Foley 1991



Oguri 1976, 1985,

Oguri & Cochran 1976)

_______________________________________________________________________

Kwerba

Kwerba Ñ (Vries & Vries 1997)

_______________________________________________________________________

Lakes Plain

Girigiri (Kirikiri) West Tariku

Edopi Central Tariku

Iau Central Tariku Bateman 1986

Sikaritai East Tariku

_______________________________________________________________________

Extended West Papuan ?

Tause Ñ

_______________________________________________________________________

Trans New GuineaMimika (Kamoro) Asmat Drabbe 1953, Voorhoeve 1980

North Asmat Asmat Voorhoeve 1980

Causaurina Coast Asmat Voorhoeve 1965, 1980

Kombai Awyu-Dumut Vries 1993

Sawi (Sawuy) Awyu-Dumut

Siagha-Yenimu Awyu-Dumut



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