7.1 Plant Domestication in the Spice Islands
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have been trivial. Plants from the Spice Islands and Wallacea had to be attuned to
microclimates very different from those of the Spice Islands and, within the Pacific,
different from island to island.
Mike Hendy has established that a differential mutation of the Japanese taro
occurred (possibly, we suggest, in New Zealand) between 2,000 and 3,000 years
ago. The early colonists’ recognition of the value of the resulting cultivar and the
vegetative reproduction of this mutated variety over millennia explain its survival to
modern times.
The successful translocation of domesticated plants indigenous to the Spice
Islands and Wallacea, which marks the Polynesians’ paths across the Pacific, supports our argument for their long genetic, maritime and horticultural history in a
Spice Island homeland. It supports our claim for the evolution in the Spice Islands
of traditional knowledge and skills, both maritime and horticultural that, passed on
to their descendants, enabled the Lapita and Polynesian peoples to successfully settle every significant island in the Pacific. Patrick Kirch [2] lists 28 species of crop
plants successfully translocated by the Lapita peoples to Pacific islands. Indeed,
Kirch claims that “the Lapita horticultural complex encompassed all of the essential crops and agronomic strategies that laid the foundation for the more elaborate
horticultural and agricultural economies of later Oceanic societies” (p. 217).
In Wallacea translocating plants from one biological zone to another was possible because the Wallaceans possessed the maritime skills needed to cross Wallace’s
Line, which separated the two biological zones, Asian and Pacific. The reason
that many early plant domestications can be attributed to Wallacea is that its peoples possessed the needed combination of maritime and horticultural skills. That
domestication involved more than shipping plants across the ocean trench can be
established from the examples of breadfruit and bananas, whose domestication
involved complex chromosome manipulations leaving the plants sterile. Similarly
a combination of maritime and horticultural skills would have been needed also for
the Spice Islanders’ conceivable role in trading American indigenous plants to India,
discussed in Chapter 8. Not only were two transoceanic crossings needed for such
trade but horticultural skill and knowledge were needed for choosing varieties most
likely to survive translocation.
The genetic manipulations needed for plant domestication involve breeding for
size and taste and vigour. The primitive precursors of most of the foods we eat
would be unrecognizable to most people. The distressing acrid taste of a tiny rootstock cherry and a 2-in.-long corn cob with only a few kernels, for example, would
seem unpromising prospects for generating future food crops. Breeding for growing
characteristics such as cold resistance or heat resistance, drought resistance, disease
resistance and cropping capacity have been engineered in many cases over thousands of years: engineered through human-assisted hybridization or human-assisted
natural selection or both. Where, as is often the case, the evolved plant has lost
vigour, it has to be grafted back onto the primitive form from which it descended,
the primitive rootstock supplying the vigour lost in the course of its human-directed
evolution. In nature, of course, weaker forms lacking vigour or the capacity for
sexual reproduction or genetic versatility would die out. Plants rendered weaker
123
have been trivial. Plants from the Spice Islands and Wallacea had to be attuned to
microclimates very different from those of the Spice Islands and, within the Pacific,
different from island to island.
Mike Hendy has established that a differential mutation of the Japanese taro
occurred (possibly, we suggest, in New Zealand) between 2,000 and 3,000 years
ago. The early colonists’ recognition of the value of the resulting cultivar and the
vegetative reproduction of this mutated variety over millennia explain its survival to
modern times.
The successful translocation of domesticated plants indigenous to the Spice
Islands and Wallacea, which marks the Polynesians’ paths across the Pacific, supports our argument for their long genetic, maritime and horticultural history in a
Spice Island homeland. It supports our claim for the evolution in the Spice Islands
of traditional knowledge and skills, both maritime and horticultural that, passed on
to their descendants, enabled the Lapita and Polynesian peoples to successfully settle every significant island in the Pacific. Patrick Kirch [2] lists 28 species of crop
plants successfully translocated by the Lapita peoples to Pacific islands. Indeed,
Kirch claims that “the Lapita horticultural complex encompassed all of the essential crops and agronomic strategies that laid the foundation for the more elaborate
horticultural and agricultural economies of later Oceanic societies” (p. 217).
In Wallacea translocating plants from one biological zone to another was possible because the Wallaceans possessed the maritime skills needed to cross Wallace’s
Line, which separated the two biological zones, Asian and Pacific. The reason
that many early plant domestications can be attributed to Wallacea is that its peoples possessed the needed combination of maritime and horticultural skills. That
domestication involved more than shipping plants across the ocean trench can be
established from the examples of breadfruit and bananas, whose domestication
involved complex chromosome manipulations leaving the plants sterile. Similarly
a combination of maritime and horticultural skills would have been needed also for
the Spice Islanders’ conceivable role in trading American indigenous plants to India,
discussed in Chapter 8. Not only were two transoceanic crossings needed for such
trade but horticultural skill and knowledge were needed for choosing varieties most
likely to survive translocation.
The genetic manipulations needed for plant domestication involve breeding for
size and taste and vigour. The primitive precursors of most of the foods we eat
would be unrecognizable to most people. The distressing acrid taste of a tiny rootstock cherry and a 2-in.-long corn cob with only a few kernels, for example, would
seem unpromising prospects for generating future food crops. Breeding for growing
characteristics such as cold resistance or heat resistance, drought resistance, disease
resistance and cropping capacity have been engineered in many cases over thousands of years: engineered through human-assisted hybridization or human-assisted
natural selection or both. Where, as is often the case, the evolved plant has lost
vigour, it has to be grafted back onto the primitive form from which it descended,
the primitive rootstock supplying the vigour lost in the course of its human-directed
evolution. In nature, of course, weaker forms lacking vigour or the capacity for
sexual reproduction or genetic versatility would die out. Plants rendered weaker