Cultivated plants as indicators in the reconstruction of the progression of settlement in Oceania
1981
Kreisel, W. (Rheinisch-Westfaelische Technische Hochschule, Aachen (Germany, F.R.). Geographisches Inst.)
The origin of the inhabitants of Oceania, and in particular that of the Polynesians, has as yet remained a partially unsolved problem. A methodological approach which can assist in finding an explanation is to draw conclusions about the origin of the population from the origin and migration routes of the most important cultivated plants. The present article deals with the cultivated plant which is in this respect most controversial, the sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas). Numerous researchers posit its original home in America and thus deduce that the inhabitants of Polynesia also hail from this continent. A close examination proves that the sweet potato was indeed transferred from America to Oceania. This does not, however, prove that Oceania was settled from America. For the plant first appears in Oceania considerably after the first period of settlement; it was added later to the cultivated plants already present. These can only have been the tuber crops taro and yam which come from Asia. Both were transferred to Oceania by the first settlers from Asia and this clearly indicates that the origin of the inhabitants of Oceania is in Asia. Nevertheless, the transfer of the sweet potato probably by Polynesian seafarers does establish the existence of contacts between Oceania and South America in the pre-European period
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