One Reply to “Coconut origins explained”

  1. Let’s hope the words are more accurate than the lines on the map! Sailing ships, like floating coconuts, go with winds and tides. The introduction of coconut into the Atlantic and Caribbean by the Portuguese was via the Cape Verde islands not the Gulf of Guinea and annually, for more than 200 years, the Spanish carried hundreds of people and thousands of coconuts from the Philippines to the west coat of America (from Mexico to Peru) by a north Pacific route avoiding any islands. The Austronesian and Poynesian distributions and the two centres of diversity have been identified previously, before DNA analysis was available, and it is satisfying to have this confirmation.

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