Atoll pit cultivation (pulaka, babai)
Cultivo en fosa de atolón (pulaka, babai)
- Date
- c. century XI (estimado) · confidence low
- Place
- Funafuti, Tuvalu
- Credited to
- Polynesian and Micronesian peoples of the atolls
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
On atolls, with poor limestone soil, pits are dug down to the freshwater lens and filled with compost to grow giant swamp taro (Cyrtosperma). It is a way of producing very large tubers where almost nothing else grows.
The age of the pits is not well dated: it is estimated from the settlement of the atolls (around the 10th century in Tuvalu, earlier in Kiribati) and ethnographic accounts. They are called pulaka in Tuvalu and babai in Kiribati.
What it led to
- sustainable subsistence on the atolls of Tuvalu and Kiribati
- tubers that keep for years and feed in times of famine
- adaptation to sea-level rise and salinisation, which now threatens the pits