The assumption of the Southeast Asian origin of Oceanic agriculture is examined on the following bases: a) The root crop precedence to rice as the widely adopted food staple in SE Asia, and the significance of this precedence to agricultural diffusion into Oceania. b) A review of recent evidence in regard to a). c) The significance of early environmental adaptations in New Guinea that could indicate that agriculture there was as early as any such adaptation in the world. d) That the process of genetic adaptation, i.e. domestication, was a continuous process that was to change the Oceanic agricultural systems of Oceania from their founding forms.