Hi everybody, from Wondery welcome to another episode of Tides of History.

One of the most valuable aspects of studying prehistory in the deep human past and global

perspective is that it makes you realize how much you don't know.

Though even if you consider yourself a pretty well informed person, maybe you're even

a trained specialist on some aspect of archeology or history, a cursory reading of the work

in a new time period or place is pretty much guaranteed to blow your mind in some way.

As I've been doing this current series, I've been lucky enough to have that feeling over

and over again.

I'm not sure any topic in this series has so thoroughly interested and confused me as

the invention of agriculture in New Guinea.

It's a place on which there's very little focus and the educational curriculum we tend

to study in the United States.

On top of that, it's a place where new archaeological work and discoveries have thoroughly shifted

our understanding of how really fundamental pieces of the human journey, like the emergence

of food production, can and have worked.

That's why I'm really excited to talk to our guest today.

He's one of the world's leading experts on the archeology of the New Guinea Highlands

and especially on Cook's Swamp.

The archeological site I spent so much time talking about last week.

But beyond New Guinea, he works on a whole variety of topics, including really cutting-edge

aspects of Archeo Botny, the archeological study of plant remains.

He's a professor of archeological science at Australian National University, the author

...