FOOD PLANTS OF ANCIENT AMERICA." 



By 0. F. Cook, 

 U. S. Department of Agriculture. 



Agricultural science so generallj^ appears as a borrower from 

 physics, chemistry, botany, or zoology that it has not been expected 

 to furnish facts of use in other lines of investigation. Thus, although 

 it has been known since the sixteenth century that the same primitive 

 food plants were . cultivated throughout the tropics of both hemis- 

 pheres, the signiiicance of this remains unappreciated, and there is 

 still doubt and speculation regarding prehistoric communication across 

 the Pacific. Alaskan land connection, Buddhist missionaries, stranded 

 Japanese junks, and other possibilities of a northwestern contact have 

 been gravely and minutely discussed, while unequivocal evidence of 

 tropical intercourse lay only too obviously at hand. The cultivation 

 of the same seedless plants, such as the yam, sweet potato, taro, sugar 

 cane, and banana by the primitive peoples of the islands of the Pacific, 

 as well as by those of the adjacent shores of Asia and America, indi- 

 cates, with attendant facts, not only an older communication but an 

 intimate contact or community of origin of the agricultural civiliza- 

 tions of the lands bordering upon the Pacific and Indian oceans. Con- 

 crete biological data need not be disregarded because the peopling of 

 America by the lost tribes of Israel and other equally fanciful con- 

 jectures are discredited. 



THE CULTIVATED PLANTS OF THE PACIFIC ISLANDS. 



Notwithstanding the immense distances by which the tropical islands 

 of the Pacific are separated from the continents and from each other,- 

 .European discoverers found them already occupied by an adventur- 

 ous, sea-faring people who knew enough of the stars, trade winds, and 

 currents to navigate their frail canoes in those vast expanses of ocean 

 without the mariner's compass. The agriculture of the Polynesians 

 was, however, no less wonderful than their seamanship, and was cer- 

 tainly not less important to them, since the coral islands of the Pacific 

 are not only deficient in indigenous plants and animals suitable 

 for food, but the natural conditions are distinctlj' unfavorable to 

 agriculture. 



o Revision of article on The American Origin of Agriculture, in Popular Science 

 Monthly, October, 1902. 



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