MORE ON POLYNESIAN DNA EVIDENCE IN CHILE
- From: mike ruggeri <michaelruggeri@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2007 08:30:49 -0700
Polynesians beat Spaniards to South America, study shows
Analysis of chicken bones found in Chile shows Polynesians reached the
continent no later than 1407.
By Thomas H. Maugh II, Times Staff Writer
June 5, 2007
After decades of contention, New Zealand researchers have provided the
first direct evidence that Polynesians sailed across thousands of
miles of the Pacific Ocean to reach South America long before the
arrival of the Spanish around AD 1500.
Their proof? Chicken bones.
Using genetic analysis and radiocarbon dating of chicken bones found
in Chile, the researchers showed that the fowl originated in
Polynesia, not Europe as was previously believed, the researchers said
Monday.
"The Polynesian contact probably didn't change the course of
prehistory, but I think maybe it makes us recognize the ethnocentrism
in our long-standing views of the prehistory of the New World," said
archeologist Terry L. Jones of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, who was not
involved in the research.
"The basic premise has always been that there was only one
civilization capable of crossing the ocean and discovering the New
World," he said. The new findings, reported in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, indicate that "the prehistory of the New
World was probably a little bit more complicated than we thought in
the past."
The possibility of contact between Polynesia and the New World has
been a subject of contention since Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl's
famous 1947 voyage aboard his crude raft Kon-Tiki.
Heyerdahl believed that an ancient, fair-haired race originating high
in the Andes around Lake Titicaca sailed to the Pacific islands.
He attempted to prove his ideas by setting off on a trip from the west
coast of South America on a raft based on Inca designs.
The 4,300-mile trip from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands took 101 days,
but subsequent trips were much faster once researchers learned how to
steer the boats.
Despite Heyerdahl's demonstration, the idea that Polynesians could
have routinely - or even occasionally - navigated across the Pacific
was considered farfetched, primarily because of the lack of proof.
"Scientists have not been willing to fully accept the idea" of
prehistoric contact between Polynesia and South America, Jones said,
"but it is hard to understand why."
The most convincing previous evidence of cultural contact was the
presence of sweet potatoes - a native American plant - at
archeological sites throughout Polynesia.
Most notably, sweet potatoes dating from about AD 1000 have been found
on the Cook Islands. Equally important, Jones noted, the name of the
potato used throughout Polynesia is the same name given it by South
Americans.
Heyerdahl's trip and the discovery of the sweet potatoes showed South
Americans could have taken the sweet potato to the islands but did not
demonstrate that the islanders could have come to South America.
The new findings show that definitively, said the senior author of the
new report, archeologist Elizabeth A. Matisoo-Smith of the University
of Auckland.
The chicken bones were recovered from a site called El Arenal-1 in
south-central Chile, about a mile and a half inland on the southern
side of the Arauco Peninsula. Thermoluminescent dating of ceramics
from the site indicates it was occupied from AD 700 to 1390.
Analysis of the bones was conducted by graduate student Alice A. Story
in Matisoo-Smith's lab.
Matisoo-Smith said she didn't expect much from the study because
finding evidence of Polynesian contact would be like "finding a needle
in a haystack."
But radiocarbon dating showed the bones were about 622 years old. Even
with potential errors, they dated from AD 1321 to 1407 - before
Spaniards first trod the New World.
Genetic analysis of the chickens showed that they were identical to
genetic sequences of chicken from that same time period in American
Samoa and Tonga, both more than 5,000 miles from Chile.
The sequences were very similar to those of chickens from Hawaii, also
about 5,000 miles distant, and Easter Island, about 2,500 miles away.
"I was pretty excited when the dates came back as clearly pre-
European," Matisoo-Smith said. "There were no questions. The Europeans
didn't pick them up in Polynesia and bring them back" to South
America, she said.
Sailing into the wind from the islands to South America "requires
significant sailing technology and navigational skills," she said.
"But if you look at the winds, leaving from Easter Island, you would
actually land [in South America] around the area where El Arenal-1 is
located. You could then make the return voyage further north."
Jones of Cal Poly is particularly pleased because the find supports
his theory that Polynesians also landed in the Northern Hemisphere. He
and linguist Kathryn A. Klar of UC Berkeley have argued that the
Chumash Indians of Southern California learned to build their sewn-
plank canoes from the Polynesians, in part because the names of the
ships are very similar in the two unrelated languages.
Composite bone fishhooks used by the Indians also closely resembled
those used in Polynesia.
If we know they landed in Chile, he said, "then why is it so difficult
to imagine they couldn't have made it to Southern California from
Hawaii?"
thomas.maugh@xxxxxxxxxxx
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