Was the coconut "the milk bottle on the doorstep of mankind"? Were coconut palms present on the east coast islands of Africa when early hominids began to walk (and swim) along the beaches towards Asia? Did floating coconuts help them cross the deeper waters of Wallace's Line? Were coconuts domesticated in a sub-continental part of that region, now submerged by catastrophic sea level changes? Did the early voyagers from that region, who went east to Samoa and west to Madagascar, travel in boats held together by coconut fibre ropes, carrying immature coconuts as their chief supply of drinking water?