Hey, someone was going to...
Another recent potato story:
Hey, someone was going to...
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"I yam what I yam."
In NZ these “sweet potato” are called kumara. They have three colors: gold, white, and red. Much nicer than what you Yanks would call “yams”: you can prepare them exactly like you would a potato. Very, very nice: deep-fried they are a delicious change from Freedom Fries. (Serve with sour cream rather than ketchup, perfect for soaking up excess beer urrrp!). Very nice mashed, or roasted with other root vegetables around the Sunday roast.
Did they arrive here from the Andes? I doubt it. Maori have been cultivating kumara ever since they arrived here in NZ, it is a hi-value hi-energy carbohydrate that would be just perfect for hooning around the South Pacific in dugout canoes. Just as likely a roving band of Maori dropped some kumara off in the Andes during one of their South Pacific cannibalizing jaunts.
The longer I live in NZ, the more convinced I am that the Maori and the Pacific Islanders were alot more clever and mobile than history has given them credit for. The mere facts that they never discovered the wheel, or metals, or a written language is quite deceiving.
Nope: I’m going to put a stake in the ground and state confidently that the Maori brought Kumara to South America, and not the other way around.
I’m just glad they got here.
ping
> Drifters could explain sweet-potato travel
>
> An unsteered ship may have delivered crop to Polynesia.
I used to be of the opinion that Maori shipwrecked ashore in New Zealand and that they did not navigate their way here, contrary to their oral traditions.
I have changed my mind, having become immersed in their culture.
They were very, very clever with their dugout ocean-going canoes, filled with fghting-fit warrior cannibals, each of them rowing under the direction of a single Navigator. They could beyond doubt navigate by stars, and they could use ocean currents like we use Interstate Hiways.
Something like stone-age Vikings, except with fewer clothes.
Beyond doubt they had regular exchange with Tahitians and Cook Islanders (the languages and physical characteristics are virtually identical) and definitely the Hawaiians (a nine hour flite from Auckland: still, the languages are strikingly similar).
The jolly “kumara” sweet potatoes would never have gotten here by drifting. If brought to NZ from South America, it would have been delivered by war canoe by a marauding raiding party of hungry Maori cannibals, who would have noticed that kumara made a nice condiment to be served with Incas, both roasted slowly in their clay hangi pits.
More likely in my view, the Maori brought kumara to South America.
I would think that this had already been settled back in the 40’s by Thor Heyerdahl.
This is all just rumor and innuendo. My forebears were not “drifters” at all. Rather, I come from a long line of rogues, charming and rakishly handsome all, and we shall not abide this calumny!
Intercontinental yam cannon.
