ABSTRACT
The community of the Kai people, in the interior of the Saddle Mountains on the north coast of New Guinea, may serve as a representative of an unstratified society of hunters, trappers, and women collectors. Like other Papuans, they chiefly subsist on yams, taro, and other tubers which are planted everywhere, while potatoes are little known and seldom found. In general the temperate zones have favoured the cultivation of grain. In Asia and Europe wheat, barley, oats, and rye were available, and rice in the southern parts of Asia. A similar situation existed in America, where the principal cereal was maize, a plant probably indigenous to Mexico, whence it spread northward and southward. Beans and marrows are also native to America, so that in this respect the influence of the Old World cannot be accepted.
