Posted on 05/12/2018 1:58:52 PM PDT by blam
Sweet potatoes were domesticated thousands of years ago in the Americas. So 18th century European explorers were surprised to find Polynesians had been growing the crop for centuries. New genetic evidence instead suggests that wild precursors to sweet potatoes reached Polynesia at least 100,000 years ago — long before humans inhabited the South Pacific islands, researchers report April 12 in Current Biology. If true, it could also challenge the idea that Polynesian seafarers reached the Americas around the 12th century.
For the new study, the researchers analyzed the DNA of 199 specimens taken from sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) and 38 species of its wild relatives. The goal, says plant geneticist Tom Carruthers of the University of Oxford, was to “gain insight into the origins of the sweet potato — when it arose, where it arose and how it arose.”
Carruthers and his colleagues confirmed previous research that the sweet potato’s closest relative is the flowering Ipomoea trifida, which is similar to a morning glory. The genetic analysis shows that sweet potatoes originated from I. trifida at least 800,000 years ago, and then later interbred with I. trifida. It also shows that a specimen preserved from Captain James Cook’s 1769 expedition to the South Pacific is genetically different from South American sweet potatoes.
The researchers calculated the average rate of genetic change for the plant, determining that the Polynesian sweet potato diverged from its South American cousin at least 100,000 years ago. That suggests the plants, or their seeds, somehow migrated across the ocean on their own, possibly via wind, water or birds. Precedent exists, the authors note. Two other Ipomoea species crossed the Pacific about a million years ago — to Hawaii in one case, and to islands from Polynesia to Madagascar in the other.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
Too bad the virus in them couldn’t survive on Earth.
The idea that sweet potato “seeds” or the plants themselves floated or were carried by birds or other animals from South America to Polynesia is silly. Anyone with a basic knowledge of sweet potato production will tell you that the plants are propagated from slips grown from the tuber. No tuber the size required to sustain growth would have survived any journey on salt water.
The most logical explanation is that while traveling over the central and southern pacific the Polynesians had some contact with some part of the American continents that raised a sweet potato that was carried west to parts of Polynesia.
The strange thing to me is that I have just in the last day or so become interested in the Polynesian diaspora, if I may call it that, all because of Kilauea, and the focus it put on Hawaiian culture.
Who are the Hawaiians? I asked myself, and found that they are essentially Polynesians, but who are the Polynesians? And I immersed myself in that whole story, with emphasis on “Navigation” which quite impressed me, and has a topical connection to the recent resurrection of this ancient and enduring craft or technology. Not a science in our terms, perhaps, but certainly worthy of the title.
I was mostly impressed with my own complete ignorance this entire sphere, or hemisphere we might say, of knowledge, heretofore.
Thanks blam.
The researchers calculated the average rate of genetic change for the plant, determining that the Polynesian sweet potato diverged from its South American cousin at least 100,000 years ago. That suggests the plants, or their seeds, somehow migrated across the ocean on their own, possibly via wind, water or birds.
IOW, their calculations are a giant pile of crap. They should be calibrating their stupid model using reality, rather than trying to do the opposite. One way to do that would be to abandon the Clovis-First-and-Only nonsense, and admit humans have been in the Americas for 100s of 1000s of years.
For instance, the Polynesian word for the tuber, “kuumala,” is extremely similar to the Andean people’s Quechuan word, “kumara.” This linguistic evidence for humans introducing sweet potatoes to the South Pacific is highly compelling
Game, set, match.
???
And if government is spending my money to increase production or nutritional content, I would say that is more properly the job of the sweet potato industry.
If that knowledge can create some new wealth*, or feed, clothe and house people, or prevent us from killing one another by repeating past mistakes then it is worth the investment. If it is simply very interesting information, let the interested pay for it.
*Moving dollars from our pockets to those of so-called scientists is not wealth creation.
If she knew anything about them you’re a lucky man. It’s been 29 years for me and she was the granddaughter of one of the last Indian maharajahs. Stunning to this day. My anniversary present to her was to finally stop referring to her as my ‘first’ wife :-).
I yam what I yam,” said Popeyelua, the polynesian sailor
Research suggests sweet potatoes didn’t originate in the Americas as previously thought — May 21, 2018, Indiana University [”57-milion-year-old leaf fossils”]
https://phys.org/news/2018-05-sweet-potatoes-didnt-americas-previously.html
I always wondered just where Swee’pea came from, frankly.
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