• Grimtuck@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    Do you’re telling me that it had nothing to do with swallows being either European or African?!

  • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    35 million years of coconuts in Asia and they didn’t float over until after traders established shipping routes to Asia?

    • FundMECFS@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      8 days ago

      According to the first article that popped up in the search results the most likely theory is portugese traders brought them over from madagascar.

    • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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      8 days ago

      It also plays a central role in the Coconut Religion founded in 1963 in Vietnam.

      follows the Coconut Religion link

      The Coconut Religion was founded in 1963 by Vietnamese mystic and scholar Nguyễn Thành Nam,[1] also known as the Coconut Monk,[2][3] His Coconutship,[4] Prophet of Concord,[4] and Uncle Hai[4] (1909 – 1990[5]).

      Oh, come the fuck on, now

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      I was wondering how the heck coconuts journeyed around the southern passages for what would have been probably years on ocean currents and arrive in the caribbean still viable for growth.

      Or carried by a sparrow.

      Not really gonna happen.

  • Caveman@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    I’m gonna cast doubt on this. It happened too conveniently after people figured out long distance sea travel.

    If they would have floated it’s much more likely that it happened somewhere in the last million years rather than the last 500.

  • Dasus@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    The float yeah and that’s how they spread, but the coconuts were mostly brought by ships.

    A coconut is really good on a ship 500 years ago, you have fresh water, some nutrition, etc.

    Some ship gets destroyed with a load of coconuts on board and so it began probably.

    Then when even the first ones have taken root, they start floating from isle to isle themselves.

  • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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    8 days ago

    Coconuts have evolved to spread from island to island by floating, but it’s still weird that one happened to float to the other side of the world in historic times. I would have guessed that either the currents could never take a coconut there or that the currents would have taken a coconut there long ago.

    (When I visit Florida, I see coconuts float by sometimes. Some have been in the water a long time - they’re covered in barnacles. However, if they’re still floating does that mean they might still be viable?)

  • expatriado@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    Caribbean from Asia? did they take the Panama Canal 400 years before it was built? there is not path that isn’t crazy

    • BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works
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      8 days ago

      There’s a current originating in Indian ocean flowing south of Africa to the gulf of Mexico, before proceeding north east between Iceland and Great Britain. It’s why Scandinavia is so much warmer than the same latitude in the Americas. I’m 55 north in Denmark, and have hardly seen snow this winter, meanwhile Edmonton in Canada is 2° south of that.

      Coconuts bobbing around the south of Africa is pretty wild, but not implausible.

    • snooggums@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      I assumed one finally got lucky and got around the southern tip of Africa while headed west.

  • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    So the coconuts migrated, but the majority population of many of the islands were taken there as cargo?