Do you're telling me that it had nothing to do with swallows being either European or African?!
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2025
1182 points (98.1% liked)
Science Memes
14043 readers
1203 users here now
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
- Infographics welcome, get schooled.
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Research Committee
Other Mander Communities
Science and Research
Biology and Life Sciences
- !abiogenesis@mander.xyz
- !animal-behavior@mander.xyz
- !anthropology@mander.xyz
- !arachnology@mander.xyz
- !balconygardening@slrpnk.net
- !biodiversity@mander.xyz
- !biology@mander.xyz
- !biophysics@mander.xyz
- !botany@mander.xyz
- !ecology@mander.xyz
- !entomology@mander.xyz
- !fermentation@mander.xyz
- !herpetology@mander.xyz
- !houseplants@mander.xyz
- !medicine@mander.xyz
- !microscopy@mander.xyz
- !mycology@mander.xyz
- !nudibranchs@mander.xyz
- !nutrition@mander.xyz
- !palaeoecology@mander.xyz
- !palaeontology@mander.xyz
- !photosynthesis@mander.xyz
- !plantid@mander.xyz
- !plants@mander.xyz
- !reptiles and amphibians@mander.xyz
Physical Sciences
- !astronomy@mander.xyz
- !chemistry@mander.xyz
- !earthscience@mander.xyz
- !geography@mander.xyz
- !geospatial@mander.xyz
- !nuclear@mander.xyz
- !physics@mander.xyz
- !quantum-computing@mander.xyz
- !spectroscopy@mander.xyz
Humanities and Social Sciences
Practical and Applied Sciences
- !exercise-and sports-science@mander.xyz
- !gardening@mander.xyz
- !self sufficiency@mander.xyz
- !soilscience@slrpnk.net
- !terrariums@mander.xyz
- !timelapse@mander.xyz
Memes
Miscellaneous
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
It could grip it by the husk.
It’s not a matter of where it grips it! It’s a matter of weight ratios!
I’m so glad that this 50-year-old joke is still funny.
Good jokes never die, nor do Black Knights.
What's not funny is how old I feel now
load more comments
(1 replies)
35 million years of coconuts in Asia and they didn't float over until after traders established shipping routes to Asia?
Yes, but for human related reasons. Humans moved them around a lot in Africa and Asia - moving them from Southeast Asia to India and Madagascar is bound to have an impact on the currents they get caught up in.
are you proposing some kind of Columbus effect where people heading to India will occasionally end up in Taino land by accident
So thanks to humans more coconuts went for a swim?
According to the first article that popped up in the search results the most likely theory is portugese traders brought them over from madagascar.
load more comments
(1 replies)
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.
No, it was clearly the Swallows gripping them by the husks!
"500 years ago*
Columbus makes the trip in 1492, 533 years ago.
Yeah that checks out.
Not accurate. They were taken by Astronesians during their seaborne migrations.
Read more here
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
Coconutship
Definitely a sex cult.
Repressed memory unlocked.
Please, no! Coconuts don't fit up there!
Not with that kind of attitude.
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.
They took the Panama Canal, obviously.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
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.
load more comments
(1 replies)
they only think coconuts floated over on their own 500 years ago because austronesians are supernaturally invisible to white people
Bingo. I thought this was interesting and went looking for more information and its fake. They were brought to other parts of the world, first by austronesians and later by European sailors.
Someone in this thread needs to say who austronesians are
Edit:
The Austronesian peoples, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples who have settled in Taiwan, maritime Southeast Asia, parts of mainland Southeast Asia, Micronesia, coastal New Guinea, Island Melanesia, Polynesia, and Madagascar that speak Austronesian languages. They also include indigenous ethnic minorities in Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Hainan, the Comoros, and the Torres Strait Islands. The nations and territories predominantly populated by Austronesian-speaking peoples are sometimes known collectively as Austronesia.
They're basically the proto Pacific Islanders. It's believed that their civilizations all trace back to a group of people from the island of Taiwan/Formosa, who learned how to sail over the deep ocean and set up new communities, bringing chickens, pigs, taro, coconuts.
They settled modern day Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, as far west as Madagascar, to Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, and most of the other Pacific Islands, as far east as Easter Island. Native Hawaiians, Samoans, Guamese, etc., are all Austronesian. Most ethnic groups considered native to these islands trace back to Austronesian expansion.
There are shared linguistic and cultural ties that showed that they had recent comment ancestry, that has since been confirmed by DNA genealogy.
Makes a lot more sense than ASTROnesians, as spelled above, which makes them sound like aliens. Which is silly, because everyone knows aliens only land in either densely populated metropolitan areas (NYC, Tokyo, etc) or in the desert near Area 51.
load more comments
(1 replies)
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?)
Y'know... I'd have found all this "coconuts floated from Asia to the Caribbean" stuff pretty far fetched...
But not two years ago I was fishing, and a goddamn coconut floated right down and bumped me in the leg.
In the Monongahela River.
In Pittsburgh.
load more comments
(3 replies)
No swallows necessary
That's not what my partner says uwu
Caribbean from Asia? did they take the Panama Canal 400 years before it was built? there is not path that isn't crazy
Asia via the Pacific to the Americas, then a swallow grabs one and brings it to the Atlantic coast.
African, or European?
They went around the horn like a real man!
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.
Great article. It's worth remembering that DNA is only evidence that someone banged, and I imagine there's a fair amount of contact that goes on before that.
A North American group from Colombia
I hope this person just meant to say "Native American", and doesn't really think Colombia is in North America.
(sorry, I've spent the last week proofreading articles...)
load more comments
(4 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
So the coconuts migrated, but the majority population of many of the islands were taken there as cargo?
Oof, good point
The swallow may fly south with the sun or the house martin or the plover may seek warmer climes in winter, yet these are not strangers to our land?
load more comments
(1 replies)
Please do not disturb the migratory fruits