ABSTRACT
Ever since Vavilov (1927: 417, 425) included Java, Sumatra, and other insular Asian centres among places of origin of domesticated plants, a series of publications have appeared indicating an area encompassing Indochina and South China in the west, and Western Melanesia in the east, as one of the fundamental centres of origin of cultivated plants (Yen 1980). The flooding of the Sunda and Sahul Shelfs (connecting islands of West Indonesia with Indochina, and New Guinea with Australia respectively) between 12,000 and 8000 Be must have led to a concentration of population in Southeast Asia and West Melanesia, in which people gradually retreating from the flooded lowlands met highlanders descending the mountain valleys as a result of the gradual expansion of the continental population. One consequence of this process was possibly an early recourse to more intensive methods of exploitation of food resources, domestication of food plants and animals. Indeed, first signs of apparent plant domestication appear in the course of the following two to four millennia in Indochina and in New Guinea.
