Abstract
Hainuwele myth, which is found among the Wemale in Ceram Island, Morucca, is famous as a story explaining the origin of planting root crops. It tells how people began cultivating root crops, such as taro and yam. The Arafundi and the Kaningara in the Upper Karawari, East Sepik, Papua New Guinea, have several myths and folklore which explain the origin of utilizing sago palms for carbohydrate. This paper examines these myths and folklore comparing with the Hainuwele myth. The findings are as follows. 1. There is a similar structure among these myths. 2. Although Hainuwele myth explains the origin of root crops, the myths in the upper Karawari do not explain the origin of sago utilization, but only explain the beginning of cooking sago. 3. The reason of this difference may be explained by the fact that the people in the upper Karawari do not recognize sago utilization as a form of agriculture. 4. The similarity found between these myth may reflect that the people in the upper Karawari used to depend on root crops as their main food, and that they had to adapt their life to sago utilization when they settled in the Sepik area. 5. In the myths and some folklore in the upper Karawari, we find impoverishment and inversion of the Hainuwele myth. 6. We even find the distortion of the structure in the folklore which explains the origin of Australian people.
https://ror.org/01ryrzh03 
