The Surprising Ingredient That Helped Polynesians Conquer the Pacific

Sweet potatoes are a precise versatile tuber. You tin roast them. You tin cook them into a pie. You tin crook them into the 3rd champion benignant of gallic fry. And apparently, you tin marque them an integral portion of colonizing Polynesian islands.

Sweet potatoes are not indigenous to Polynesia, having arisen thousands of miles distant successful Central and South America. Even so, the tasty basal rootlike has go a staple of the islands’ cuisine. While it was known that the harvest had arrived successful eastbound Polynesia immoderate clip aft quality colony successful 900 CE, and past dispersed westward towards New Zealand, scientists person debated precisely however and erstwhile it got there. Some grounds suggests saccharine murphy seeds reached the portion done earthy means, specified arsenic birds, wind, and oversea currents. Now, caller probe hints that the crop’s beingness was a large origin successful enabling quality enlargement crossed the Polynesian islands.

A squad of archaeologists, led by University of Otago prof Ian Barber, scoured the New Zealand land Te Wāhipounamu for remains of past kūmara, arsenic the Maori telephone saccharine potatoes. They recovered what they were looking for astatine Triangle Flat, an country that was erstwhile location to a Maori farming complex. In the sand, they located saccharine murphy granules, which they past c dated.

Results showed that the harvest could person been planted arsenic aboriginal arsenic 1290 CE, implicit 100 years earlier than antecedently believed connected the island, and astir the aforesaid clip that settlers archetypal began colonizing the southernmost Polynesian islands. As Barber wrote successful his ensuing study, published Wednesday successful the diary Antiquity, the findings suggest saccharine potatoes were among the archetypal crops planted by colonizers. In fact, the availability of saccharine potatoes arsenic a harvest whitethorn person been among the factors that made settling the islands imaginable successful the archetypal place.

The rootlike is known for its hardiness, arsenic good arsenic for the velocity astatine which it grows. Polynesia is simply a immense web of implicit 1,000 islands, and settlers needed hardy crops to prolong themselves arsenic they dispersed to caller territories with cooler climates than those of islands nearer the equator. In a property release, Barber suggested that Polynesians whitethorn person been galvanized by the cognition they had specified a robust nutrient root astatine their disposal.

“American saccharine murphy resilience, arsenic bequeathed by continental evolution, whitethorn person helped motivate aboriginal migrants to transverse cooler waters for confederate Polynesian islands wherever kūmara would outperform,” helium said.

There could beryllium immoderate greater impacts of Barber’s research. According to the International Potato Center, much than 105 cardinal metric tons of the harvest are produced globally each year, making it the world’s 5th largest crop. Climate change, however, threatens to impact production, arsenic regions that nutrient a ample magnitude of the proviso could lukewarm dramatically by 2070. Barber expressed anticipation that studying the dispersed of saccharine potatoes could uncover caller ways to amended the crop’s resilience. If that happens, you’ll cognize who to convey for redeeming your favourite Thanksgiving broadside dish.