AUSTRONESIAN ORIGIN

Sweet potatoes were a common food crop of the Austronesian people, which were abundantly cultivated in New Zealand, Hawaii and Easter Islands.  “Kumara” is a Maori term and it is also used by most other Austronesian languages to call sweet potatoes.  The place of origin of sweet potato has been considered by most mainstream science as Central and South America. But before Columbus arrived in America in 1492, the sweet potato was already being cultivated on the islands of Pacific.  

 

There is also another theory that the Austronesian people, with their excellent navigation techniques, had already visited America and brought back the sweet potato.  But this theory is lacking, for why did they only bring back the sweet potato and not other crops, such as maize, another food crop that is also originally from America?

 

In the history of the Maori and Hawaiian peoples, “Canoe plants” were mentioned, this referred to a list of the plants their ancestors brought with them when they arrived on these new lands by boat.  Sweet potatoes were on these lists. Maori had arrived New Zealand in AD 1200 and Hawaiian had arrived Hawaii in AD 900, and both had brought sweet potatoes with them. These dates are quite a bit earlier than Columbus’ 1492.  Another plant also found on the list of canoe plants is the paper mulberry, with which the bark is used for making tapa cloth, and it was already proven to have  originated from Taiwan.  Therefore, the place of origin for all the canoe plants need to be reconsidered.

 

Recent scientific studies have come to the conclusion regarding the theory that the Austronesian people originated from Taiwan is correct. It is probable that the origin of the sweet potato may also be from Taiwan, or from somewhere during enroute their migration.  According to modern knowledge, the distribution of many plants are connected with the Age of Discovery.  But this Age was just a matter of the recent five hundred years. It is not possible for it to be used to explain the history of human activity from thousand or tens of thousand of years ago.

 

The naming of sweet potatoes along the Pacific Rim can divided into three main categories. First is the “kumara”, which  originated from the Peruvian Indian Quechua name of “kumar”. “Kumara” and other cognates, as kumala, umala, ‘uala, are widely used in Polynesian Oceania. Second is “camote”, which originated from a Mexican Indian Nahuatl word “camotli”, it is used in Central America; and known in the Philippines as “kamote”, in Chamorro of North Mariana as ”kamuti”.  Third is “batata”, used in South America and the Caribbean islands, and Western New Guinea.  The second category of distribution for the name of “camote” was through Spanish galleons that set out from Mexico and spread over the Pacific Islands, such as North Mariana and Philippines. It's quite interesting why Spanish adopted “batata” instead of “camote” for sweet potato.  The third category of distribution for the word of “batata” was through the Portuguese from somewhere in South America and spread over the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, Africa and Moluccas.  But both second and third categories of distribution are dated after Columbus.  Only the first category of distribution for the word of “ kumara” had happened thousand of years before Columbus.  

 

From a linguistic point-of-view, with the word “kumara” used in Oceania, and the word “kumar” used in Peru, we can be sure that both words are cognates.  But which one had occurred first, it's still obscure.  Even though we can be sure the Austronesian people and the Peruvian people had made contact in ancient time, and sweet potato had changed hands through them,  from who to whom is still an unsolved question.

 

As an organism, sweet potato don't have a hard structure such as the bones of animals that can survive for thousand of years waiting for an archaeologist to  confirm their dates.  The current archaeological method to check the date of the sweet potato is through a specimen of carbonated tuber. But this method is quite insufficient.  If next time a specimen is found in another location, this discovery could rewrite history.

 

Links for further information:

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• Historical collections reveal patterns of diffusion of sweet potato in Oceania obscured by modern plant movements and recombination

• The Sweet Potato: Its Origin and Dispersal

• Sweet potato

• Austronesian Tapa Cloth

• Tree distribution supports ‘out of Taiwan’ hypothesis

• The "Canoe Plants" of Ancient Hawai`i