The main cultivated aroids of Asia and the Pacific are Alocasia macrorrhizos, Amorphophallus paeoniifolius, Colocasia esculenta, and Cyrtosperma merkusii. These aroids are widely cultivated by Austronesian language speakers. In this review I develop a theoretical framework for understanding aroid domestication and dispersal. For taro in particular, a likely tropical wildtype Colocasia esculenta var. aquatilis is described and compared with cultivated taros.