Clones within Clones: Cosmology and Esthetics and Polynesian Crop Selection

Abstract

Polynesians living on tropical and temperate high islands in the Pacific traditionally maintained large inventories of cultivars (cultivated varieties) in vegetatively propagated crop species or cultigens. This infraspecific or "within species" diversification has usually been explained in ecological-functional terms, with cultivar selections seen as human adaptive responses to variation in natural and agricultural ecosystems. But recent research reveals little genetic basis to the Polynesian polyvarietal phenomenon and further suggests that functional equivalency existed among some cultivars in agricultural contexts. Hawaiian polyvarietal phenomena are described and crop folk classification is outlined. Utility and perceptual distinctiveness are explored along with indigenous concepts of cosmology and esthetics as criteria that in combination may better account for the large inventories of crop cultivars in Hawaii and Polynesia.Whether viewed from the perspectives of horticulture, human ecology or ethnohistory the diversification of traditional crops into many and even scores of cultivars (cultivated varieties) is a remarkable feature of Polynesian cultural evolution. Excepting the sub-antarctic Chatham Islands, the selection and maintenance of multiple cultivars within crop species or cultigens occurred everywhere in traditional Polynesia. Especially prevalent in the more massive and ecologically diverse high islands, each Polynesian society--whatever its size and complexity--based its agricultural production on a unique set of crops and semidomesticates chosen from a core group of plant species, most of which had originated outside of Polynesia. During centuries of more-or-less endogenous cultural development following colonization, the people of each of the major Polynesian archipelagoes favoured one or more of these crops with substantial and even lavish attention in the form of polyvarietal selection and maintenance. In this study I investigate structural and functional aspects of the Polynesian polyvarietal phenomenon. Using as examples five Hawaiian cultigens--banana, kava, sugarcane, sweet potato and taro--I first identify common features of the biology and folk classification of the Polynesian crops. After reviewing the criteria most often proposed to account for polyvarietal crop phenomena in Polynesia and other tropical regions, I introduce cosmology and esthetics as possible important motivating factors in the selection and maintenance of truly large numbers of cultivated varieties in Hawaii and Polynesia.

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