How Breadfruit, Coconuts, and Ancient Polynesian Navigators Conquered the World's Largest Ocean

What Would You Pack to Build a Civilization?

We have talked about empires before, from the ancient ones to the British, but nothing prepares you for the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. This was Polynesia, and we are looking at how people built a civilization and what they packed for it.

Someone, somewhere on one of those islands, decided to take a canoe out and explore. Finding another island, or two, or three. Later, someone said,

“Hey, our island is getting crowded; we need to make a new colony somewhere else."

You may have heard ancient stories about “an island” passed on as stories are. Perhaps someone was there before and returned with stories of another island that could be the future home. Complete with freshwater and fresh tropical drinks like a daiquiri.

Looking at those distances, even by today's standards, all I can think about is a long flight across the Pacific. The seats are uncomfortable, and the food isn’t particularly good. I’d hope for an upgrade that might give a little more legroom, and perhaps a meal that doesn’t come wrapped in plastic. Of course, I would hope the Wi-Fi works. Because someone on X is wrong.

The ancient Polynesians crossed this same ocean in canoes. Navigation before GPS (seriously, no Google Maps). Probably larger seats, and their Wi-Fi was the stars, the currents, and finding seabirds meant land and home.

Over centuries, voyagers reached those islands and settled them.

It is hard to imagine how extraordinary this is. My Western mind is blown to think that this is before Europeans crossed the pond.

The Polynesians didn’t just carry provisions for the voyage. They transported what they needed to settle an island. And the food was the constant.

They were bringing the means to make those places habitable. And that makes me think of another enormous frontier that humans are only beginning to explore. Space. The final frontier (where is Captain Kirk).

Their Pacific, Our Universe

“Space, the final frontier,” I was about ten when that TV show came out, and it was one of my favorites. “Boldly going where no man had gone before.”

For us to go to space, we either need to be a billionaire or a government. But for the people of the Pacific, they needed a few friends to build a boat. We have to have thousands of pounds of rocket fuel, lots of thrust just to escape Earth’s gravity and get into orbit. They needed a push from the beach, and they were on the ocean in their vessel.

Now comes the important question. What do we eat when we get there? This is a question NASA is still trying to answer. If you read The Martian, potatoes were the answer, and some of that came from the folks who used them.

Right now, the International Space Station receives regular deliveries of food from Earth; it was the first Instacart. I’ve had the pleasure of trying some of this food, and I must say I prefer it to American Airlines' fare.

If you are in a canoe, you can bring food along for a journey. If you inhabit a new island, you need to bring the plants to grow, the pigs, and whatever else to establish a colony. Same with Mars. On Star Trek, they had a machine that looked like a fancy vending machine, turn a button, and out came clam chowder. They avoided the messy background of how this got assembled, was it pre-made, or magically put together and transported like the transporter room that Bones McCoy hated to get in.

NASA has already experimented with growing lettuce, peppers, and other plants in space, using relatively little water and without conventional soil. Biosphere was an experiment done in the desert to see how people did in a version of space, just as barren, but still a windshield away from the real Earth. In that and many other experiments, NASA, as well as many of Earth’s engineers and farmers, work with plants to see what might work. Our friends in Polynesia had done those same experiments.

They didn’t have to create life-support systems on an uninhabitable planet. They were moving familiar food-producing organisms into unfamiliar environments.

You could eat a coconut and plant one. The time to plant a tree is 100 years ago; the next best time is now. Same with a yam and breadfruit. Bring some to eat, some to plant.

We think of space, and we don’t rely on just NASA. Biosphere was privately funded like SpaceX. In fact, I am writing this with help from those satellites now. We have lots of private financing, not specifically looking to go to space, but consider this: we are making artificial meat in a lab. Why? Some want the taste without the cow. Bringing a cow to Mars might make a carnivore happy, but it isn’t practical. We have water engineers saving water and trying to grow crops in the most inhospitable places on earth. They aren’t thinking of Mars or beyond; they are thinking of feeding a hungry planet.

Each of our ingredients, breadfruit, yams, and coconuts, was not part of a grand experiment to find a new island. But something that had worked for centuries, feeding a people, and some learned to grow them to make it easier. Like all of our civilizations. They learn to grow something, then they can grow it elsewhere, and civilization spreads.

Breadfruit: What Do You Do With It?

Breadfruit, it isn’t bread, and it doesn’t look like the fruit most of us know. It is a bumpy green ball about the size of a grapefruit. Cut it open, and you’ll find pale, starchy flesh.

Roast breadfruit, and the aroma and texture are a bit like freshly baked bread. I think that is more imagination than I have; perhaps it was so long at sea. To me, it is more like a roasted potato than a loaf of sourdough.

In our series, we have seen that early farmers take a wild plant and learn how to grow it for the village. They plant some wheat in the spring and harvest it in the fall. But every year it needs to be planted again. The soil for wheat or rice was often rich soil with water nearby.

The soil on most islands is not great for growing rice or wheat. It is often volcanic, or sandy, or a mix. But these Breadfruit trees can be planted in volcanic soil, or even sandy soil, and in five to seven years, the tree is producing fruit. It thrives on that volcanic soil with good drainage and lots of rain that the South Pacific has.

Chopped is one of the Food Network's game shows where chefs are given a surprise basket of ingredients to make a meal in a short period of time. On occasion, breadfruit shows up. If the breadfruit is firm, it is mature and mostly starch, like a potato. Something you can cut, deep fry, mash, or boil and add some olive oil to (the Polynesians didn’t have olive oil, or even Popeye).

If the breadfruit is fully ripe, the flesh is. soft, creamy, sweeter, and almost custard-like. This would be a custard, or maybe throw it in the ice-cream machine. The ice cream machine on Chopped is a trap; it almost always goes on the brink, like McDonald’s.

But that mature breadfruit tree can produce hundreds of pounds of fruit during a season. And unlike an annual grain crop, a breadfruit tree can continue producing for decades. Just like wheat and rice provided a dependable source of carbohydrates, or the potato, the breadfruit was the source for these islanders.

You could go to an island, plant some trees, come back later, and start to colonize it. You could start with a small number of people, and as the trees' harvest grew, as well as the harvest from the ocean, you could gradually sustain a larger population.

Taro, Yams, and the South American–New Zealand Express

Taro is one of those vegetables you might have seen in an Asian market. It looks like a hairy, unattractive potato. Cut it open, and there is a starchy interior, creamy white, sometimes flecked with purple.

Taro is the foundation of poi. And since it seems every strip mall in California has some poi, you probably had one of the essential foods of Polynesia. Yes, poki and poi, coming to a mall near you.

You cannot eat Taro raw because it contains calcium oxalate crystals (if your body makes these, they are called kidney stones). Those crystals will irritate your throat and esophagus.

Yams were another useful crop. And before someone sends me an angry message from the sweet potato industry, a true yam is not a sweet potato. This is one of those facts you will see someone talk about at Thanksgiving. Yes, we know. And I am assured that the Polynesians did not have marshmallows.

Some yams grow into enormous underground tubers. They can be stored for considerable periods, much like you can store potatoes, making them valuable when fresh food is scarce.

A South American Passenger

Sweet potatoes used by the Polynesians originated in the Americas. And that means that there was a trade route between those civilizations. In fact, the Polynesians were growing yams before Europeans reached the Pacific.

The precise movements of people and plants, and the dates and routes involved, we can only guess. Who knows who reached whom first? The result of that trade was that the sweet potato became part of the food system of the Pacific, all the way to New Zealand.

The South American–New Zealand Express. Enter the Māori

The Polynesian ancestors , the Māori ,reached New Zealand around the late thirteenth century.

New Zealand was much colder than the tropical islands. Breadfruit trees and coconuts didn’t grow well in New Zealand. But the sweet potato, called kūmara in Māori, did.

They developed storage pits to preserve the harvest through colder seasons. Much like your root cellar.

Coconuts: Food, Water, and a Hardware...