
First South Americans Were Australian Aborigines (1999) - ptio
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/430944.stm
======
idlewords
Here are two much more recent papers on the topic:

Nature
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vnfv/ncurrent/full/natu...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vnfv/ncurrent/full/nature14895.html)

Science
[http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6250/aab3884.abstract](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6250/aab3884.abstract)

~~~
chx
That Nature article makes Thor Heyerdahl right even if in reverse. That's ...
amazing.

~~~
dalke
All of the following are "right even if in reverse": Columbus started from the
Caribbean and discovered Spain in the late 1400s; the Mormons left Utah due to
persecution and relocated to the Midwest; Australians convicts in the early
1800s were transported to Britain to work and live in penal colonies; millions
of free people were sold into slavery in the Americas and shipped to Africa to
work; and the Mississippi flows from Louisiana to Minnesota.

Heyerdahl believed there were cultural similarities between pre-Columbian
civilizations of the Andes and Polynesians because the South Americans
"colonized the then-uninhabited Polynesian islands as far north as Hawaii, as
far south as New Zealand, as far east as Easter Island, and as far west as
Samoa and Tonga around 500 AD". (Quoting Wikipedia.) He also believed the
current Polynesian population came to the islands centuries later by first
going to the Pacific Northwest of the Americas and then to Hawaii before going
to the rest of the Pacific.

That can't be so easily reversed.

~~~
chx
Then maybe I should have said "the Kon-Tiki expedition was relevant even if
not exactly in the way we expected". Thor Heyerdahl has proven it is possible
to cross this distance by using only the materials and technologies available
to those people at the time, that there were no technical reasons to prevent
them from having done so.

------
nreece
It's a small world after all. Interestingly, DNA from Aboriginal Australians
suggests Australia experienced a wave of migration from India about 4,000
years ago.

[http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2013/01/aborigin...](http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2013/01/aboriginal-
genes-suggest-indian-migration/)

[http://www.bbc.com/news/science-
environment-21016700](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-21016700)

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

~~~
EdwardDiego
Kon-Tiki was interesting, but I can't handle the implication of Heyerdahl's
beliefs - that the Polynesian people, supreme sailors and navigators who
travelled huge distances across the open ocean while Europeans were still
hugging the coast, were somehow incapable of sailing to South America and
back.

We know that there has been some contact between the Americas and Polynesia,
for example, the staple food of the Maori of New Zealand was the kumara, a
sweet potato, which are native to the Americas.

His main objection was based, I believe, on predominating currents and winds.
However, in an El Nino year, the currents shift and winds shift, and there is
evidence that Polynesian migrations eastward coincided with El Nino events.

~~~
pacala
Australians != Polynesians. Polynesian migrations are relatively recent,
starting 3000BC ~ 1000BC from Taiwan. They got to New Zealand and Easter
Island only about 1200 AD, which is only 300 years before Columbus. I don't
recall any evidence that they sailed all the way to the Americas between
1200AD and 1500 AD, the time of Pizzaro's conquest of the Inca Empire.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesia#Origins_and_expansio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesia#Origins_and_expansion)

~~~
EdwardDiego
Yeah, I'm well aware of that fact, on account of living in New Zealand. ;) I
was directly responding to the person I, erm, directly responded to, who
posted a link to Kon-Tiki.

> I don't recall any evidence that they sailed all the way to the Americas

We have obvious evidence of contact between Polynesia and South America before
the 1200s, as the Maori arrived in NZ in the 13th century with a sweet potato,
as I mentioned.

As for "all the way to the Americas", the distance from Rapanui/Easter Island
to Chile is less than the distance from the Marquesas Islands to Hawaii (which
was colonised in the 10th century), or from Tuabai / Tahiti / Cook Islands
(whichever identity of 'Hawaiki' you prefer) to New Zealand.

So, we have evidence that Polynesians contacted the Americas sometime before
the 13th century, and we have evidence that the Polynesians were capable of
navigating distances greater than that from Easter Island to Chile in the 10th
century.

I'm not aware of any evidence of any similar ocean-going prowess of South
American natives, as such, Occam's Razor probably applies.

~~~
pacala
There are two points here:

A. Polynesians are definitely not "first South Americans", regardless at which
date the conjectured sweet potato journey happened. Simply because the other
South Americans we know of arrived about 15,000 years ago, way before
Polynesians even left Taiwan.

B. "The distance from Rapanui/Easter Island to Chile is less than the distance
from the Marquesas Islands to Hawaii", true. But since Polynesians reached
Easter Island only in the 1200s, their conjectured sweet potato journey must
have been either post 1200s, or much longer than the journey from Easter
Island.

As of the sweet potato, who knows how it got in Maori hands? Super alternative
conjecture, maybe some people during the glacial age, beneficiary of low ocean
levels, brought it to the islands, and Polynesians picked it up from there?

~~~
EdwardDiego
> Polynesians are definitely not "first South Americans"

Who are you correcting? Certainly not me. I'm discussing which side of the
Pacific drove the pre-Columbian contact. The obvious answer is the "sea-faring
people who colonised islands across the vast distances of the Pacific Ocean".

> "The distance from Rapanui/Easter Island to Chile is less than the distance
> from the Marquesas Islands to Hawaii", true. But since Polynesians reached
> Easter Island only in the 1200s, their conjectured sweet potato journey must
> have been either post 1200s, or much longer than the journey from Easter
> Island.

They only _settled_ Easter Island in the 1200s. There is ample evidence of
Polynesian temporary occupation of otherwise uninhabited islands, such as
Raoul Island in the Kermadecs, New Zealand's sub-Antarctic islands (Campbell,
Auckland in particular), and Norfolk Island. Polynesian colonisation was
largely driven by population pressure, so it's quite likely that they had
discovered Easter Island long before they decided to colonise it.

> Super alternative conjecture, maybe some people during the glacial age,
> beneficiary of low ocean levels, brought it to the islands, and Polynesians
> picked it up from there?

Occam's Razor definitely applies, especially when you'd have to drop the sea
level by several _kilometres_ to have a lower ocean level make any difference
to travel to Polynesia from America. Highest mountain on earth is Mauna Loa,
in Hawaii, 9km from bottom to top.

~~~
pacala
The title of this thread is "First South Americans Were Australian
Aborigines", just making sure we are all aware that this sub conversation
concerns a different population at a different time. Might as well throw in
some Vikings ;)

Super interesting point about evidence of Polynesian travel in New Zealand.
Now if there were some of that evidence with regard to South America, we'd be
all clear. But there isn't as far as I know, which raises even more questions
about the sweet potato conjecture.

With regard to the glacial maximum, nobody is claiming the oceans were plains
to roam around. But a sea level 100 lower may uncover some new islands and
make island hopping a whole lot easier. For example, Baral Guyot is a barely
submerged island
[https://earthref.org/SC/SMNT-257S-0866W/](https://earthref.org/SC/SMNT-257S-0866W/)
along the Sala y Gomez ridge and Nazca Ridge.

Obviously there is no archeological confirmation of the conjecture I made, but
that leaves both conjectures in the same uncomfortable spot.

Edit: Here's some actual research on sweet potato:
[http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/01/22/169980441/how...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/01/22/169980441/how-
the-sweet-potato-crossed-the-pacific-before-columbus). I hereby retire my
glacial travel counter theory :)

This places the sweet potato travel around 1000 AD, which matches pretty well
our conversation, but it's definitely not evidence for "first americans".

~~~
EdwardDiego
> The title of this thread is "First South Americans Were Australian
> Aborigines", just making sure we are all aware that this sub conversation
> concerns a different population at a different time. Might as well throw in
> some Vikings ;)

Fair enough.

> Super interesting point about evidence of Polynesian travel in New Zealand.
> Now if there were some of that evidence with regard to South America, we'd
> be all clear. But there isn't as far as I know, which raises even more
> questions about the sweet potato conjecture.

It would be rather easy, presumably, for the evidence of transitory usage to
be destroyed or at least rendered indistinguishable by several hundred years
of settlement. We have that problem in NZ - Maori legend speaks of the greate
explorer Kupe who found New Zealand (Aotearoa) and returned to Hawaiki to
bring people back. Nearly all Maori tribes claim to descend from an original
migration canoe (waka) from Hawaiki -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Māori_waka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Māori_waka)

However, archaeologically, we can't really tell where they, or Kupe the Great,
specifically landed first - we can date earliest settlements, but how would
you distinguish evidence of temporary occupation from evidence of permanent
occupation?

So yeah, I would speculate that any travel to South America from Polynesia
would probably have transited via Easter Island in the first instance -
especially as it used to have dense forests before the Polynesian induced
deforestation - thus making it an ideal staging post for resupplying by
fishing and hunting, and providing materials to repair your canoes.

> With regard to the glacial maximum, nobody is claiming the oceans were
> plains to roam around. But a sea level 100 lower may uncover some new
> islands and make island hopping a whole lot easier. For example, Baral Guyot
> is a barely submerged island
> [https://earthref.org/SC/SMNT-257S-0866W/](https://earthref.org/SC/SMNT-257S-0866W/)
> along the Sala y Gomez ridge and Nazca Ridge.

That is a very good point, I was only thinking Bering Sea-esque 'land bridges'
and didn't consider seamounts becoming islands.

> Obviously there is no archeological confirmation of the conjecture I made,
> but that leaves both conjectures in the same uncomfortable spot.

The chicken DNA hypothesis needs more investigation IMO. Although it still
leaves the question of the 'navigators' vs the 'navigees' unspoken. Who knows,
maybe I'm manifesting extreme modern privilege and ignorance by assuming that
seafaring was extraordinary to the Polynesians in the 10th century. It may
well have been that contact between Polynesia and South America was driven
from both sides mucking about in boats and having a great time. I guess I'm
being a bit defensive of the Polynesians who were summarily dismissed by
Heyerdahl - I hesitate to call him racist, but he overlooked what I consider
to be an extraordinary amount of persuasive evidence that the Polynesians
could easily have made the trip.

> This places the sweet potato travel around 1000 AD, which matches pretty
> well our conversation, but it's definitely not evidence for "first
> americans".

It's an interesting time for it to arrive - Hawaii was settled in the 900s, so
we can speculate that population pressure (or perhaps food pressure?) drove a
wave of exploration and migration from Polynesia. Tying it all together :D
Some of those explorers found Hawaii, and some of them found kumara and
Mapuches. :D

------
stolk
The dating method sounds very unreliable:

"The style of the art means it is at least 17,000 years old, but it could be
up to 50,000 years old."

Art style? Yeah, right..... I call bull. Until carbon dated, I call this
false.

If i draw something today in that style, it would not make it 50000 yrs old.

