Talk:Sweet potato

From Academic Kids

Photo

Sure about that photo? Sweet potato leaves tend to be heart-shaped. Perhaps you have a yam photo.

Kumar/Kumara

I'd appreciate a reference on the kumar/kumara. I remember the story being a bit more complicated. Diderot 20:55, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

POV

The text says Sweet potatoes are believed to have originated in South America and spread throughout the tropical Americas into the Caribbean and across the South Pacific to Easter Island. Very likely the tuber drifted across the sea just as coconuts and some other plants still do today.

All other texts I have found on the Internet say that it is impossible for sweet potatoes to drift across the sea. They would rot long before they arrived at Easter Island. See for instance [1] (http://www.botgard.ucla.edu/html/botanytextbooks/economicbotany/Ipomoea/), [2] (http://www.trends.net/~yuku/tran/pot.htm) and [3] (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A1984421).

Because the general Polynesian word for the sweet potato is kumara, and the South American word is kumar, it was originally thought that this was evidence of cross-Pacific contact between South America and Polynesia. However, linguists have determined that kumara and kumar are totally unrelated and have nothing to do with each other. This therefore cannot be considered as evidence of pre-Magellan trans-Pacific crossings.

I would really like a reference for this "linguistic" assertion. It would only be possible to rule out that it is the same word, if and only if, the name kumara can be determined to have appeared in Polynesian before an important sound change. Loan words, such as kumara possibly is do not lend themselves to such categorical conclusions. According to this site, it is the same word in South America and Polynesia [4] (http://awcmee.massey.ac.nz/people/aclarke/spotato.htm). I strongly suspect that we have a POV crusader against transoceanic crossings at Wikipedia.--Wiglaf 10:28, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I suspect rather less malicious intent, but everything I remember about the sweet potato problem suggests that it's more complicated than this article says. The "linguistic proof" that the words are unrelated is the one that sticks in my gaw, since the whole idea of linguists "proving" that the word isn't related to the one used in South America is a tad bizarre. The more I trawl the web on it, the more confused it gets. It's possible that only the radicals are writing webpages though. The DNA research is a bit weird too. I'd have to do some paper research to do it justice, and I haven't the time.

It's not that simple, either the for case or the against. Frakly, the whole business seems to attract enough crackpots that even if the crackpots are right, you still don't want to have much to do with them.

Diderot 13:31, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Diderot about the complexity, the crackpots, and the time constraints.

I believe that the South American origin is undisputed, and the controversy has only to do with how the sweet potato came to be used in Polynesia.

I removed the statement about "kumara" because this seems to be exactly one of the points debated. I'm sure a more complete treatment would reinclude it, but with more detail and sources. We should explain, at least, that there are variations in the Polynesian forms, and explain which South American languages, among the hundreds, use this word.

Pekinensis 18:56, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sure. I hope someone can fill it in with a relevant discussion. I just read this article [5] (http://www.hallofmaat.com/modules.php?name=Articles&file=article&sid=74) and it is a nice article. However, he seems a bit too eager to debunk the hypotheses. Especially the part about the Kensington runestone was a little too hasty. I don't believe that the Kensington runestone is authentic, but the debunking is not as easy or as straightforward as he claims.--Wiglaf 19:31, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)