Landmark Australia and Oceania
Kuk Swamp
Kuk Swamp is a wet valley in the mountains of New Guinea. People have grown plants there for thousands of years!
Kuk Swamp is a wetland in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, about 1,500 meters above sea level. Digging there has shown that people have farmed it almost without a break for 7,000 years, and possibly for 10,000 years. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008.
The Kuk Early Agricultural Site covers 116 ha of swamp in the highlands of New Guinea. UNESCO says its buried remains show an independent leap from gathering plants to farming them around 7,000-6,400 years ago, based on bananas, taro and yam, and later the draining of the wetland with ditches dug with wooden tools.
Photo: NASA: JPL, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Discover Kuk Swamp
Kuk Swamp is on the island of New Guinea, in the country of Papua New Guinea.
It is a wet, green valley high in the mountains.
Kuk Swamp lies in the highlands of New Guinea, about 1,500 meters above sea level. It is part of a large valley between mountains, where people still farm the wet land today.
The World Heritage Site covers 116 hectares of swamp. It is not a building: what makes it special is hidden in the ground, where archaeologists have found the traces of very old gardens.
UNESCO places the Kuk Early Agricultural Site in the western highlands of New Guinea at about 1,500 m (ICOMOS gives 1,560 m), in one of the largest inter-montane valleys along the island's highland spine. The roughly rectangular site covers 116 ha, with a 195 ha buffer zone on three sides.
ICOMOS notes that the Kuk swamps appear to have been settled before 25,000 years ago, and that Kuk is now part of a wide area of intensively cultivated wetland in several densely populated valleys.
- Country
- Papua New Guinea
- Area
- 116 ha
- Farmed for
- 7,000, possibly 10,000 years
- World Heritage Site
- 2008
Thousands of years of gardens
Long, long ago, people here grew bananas, taro and yams.
Later they dug ditches to drain the wet ground.
Around 7,000 to 6,400 years ago, people at Kuk began growing bananas, taro and yams on mounds of soil at the edges of the wetland. UNESCO calls this a technological leap: people were no longer just gathering plants, they were farming them.
From about 4,000 years ago, people dug ditches with wooden tools to drain water from the swamp and grow crops on the wet land.
ICOMOS describes early evidence of planting and digging pits from 10,000 to 7,000 years ago, which it calls still contentious. The earliest agreed evidence is the bases of cultivation mounds from 7,000 to 6,400 years ago: bananas and yams grew on the mounds, and taro, which could stand wetter ground, along their edges.
Between 4,350 and 3,980 years ago, networks of ditches joined to larger drainage channels improved banana growing on the waterlogged ground. For the last 2,000 years the ditches marked out rectangular plots, a system used on and off until about 100 years ago.
Ditches, mounds and digging sticks
Archaeologists dug trenches to look under the ground.
They found the shapes of old mounds and ditches.
Archaeologists have dug more than 200 trenches at Kuk. In the soil they found the bottoms of old mounds where plants grew, and the outlines of drainage ditches.
They also found stone tools used for preparing taro, yams and other starchy plants. The ditches were dug with wooden tools.
The evidence comes from more than 200 excavated trenches, which have touched only a small part of the core site. ICOMOS lists four kinds of evidence: early plant use, the gradual development of systematic agriculture on mounds, drainage ditches from about 4,000 years ago, and signs that domesticated plants spread from the Kuk area.
Stone tools found there are linked with processing taro, yam and other starchy and woody plants. Kuk was chosen for nomination because it has been studied in the greatest detail and holds the most successive periods of food production and the oldest evidence for plant food production.
A home of the banana
Some of the bananas people eat today may have first been grown in New Guinea!
Scientists' research suggests this.
The bananas grown at Kuk long ago included a wild kind. ICOMOS says that, much later, the world's largest group of farmed bananas came from that wild species.
Scientists who study the genes of bananas suggest that people first domesticated bananas in New Guinea, and that bananas then spread to Southeast Asia. Tiny plant remains found at Kuk support this idea.
Plant microfossils from Kuk support genetic and plant-geography studies suggesting that New Guinea was a center where bananas and yams were domesticated, and a center from which domestication spread. The bananas grown on the early mounds included a wild species from which the world's largest group of domesticated bananas later arose.
UNESCO calls Kuk one of the few places in the world where archaeological evidence suggests independent agricultural development and changes in farming practice over 7,000 and possibly 10,000 years.
- Early crops
- Bananas, taro, yams
- Trenches dug
- more than 200
- Elevation
- about 1,500 m
- Buffer zone
- 195 ha
Kuk today, seen from space
This picture was taken from space!
It shows green valleys, forests on the hills and a few white clouds.
This picture was taken by the ASTER instrument on NASA's Terra satellite on 7 May 2002. It shows an area of the highlands around Kuk, 31.6 by 40 kilometers, with green valley floors, fields, a winding river, forested ridges and a few clouds.
In 1968 the swamp was drained and a research station grew tea and other crops there. The station closed in 1991, and since then local people have farmed the land again.
The ASTER image (NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS and the U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team, 7 May 2002) covers 31.6 × 40 km around 5.8° S, 144.3° E; rectangular fields and a meandering river stand out on the valley floor below forested ridges.
In 1968 a research station, first for tea and later for other crops, drained the swamp with parallel trenches. Excavations of the new drains began just before Papua New Guinea's independence in 1975, led by the Australian National University. After the station closed in 1991, local people returned to farming, mixing traditional practices with crops such as coffee.
Amazing facts
-
Many bananas we eat today may come from a wild banana once grown here!
The bananas grown at Kuk long ago included a wild species from which the world's largest group of farmed bananas later came.
ICOMOS notes that the bananas on Kuk's early mounds included a wild species from which the world's largest group of domesticated bananas later arose.
-
The old ditches were dug with wooden tools!
People drained the Kuk wetland by digging ditches with wooden tools.
UNESCO dates the draining of the wetland with ditches dug with wooden tools from about 4,000 years ago (4,000 BP) to the present.
-
Modern drains helped scientists find ancient ditches!
In the 1970s archaeologists studied newly dug plantation drains and found the traces of ancient drainage ditches.
Just before independence in 1975, the Australian National University began studying the newly dug plantation drains; large-scale excavations ran until 1977 and revealed traces of ancient drainage systems.
Words to know
- swamp
- wet, soggy land where water covers the ground for much of the time
- archaeologist
- a scientist who digs up and studies things people left long ago
- agriculture
- growing crops and raising animals for food
- drainage ditch
- a long channel dug to carry water away from land
- taro
- a plant with a starchy root that people cook and eat
- domesticate
- to change a wild plant or animal over time by growing or raising it
Discovery challenge
-
Which country is Kuk Swamp in?
In which country is Kuk Swamp?
The Kuk Early Agricultural Site is a World Heritage Site in which country?
- Papua New Guinea
- Australia
- Japan
Show the answer
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea!
Papua New Guinea, in its highlands.
Papua New Guinea; inscribed in 2008.
-
Which of these did people grow at Kuk long ago?
Which crops grew on the early mounds at Kuk?
UNESCO says early agriculture at Kuk was based on the vegetative propagation of which plants?
- Bananas, taro and yams
- Wheat, barley and oats
- Rice, corn and potatoes
Show the answer
Bananas, taro and yams
Bananas, taro and yams!
Bananas, taro and yams.
Bananas, taro and yam.
-
How did people dry out the wet ground?
How did people at Kuk drain the wetland?
From about 4,000 years ago, how was the Kuk wetland drained?
- They dug ditches
- They built pumps
- They waited for summer
Show the answer
They dug ditches
They dug ditches!
They dug ditches with wooden tools.
By digging ditches with wooden tools.
-
For how long have people farmed at Kuk?
For about how long has Kuk been farmed almost without a break?
UNESCO says the Kuk wetland has been worked almost continuously for how long?
- 7,000 years, maybe 10,000
- 70 years
- 700 years
Show the answer
7,000 years, maybe 10,000
Thousands of years: 7,000 or more!
7,000 years, and possibly 10,000.
7,000 and possibly 10,000 years.
-
How was the picture on this page taken?
What took the picture of Kuk on this page?
Which instrument recorded this 2002 image of the Kuk area?
- A satellite in space
- A person on a ladder
- A boat underwater
Show the answer
A satellite in space
A satellite in space!
The ASTER instrument on NASA's Terra satellite.
ASTER, on the Terra satellite.
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For parents & teachers
What children will learn
- Explain the difference between gathering wild plants and farming them.
- Describe how ditches can turn wet land into land for crops.
- Explain how archaeologists learn about the past from soil and trenches.
Recommended ages: 4 to 17 · About 15 minutes
Talk about it
- Why might people choose to farm in a wet valley?
- How can scientists tell that a ditch was dug thousands of years ago?
- Why might the same land be farmed in different ways over time?
Try at home or in class
- In a tray of wet sand, scoop a channel and watch how it drains water from the rest of the tray.
- Find New Guinea on a globe and trace how bananas might have spread to Southeast Asia.
Key vocabulary: swamp, archaeologist, agriculture, drainage ditch, taro, domesticate
Where these facts come from
- Wikidata , Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)
- Kuk Early Agricultural Site , UNESCO World Heritage Centre
- Advisory Body Evaluation: Kuk Early Agricultural Site (Papua New Guinea), No 887 , ICOMOS / UNESCO World Heritage Centre
- Kuk, New Guinea (PIA13090) , NASA Photojournal
- File:Kuk New Guinea 2002.jpg , Wikimedia Commons
- UNESCO World Heritage List , UNESCO World Heritage Centre (Linked as a reference; site facts come from Wikidata)
- Wikimedia Commons , Wikimedia Foundation (Per file (public domain, CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA); see each media record)
Checked, not yet human-reviewed. Last updated November 1, 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.
Picture credits
- Photo: NASA: JPL, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons · source