Sugarcane domestication
Domesticación de la caña de azúcar
- Date
- c. 6000 BCE · confidence low
- Place
- Highlands of New Guinea, Papua New Guinea
- Credited to
- Papuan farmers of New Guinea
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Selection of Saccharum officinarum from wild canes in New Guinea, part of the island's independent centre of agriculture. Sugarcane spread through the Pacific and Southeast Asia and reached India, where the making of crystallised sugar was born.
There are no direct archaeobotanical remains; the chronology is inferred from genetics, botany and linguistics, so the dates are very uncertain.
What it led to
- the spread of sugarcane through Oceania and Indonesia
- crystallised sugar in India
- plantation economies centuries later