3000 BCE–1000 CE: (The Malayo-Polynesian Expansion as Global Parallel — Communities Speaking Malayo-Polynesian Languages Spreading First to the Philippines T…

3000 BCE–1000 CE: (The Malayo-Polynesian Expansion as Global Parallel — Communities Speaking Malayo-Polynesian Languages Spreading First to the Philippines Then Across Almost All of Indonesia and Along the Northern Edges of New Guinea Bringing East Asian Crops Like Rice, Encounters with Existing New Guinean Populations Leading to the Adoption of Tropical Crops Like Taro Breadfruit Yam and Sugarcane from the Independent New Guinean Center of Agricultural Invention, from 1500 BCE Onward the Oceanic Subgroup Scattering Across Micronesia and Polynesia Bringing the First Agricultural and Often First Human Settlements, the East Asian Crops Not Spreading with the Oceanic Peoples Who Instead Relied on the Tropical Crops Acquired Through Agricultural Exchange in New Guinea): During the same era in a different part of the world, communities speaking languages of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian family similarly spread out, first to the Philippines and from there across almost all of today’s Indonesia as well as moving in along the northern edges of New Guinea, bringing East Asian crops, notably rice, into many of these regions. These expansions had an additional set of consequences: encounters with the existing populations of New Guinea and neighboring islands led to the adoption by the early Malayo-Polynesians of tropical crops such as taro, breadfruit, yam, and sugarcane — several of which came from the earlier independent center of agricultural invention in New Guinea. Around 1500 BCE, there began over the next 2,500 years a vast additional scattering of the speakers of the Oceanic subgroup of Malayo-Polynesian eastward into the Pacific, bringing the first agricultural, and often the first human, settlements to islands all across Micronesia and Polynesia. Interestingly, the East Asian crops, notably rice, carried to Island South Asia by the initial Malayo-Polynesian expansion, did not spread with the Oceanic peoples. Rather, it was tropical crops, including those acquired through agricultural exchange with the peoples of New Guinea, that sustained the Oceanic expansion across the Pacific. The Malayo-Polynesian story is the mirror image of the African story — a language family expansion driven by food production, enriched by agricultural exchange with the peoples it encountered, and resulting in the demographic transformation of an entire region. And the detail about the crops is crucial: the Oceanic peoples who settled Polynesia did not carry rice. They carried taro and yam — crops that originated in the independent New Guinean center of agricultural invention. The civilization of Polynesia was built on Papuan crops, just as ancient Egypt was built on Nilo-Saharan cultural foundations. Agricultural exchange — the borrowing of crops across cultural and linguistic boundaries — is the hidden thread that connects the most far-flung human achievements of the ancient world.