Sweet Potatoes rafted over to Polynesia and were not gathered on a "shopping trip"?

[repoman]

This is no slight to the Polynesians, it is staggering the ocean that they did cross. But the sweet potato linkcmay be out of play.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/04/polynesians-may-not-have-gone-grocery-shopping-in-south-america/

But maybe they brought a now extinct strain similar to the extant strain over?

 

[steve_bank]

Not the recent one, after a a previous hurricane in the Bahamas a group of lizards were washed out to sea on a mesh of foliage. They made to the Canary Islands I believe.

Coconuts washed out to sea drift far.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

DNA evidence strikes again. No humans involved, no modern humans even around when the large tubered sweet potato was born.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The Curse of Oak Island makes me laugh. They keep finding minor trinkets here and there, and the honest reality is that it is very possible for debris to wash up on shore.