
Polynesian DNA suggests epic voyage to South America 800 years ago - digital55
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/science/polynesian-ancestry.html
======
ravenstine
It's also possible that Polynesians visited North America. The Chumash people
had relatively sophisticated canoes called tomols which have planks that are
sewn together, which was a technique unique to them in North America, but has
been seen in Polynesian and South American boat construction.

[https://external-
content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fo...](https://external-
content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Foil.piratelab.org%2Fwp-
content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F05%2Fsb-07-tomol.jpg&f=1&nofb=1)

[http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=24433](http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=24433)

> Archaeologist Terry Jones of California Polytechnic State University
> acknowledges that the Malibu Lagoon Chumash could have encountered
> Polynesian master navigators, who gave their tomol building skills to the
> Chumash.

> Among North American Indians, only the Chumash, and later the neighboring
> Gabrielino, built sewn-plank canoes. In the Western Hemisphere, this
> technology is otherwise known only from the coast of Chile and among Pacific
> Islanders. The tomols were able to carry large loads for long distances
> which could allowed for navigation across the Pacific.

I can't seem to find information on whether there's a confirmed Polynesian
genetic connection to the Chumash. Probably unlikely, but I've always found
the idea interesting.

~~~
BurningFrog
Some Polynesian canoe(s) drifting shore in California seems the simpler
theory.

~~~
aunty_helen
Something slightly related, but mostly of a tangential interest:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_bell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_bell)

The Maori population also having descended from the Pacific Island
Polynesians.

~~~
willvarfar
Fascinating trivia: Madagascar was populated by the Polynesians

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Madagascar#A_common...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Madagascar#A_common_Austronesian_origin:_The_Vahoaka_Ntaolo)

~~~
gquiniou
No, it was people from Sunda Islands (now Indonesia) who are also
austronesians.

------
ancorevard
Highly recommend reading the book Kontiki (or watch the movie) for the
incredible story of Thor Heyerdahl demonstrating that sailing on a raft from
South America to Polynesia is possible and a theory that now seems even more
likely with the current DNA evidence.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kon-
Tiki_expedition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kon-Tiki_expedition)

~~~
gerbilly
The DNA evidence suggests the opposite, in fact.

Many lines of evidence, linguistic, genetic, cultural suggest that polynesia
was colonized west to east, probably originating in ancient Taiwan.

Heyerdahl pulled of an impressive feat, but his raft was a real dogs breakfast
compared to a voyaging canoe or flying proa.

~~~
irrational
Doesn't the DNA evidence now suggest both? The article says that polynesian
populations show a DNA connection with the Americas (especially around
Columbia) from sometime around 1200. It would seem that the polynesians sailed
from West to East until they either hit the American continents or peoples
from the American continents came out and met them. Or both.

~~~
oh_sigh
The article also suggests some think it might just be the effect of their most
recent common ancestor in Asia somewhere, and not from any kind of transplant.

~~~
irrational
The American continents are kind of hard to miss. After sailing east from tiny
island to tiny island, it is kind of hard to believe that they didn’t run into
the continents at some point while looking for new islands.

~~~
oh_sigh
Maybe, maybe not. Easter island is one of the most isolated islands in the
world and is also one of the easternmost islands in the Pacific. It's still a
long way to go to get to South America from there. Maybe a few family units
arrived and then forgot about boat building and navigation for a few
generations because the islands land resources were so plentiful. I think
something similar happened to native people on Tasmania - they took a boat to
get there, but forgot how to build boats eventually and so were stuck on their
island without the ability to go to mainland Australia.

------
KhoomeiK
This is a super interesting read! In my previous conversations with Prof.
Fehren-Schmitz he was highly skeptical of any Pre-Columbian contact based on
his findings in [1]. He says the issue is pretty strongly politicized, because
there's a modern Polynesian immigrant community in Peru that would "benefit"
if admixture is found, while the Polynesians in Polynesia are a lot more
skeptical due to nationalist tendencies. I might be getting this backward, not
completely sure, but his point was basically that it's super hard to study
this specific issue because of the surprising amount of politicization there
is surrounding it.

[1] [https://www.cell.com/current-
biology/pdfExtended/S0960-9822(...](https://www.cell.com/current-
biology/pdfExtended/S0960-9822\(17\)31194-6)

------
mywacaday
There is one thing I don't understand for these epic journeys, whether it's
trans Pacific/Atlantic, the Bering straight etc, what was the motivation to
risk your life? Unless there was some kind of local conflict why would you
risk the move given there was relatively unlimited resources at source
destinations at the time comparef to population. What makes the first person
decide I'm going to sail past the horizon and everything we know and risk my
life, it boggles my mind.

~~~
svara
Part of the answer I think is that we often underestimate the level of
sophistication of people who lived a very long time ago. Polynesians were
expert navigators, they had a lot of knowledge of things like wind patterns,
currents, birds, the positions of the sun and stars... and knew how to use
those to orient themselves at sea. Long voyages were probably dangerous, but
they may well have had the means to turn back and return home in case they
didn't find land. This article is really interesting:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation)

Maybe discovering far away lands was to them meaningful for exactly the same
reasons that it was later for the European explorers who rediscovered their
islands...

~~~
totetsu
Having dipped my toe in mnemonic techniques, I think part of why we
underestimate people of the past, is we have forgotten just how much the human
brain is capable of sans external tech.

~~~
vicda
Yeah, it shocked me the first time I memorized a deck of cards with a memory
palace. Plus, imagine how well trained muscle memories became since methods
would have hardly changed from generations before.

~~~
totetsu
One of the Polynesian navigational methods I have heard described, was laying
down in the bow of the canoe and going into a meditative trace, thereby being
able to feel the ocean swell, and infer the location of distant islands by the
diffraction pattern of waves.
[https://manoa.hawaii.edu/exploringourfluidearth/media_colorb...](https://manoa.hawaii.edu/exploringourfluidearth/media_colorbox/2539/media_original/en)

~~~
newsbinator
I wonder how it was even discovered this works

------
pigscantfly
There is some additional physical evidence for this in the form of plants and
animals with American origin appearing in the archaeological record in Asia
well before 1492. This paper [1] lists around 100 cross-hemispheric species.
I'm not an expert on this, but I found the Phaseolus species (lima bean)
evidence particularly compelling -- they are species of clear American origin
with multiple unambiguous archaeological examples in India from as far back as
1600 BC. It seems hard to explain that without pre-Columbian trans-Pacific
contact.

[1] [http://www.sino-
platonic.org/complete/spp133_precolumbian_vo...](http://www.sino-
platonic.org/complete/spp133_precolumbian_voyages.pdf)

~~~
runarberg
The technology to voyage over the south pacific definitely did not exists in
1600 BCE. So trans pacific human contact is an unlikely explanation. More
likely these particular species might have migrated them selfs (e.g. by
floating) or with non-human animals (like birds) and later picked up while
still alive by human farmers in India.

There is also the possibility of more crossings over the Bering straight.
Inuits and proto-inuit cultures have crossed the Bering multiple times. I find
it dubious that they never crossed westwards. However, the technological niche
which the cultures of the far north have mastered over the centuries have less
values in warmer climates so I don’t think much would have been brought from
the Americas to as far south as India via the Bering.

Anything crossing the south Pacific from around 500 AD however can definitely
be attributed to human crossings as the Polynesian cultures from that time
period for sure had the technology for such voyages.

~~~
irrational
> The technology to voyage over the south pacific definitely did not exists in
> 1600 BCE.

How do we know that? Archeological evidence of wooden boats from that long ago
in the tropics would probably be hard to come by.

~~~
runarberg
You are right, _absence of evidence is not evidence of absence_. However
_extraordinary claims, require extraordinary evidence_ , and while there is no
evidence of an ocean fairing civilization in the 16th century BCE I will
believe the simpler explanation that the reason why American crops were
cultivated in India is because seeds were brought by winds, currents, birds or
insects, but not humans.

I guess I should have been more careful in may claim that “the technology did
not exist”, and should have worded it as: “we have no evidence for such
technology existing at that time in human history”.

------
sosborn
Anyone interested in Polynesian exploration would enjoy learning about
Hōkūle‘a: [http://www.hokulea.com/voyages/our-
story/](http://www.hokulea.com/voyages/our-story/)

------
jeffreyrogers
So that Norwegian guy[0] who built a raft and floated to Polynesia from Peru
was right all along.

Edit: Oh actually it looks like they're claiming the direction of travel went
the other way. I can't see the full article, but I wonder how they can
distinguish between the two directions.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Heyerdahl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Heyerdahl)

~~~
irrational
It looks like they aren't sure which direction the travel might have gone:

"Our earliest estimated date of contact isad 1150 for Fatu Hiva, South
Marquesas. This is close to the date estimated by radiocarbon dating for
settlement of that island group13, raising the intriguing possibility that,
upon their arrival, Polynesian settlers encountered a small, already
established, Native American population. It was on the island of Fatu Hiva—the
easternmost island in equatorial Polynesia—that Thor Heyerdahl hypothesized
that Native American and Polynesian individuals might have contacted one
another, based on islanders’ legends stating that their forefathers had come
from the east39. The Marquesas lie at the latitude of Ecuador, and wind- and
current-based simulations indicate that they are the islands most likely to be
reached from South America via the strong east-to-west currents and winds at
these equatorial latitudes4,40,41.

We cannot discount an alternative explanation: a group of Polynesian people
voyaged to northern South America and returned42 together with some Native
American individuals, or with Native American admixture, as speculated in ref.
10. We have dated the contact event to the time when Polynesian explorers
were, according to some studies, making their longest-range voyages (the
century surrounding ad 1200)—a time when these studies suggest that the
Polynesian settlers discovered all remaining island groups in the Pacific,
from Hawaii to New Zealand to Rapa Nui13,38,42. The Tuamotu Archipelago, which
lies at the centre of the Polynesian islands in which we found a Native
American component, is known to have been a Polynesian voyaging hub, and
according to simulations it is the second most likely location to be reached
when voyaging from South America4. Further population genetics collaborations
with these genetically understudied island populations are needed to resolve
these alternative hypotheses."

By "single contact event" I think they mean that all the contacts between
Polynesia and South America happened around the same time period and stopped
thereafter for some reason. So the contact could have been groups going in
either (or both) direction around that time period.

~~~
anonAndOn
Perhaps they lost their wayfinder before the knowledge was sufficiently passed
on? [0]

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau_Piailug](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau_Piailug)

~~~
airstrike
That's an incredibly interesting link. Thanks for sharing!

Posts and comment threads like these are the reason why HN is so damn good

------
sradman
From the paper [1]:

> Here we analyse genome-wide variation in individuals from islands across
> Polynesia for signs of Native American admixture, analysing 807 individuals
> from 17 island populations and 15 Pacific coast Native American groups. We
> find conclusive evidence for prehistoric contact of Polynesian individuals
> with Native American individuals (around ad 1200) contemporaneous with the
> settlement of remote Oceania. Our analyses suggest strongly that a single
> contact event occurred in eastern Polynesia, before the settlement of Rapa
> Nui, between Polynesian individuals and a Native American group most closely
> related to the indigenous inhabitants of present-day Colombia.

Rapa Nui is Easter Island. No surprises on the genetic front but the
navigational path sailed holds intriguing possibilities.

[1]
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2487-2](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2487-2)

~~~
jeffreyrogers
Isn't the headline wrong then? If the contact occurred in Polynesia, then the
"epic voyage" should be from South America to Polynesia.

~~~
irrational
If you read the article you will see that they aren't sure if there were
people going from Polynesia to South America, or from South America to
Polynesia. Or it could have been both ways.

------
oxymoron
There's a good book that came out earlier this year about the Polynesian
expansion called _Sea People_ by Christina Thompson. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

~~~
medion
Yes, loved this book too!!

------
scottlocklin
I always liked the Zuni/Japan theory.

[https://www.ancientpages.com/2017/12/26/mysterious-zuni-
indi...](https://www.ancientpages.com/2017/12/26/mysterious-zuni-indians-and-
japanese-people-may-be-related/)

------
theklub
When I found out about William Bligh I figured these types of things must
certainly been possible for a long time.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bligh](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bligh)

------
TedDoesntTalk
> One explanation: Polynesians came to South America, and then took South
> Americans onto their boats to voyage back out to sea.

Isn't it easier to assume that both groups reached Easter Island independently
and reproduced on the island with each other?

~~~
tuatoru
AFAIK there isn't much (if any) evidence of ocean-going vessels in pre-
Colombian South America. So probably not.

~~~
irrational
What evidence would we expect to find? I would imagine any wooden boats from
that long ago would have long ago disintegrated by water, tropical jungles,
tropical fauna, etc. long ago. Lack of proof isn't proof of non-existence.

~~~
tuatoru
Oral history, anchor stones, parts or fragments of vessels (carvings from the
prow, steering oars, and so on).

In Polynesian culture, an ocean-going vessel was a thing of great mana, having
its own name and celebrated in many stories. Relics were revered and carefully
preserved.

I don't think Polynesians are unique in this regard.

------
Tepix
Great book discussing this topic in the context of human exploration: „Beyond
the known“ by Andrew Rader.

------
troughway
There was a thread last week that brought up Graham Hancock.

This is yet another thing that his work speculated some 25 years ago, and I
think he did a 4-part BBC documentary that tries to connect parts of the world
to a single, ocean-faring civilization due to the construction methods and
whatnot used in the archaeological remains we have today.

Of course, he's been dismissed as a crackpot so nevermind that.

~~~
notahacker
The people who concluded Polynesians may have reached South America based on
their seafaring abilities are somewhat more likely to be vindicated by this
than Hancock's writings about pre Ice Age Atlantis, never mind his writings
about the pyramids' connections with civilizations on Mars...

------
pugworthy
Kind of OT, but it bothers me that the caption of the lead photo mentions
Easter Island, but the lead paragraph references Rapa Nui.

Like... why did you create a pointer to an existing variable with a different
name, then use them interchangeably? Or something like that.

------
johndoe42377
Fuck no. DNA cannot suggest any fucking voyage, especially in time.

This kind of bullshit is an insult to intelligence and to the very principles
of science.

~~~
johndoe42377
Okay, let's state it differently.

The problem with so called peer-reviewed abstract "sciences" is the same as
with theology and any sectarian movement - that reviewers are from the same
sect and praise effort instead of refuting nonsense.

If you do logical refutation the whole field might collapse easily and leave
reviewers out of luractive jobs and high social status. Precisely what
happened to priests - from people next to God to merely funny freaks.

Socially constructed bullshit is what we have instead of science. The
principles of science including the one that only which cannot be disproved
and experimentally refuted is accepted as a operational approximation to the
truth, NOT some fucking current social consensus among some sectarian
establishment.

And no, DNA is too far removed from high level population processes to even
try to establish a meaningful correlation, leave alone a causation.

~~~
AlotOfReading
Look, I don't entirely disagree. There are often problems with trying to use
genetics to talk about the interactions of historical people. However,
historical sciences in general don't work that way. The evidence we have
generally underdetermines theories and moreover, it's often still useful to
use a theory that isn't universal for a more limited application.

