fatehbaz: If you are interested in yams, Polynesia, folklore, linguistics, highly-detailed gardening

fatehbaz:If you are interested in yams, Polynesia, folklore, linguistics, highly-detailed gardening calendars, island ecology, or the sudden simultaneous appearance of hundreds of thousands of sea-worms on a moonlit night, you might enjoy this: Sean P. Connaughton. “A Story of Yams, Worms, and Change from Ancestral Polynesia.” The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology Vol. 7 (2012).Illustration of the Eunicea viridis (Polynesia’s palolo worm) life cycle, above, by Dakuhippo. To paraphrase this research:Centuries ago, when the pre- and/or proto-Polynesian Lapita cultures apparently started moving en masse from Melanesia into the western portions of Polynesia centered around Tonga, it seems that horticultural practices, especially regarding the growing of yams, were (like today) extremely important given the distinct dry and wet seasons in the area. Calendars were based on lunar cycles and the lunar months; on some islands, it seems that many individual days of a lunar month could be given a different name to reflect lunar-influenced marine events occurring on that date. So, to mark the best time to start planting yams in order to avoid the dry season, early residents of western Polynesia apparently purposely linked yam season with other ecological events around the same time of year. The lunar calendar in western Polynesia was augmented with folkloric stories promoting the importance of what were called the palolo months, occurring between September and November. Palolo is a local name for giant polycheate sea-worms, especially Eunicea viridis, closely-related to and of the same genus as the famous predatory Bobbit worm. These months included the seasonal rising of reproductive segments of the annelid sea-worm of the Eunicidae family in certain nearby ocean areas. In other words, there is a massive Worm Event™ where a bunch of spaghetti-like worms rise to the surface in giant masses. The arrival of the worms marked a definitive climatic shift from dry to wet season, and therefore marked the arrival of yam-growing season. By observing the worms’ behavior, island residents could accurately anticipate the most successful times for food cultivation. The worm event was, and still is, mostly limited to Tonga, Samoa, and parts of far western Polynesia, where the earlier Polynesian voyages originated; the seasonal worm event apparently does not occur across most of Polynesia, especially east of Tonga and Samoa. However, even though the worms are absent in, say, Tahiti, the lunar calendars of Polynesians living to the east still include references to the palolo months. So, essentially, the horticultural activity surrounding yam-growing season was so important in western Polynesia that the sea-worm event itself also became a very important part of the western Polynesia lunar calendar; the yams and the worms became so culturally ingrained that, as Polynesian people later migrated much farther eastward towards Tahiti, the worm references still appear in language and calendars of communities living thousands of kilometers away, and in calendars that today still exist a few centuries later in history. In Tonga, Samoa, and nearby islands, the annual harvest of palolo worms is still a big event, with hundreds of people gathering at night to collect the worms from nearshore waters. (Big harvests of palolo worms also happens in parts of Indonesia.)Here’s what a mass of palolo worms looks like during the event.   [Source: Samoa Times.]-Just some fun details about what some Polynesians and scholars call: “the yam calendar.” -- source link

More pics about