Sweet Potato

The sweet potato is a starchy tuberous root crop of the morning glory family, grown as a staple food across the tropics and cultivated as well for its edible leaves and vines. It originates in South America, in what is present-day Ecuador, and was domesticated in Central or South America by at least 5,000 years ago; the oldest radiocarbon-dated remains come from Peru's Chilca Canyon, dated to roughly 8080 BC. Its pre-Columbian presence across Polynesia is a long-debated puzzle: genetic ties between Polynesian and Indigenous American peoples and a striking linguistic parallel between the Proto-Polynesian word kumala and the Quechua and Aymara word k'umar have led most scholars toward a pre-Columbian contact model, in which Polynesian voyagers reached South America and returned with the plant. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/