Conklin, Harold C. 1963 The Oceanian-African Hypothese and the Sweet Potato. In Plants and the Migrations of Pacific Peoples. Jacques Barrau, Ed. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press. pp. 129-136.
FIND THIS!
Sweet potato history, dispersal, linguistics
http://annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.anthro.32.032702.131011
The Anthropology of Food and Eating:
Food Anthro organized into topics of
- single commodities and substances
- food and social change
- food insecurity
- eating and ritual
- eating and identities
- instructional materials
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/671520.pdf
The Sweet Potato: Its Origin and Dispersal
Understanding dispersal of Sweet potato helps understand
(1) how man was manipulating and changing specific types of plants to bring them under cultivation
(2) the effects of the nature of the plants (seed or vegetable) on the agricultural systems developed, and
(3) the significance of diffusion as a process of change through the contacts between different human populations as the plant moved around the world
Sweet potato:
Originated in northwestern South America,
The Spanish introduced it to Europe and spread it to China and Japan and Malaysia and the Moluccas region.
The Portuguese carried it to India, Indonesia, and Africa
Dispersed from the Samoa area to the rest of the pacific after AD 1
The Spanish introduced it into Europe, the Philippines, Guam, and Malaysia. From the Philippines it was then carried to China and from China ultimately to Japan
archaeological, linguistic, and historical evidence establishes that the sweet potato originated in the New World, either in the Central or South American lowlands
linguistic evidence from the proto-Mayan and proto-Mixtecan reconstructions points to the presence of the sweet potato as early as 2600 B.C. and not much later than 1000 B
Archeological remains: Ventanilla in the Chillon Valley of Peru site dated 2000-1200 BC
Dispersal:
Introduced to Europe Via Spain:
Columbus presented some to Queen Isabella
Oviedo claims that (in 1526) he introduced the plant himself at Avila, Spain
Called batata or padada
Later called Spanish potato or sweet potato
Another early work which describes the food plants of the Indians in the U.S. is Hariot’s report of Raleigh’s colony in Virginia, published in 1588. One root described called “okeepenavk” is probably what is the wild sweet potato (Ipomoea pandurata) (Swanton 1946:270). According to Safford (1925b:223) the sweet potato when first brought to North America was called the “Irish potato” because some Scotch-Irish introduced it in 1719 at Londonderry, Rockingham County, New Hampshire.
Pre-colombian spread to polynesia
Evidence of Spanish introduction is indicated by the fact that the Chinese had extensive trade within the Philippine Islands and Japan, and if the plant had been present in the Philippines before the Spanish arrived in 1521, it would have been imported to Japan along with other trade goods from these areas. The Spanish discovered the Philippines in 1521 and had established a flourishing trade with China at about 1571 (Simon 1914:713). Thus, it would appear that the sweet potato was unknown in the Far East before the arrival of the Spanish and that they brought the plant with its Mexican name camote to the Philippines (Simon 1914:714)
Conklin argues that sweet potato was dispersed to Africa via the Portuguese (words “batata, tata and mbatata all around Africa)
An Englishman named Caven- dish noted the plant growing on Guam and the Philippines, and called camote when he visited in 1588 (Safford 1925a:181)
From here to China, Formosa, Japan, Indonesia, Southeast Asia
Camotl and camotili- nahuatl language
First explorers to the most distant islands of polynesian islands noted that sweet potatos were everywhere and economically important and mainstay of the diet in Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island (which are the outer points of polynesia, and the sweet potato was not really mentioned in the middle islands of polynesia)
Cook named sweet potato as a native plant of Hawaii when he landed there for the first time (first european to arrive in Hawaii). It was already incorporated in rituals and stuff.
Also, amazing variety (24 in Hawaii alone)
In Peru and Ecuador sweet potatoes are cumar, kumar, kumara, ckumara, umar, kumal, and in Columbia umala and kuala (Heyerdahl 1952:429). In Polynesia we find kumar(a), umara, uma’s, kumala, umala, and uwala (Conklin 1963:130). Suggs suggested that since the term for sweet potato occurs in all the Polynesian languages and since there is another term for sweet potato in Peru (i.e., apichu in Quechua) that the work kumar was Polynesian and had been introduced into Peru by Europeans (1960:2)
-Linguistic evidence suggests that sweet potato was dispersed throughout polynesia before diversification of languages?
camote is Nahuatl and batata is Arawakan; neither is Quechuan.
Different names between polynesia and south america suggests sweet potato dispersed to polynesia either through 1.) human actions 2.) birds without the transfer of names (dead people/ship to polynesia, ship without women planting on islands before the arrival of polynesians)
). Portuguese influence in the spread of the plant to Ambon, Timor and in parts of the northern Moluccas is indicated linguistically since the plant name is varieties of the word batata (Conklin 1963:132). In Malaysia the sweet potato is called Spanish tuber, thus giving kastila, katela or achila with the native word for tuber (Conklin 1963:1
Guam it is called both camote (Hornell 1946; Conklin 1963) and batat (Merrill 1954).
ng. First, the sweet potato originated somewhere in Central or northwestern South America about 3000 B.C. in association in part with the development of Tropical Forest root crop agriculture
Post-columbian-Magellan introduc- tion of the sweet potato into Africa, North America, Europe, India, China, Japan, the Philippines, the Moluccas, and other islands in the Indonesian area was primarily the result of Spanish, Portuguese and English trade, exploration, colonization and mission- ization.
pre-Magellan intro- duction of the sweet potato into Polynes
Longacre, R. E., & Millon, R. (1961). Proto-Mixtecan and Proto-Amuzgo-Mixtecan vocabularies: a preliminary cultural analysis. Anthropological Linguistics, 1-44.
LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE: 1000 BC Mixtec for sweet potato reconstructs at the proto-mixtec level (Maize was fully cultivated + principal crop, sweet potato perhaps utilized and cultivated)
Sweet potato cultivated in meso america, south america, southeastern north america
Bronson, B. (1966). Roots and the Subsistence of the Ancient Maya. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 22(3), 251-279.
AD 200-900 Ancient Mayan Civilization
“Sweet potato is the only root crop to have a pan-Mayan distribution”
Only Mayan root crop studied to be known to North Americans
Important crop of the Chorti
The thesis that the sweet potato is an American native is not one that is seriously debated in the present day
Not clear where in America it was first domesticated
Pg 15 biological info