[Charles Martel]

That suggests the plants, or their seeds, somehow migrated across the ocean on their own, possibly via wind, water or birds.

I always knew that the coconut theory wasn't that far-fetched.

[null and void]

It wasn’t an African swallow, it wasn’t a European swallow, it was a Polynesian swallow!

[tet68]

I always knew that the coconut theory wasn’t that far-fetched.

Explain to me how a sweet potato crossed the Pacific
on a coconut...Hah, I thought so.

[Rurudyne]

Ancient twine using sparrows strike again!

[Don Corleone]

Kon Tiki???

[Oklahoma]

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.