The Motu people’s Hiri trade cycle swapped cooking pots for this crop, which was harvested year-round and traded for tobacco in New Guinea’s Sepik Coast exchange. For 10 points each:
[10h] Name this starchy crop that served as a famine food on Malaita and a staple in lowland Papua. It is more disease-resistant but less nutritious than the breadfruit, taro, and yams grown by Pohnpei’s Saudeleur dynasty.
ANSWER: sago palms [or sagu palms; accept true sago palms or Metroxylon sagu; accept queen sagos or queen sago palms or Cycas rumphii; prompt on palm trees or Arecaceae; prompt on cycads or Cycas or gymnosperms; prompt on evergreens]
[10m] Evidence that productive sweet potatoes replaced sago comes from one of these ecosystems called Kuk that also attests to banana domestication. Iron Age Nilotic peoples settled one of these places called the Sudd.
ANSWER: swamps [accept Kuk Swamp; prompt on wetlands or marshes; reject “bogs” or “fens”] (James Watson theorized that sweet potatoes ignited an “Ipomoean Revolution” in New Guinea; it possibly occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Sudd is in modern-day South Sudan.)
[10e] Swamp taro was the staple crop of this modern-day Pacific island country whose population is based on Tarawa Atoll and whose name is not spelled phonetically.
ANSWER: Kiribati (“kih-rih-BASS”) [or Republic of Kiribati; or Ribaberiki]
<World History>