486 FOOD PLANTS OF ANCIENT AMERICA. 



such arguments can be made as in America against the exotic origin 

 of the earliest civilizations. It is a simple zoological fact, also f reel}" 

 admitted by ethnologists, that the straight-haired Malayoid peoples 

 are not the original inhabitants of southeastern Asia and the neighbor- 

 ing islands, since throughout these regions there are isolated remnants 

 and traces of earlier curl-haired types, such as the Negritos, Anda- 

 manese, Papuans and Ainus.*^* 



If it be reasonable to suppose that the food plants which the Poly- 

 nesians shared with the tropical peoples of both continents were 

 carried by them across the Pacific, it is also reasonable to seek the 

 origin of these widely distributed species on the continent which gives 

 evidence of the oldest and most extensive agricultural activity, and to 

 the question in this form there can be but one answer. The agricul- 

 ture of the Old World ti'opics is adequately explainable by the supposi- 

 tion that it was brought by the Polynesians, since the root crops of the 

 Polynesians w^ere also staples of the Old World tropics. This proposi- 

 tion would not apply to America, where, in addition to the sweet 

 potato, yams, yam-bean {Pachyrhlzns), canna and taro, which crossed 

 the Pacific, the aborigines also domesticated a long series of root crops 

 confined to America at the time of its discovery. Such are: Manihot 

 (cassava), Maranta (arrowroot), Calathea (lleren), Solanum (Irish 

 potato), Xanthosoma {iie\eYQ\ species), Oxalis (ocu), Sechhim {chayote}^ 

 T/'ojxeolum, (massua^), Ullucus^ Arracacia, and Ilelianthus (Jerusalem 

 artichoke)'^ all of considerable local importance. 



The simplest of cultural methods, propagation from cuttings, was 

 applied to these root crops and has been in use for so long a period that 

 several of them have become seedless. With equal uniformit}^ the 

 distinctively Old World root crops are grown from seed. And as all 

 the Asiatic and European species are of temperate origin and have not 

 Ijeen greatly modified from their wild ancestral types, it is reasonable 

 to ])elieve that they were domesticated by peoples already accustomed 

 to the planting. of cereals, which are correctly viewed as the basis of 

 temperate agriculture. Root crops of American origin belong to at 

 least twelve natural families, and the only important Old World addi- 

 tion to the series is the mustard famil}', a distinctly temperate group, 

 the cultivated members of which have not been greatly modified in 

 domestication, and are still known in the wild state. 



This apparent superfluity of American root crops is explainable by 

 the fact the different plants were independently domesticated in differ- 



'' Science, N. S., 15: 928-932. 1902. 



''Mr. W. E. Safford notes that the word " musofi" means, in the Samoan language, 

 sticky or starchy and is appUed to the Polynesian arrowroot ( Tacca pmnatifi.c'a) a root 

 crop of the Pacific islands. See Pratt, Samoan Dictionary, p. 211, 1893. 



'AH these root crops were i^ropagated from cuttings except Pac/fyrZ/m^.s, Canna, and 

 Sechium. Other seed-grown cultivated plants common to the two hemispheres were 

 the cocoanut, bean, cotton, gourd {Cucurbila), and bottle gourd {Lagenaria). 



