Kuk Ear­ly Agri­cul­tur­al Site con­sists of 116 ha of swamps in the west­ern high­lands of New Guinea 1,500 metres above sea-lev­­el. Archae­o­log­i­cal exca­va­tion has revealed the land­scape to be one of wet­land recla­ma­tion worked almost con­tin­u­ous­ly for 7,000, and pos­si­bly for 10,000 years. It con­tains well-pre­served archae­o­log­i­cal remains demon­strat­ing the tech­no­log­i­cal leap which trans­formed plant exploita­tion to agri­cul­ture around 6,500 years ago. It is an excel­lent exam­ple of trans­for­ma­tion of agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices over time, from cul­ti­va­tion mounds to drain­ing the wet­lands through the dig­ging of ditch­es with wood­en tools. Kuk is one of the few places in the world where archae­o­log­i­cal evi­dence sug­gests inde­pen­dent agri­cul­tur­al devel­op­ment and changes in agri­cul­tur­al prac­tice over such a long peri­od of time.