Easter Island discovery: Experts unravel mystery of ancient statues

So you'd deny them their own heritage, or do you imagine no Europeans asked them about the Moai?

Harte

a reply to: bloodymarvelous

The dating of the arrival of people on Rapa Nui has been accomplished by several methods.
Dating bits of charcoal left in hearths, this actually shows that people arrived several centuries before the widely accepted estimates.
The arrival of the the western polynesians is heralded by the apperance of the rat, which shows up several hundred years after the first hearths, the polynesian contact with south america is marked by the apperance of manioc agriculture, manioc is native to central america.
Eventually it will be accepted that the first people on Rapa Nui were early Hawiians that arrived between 200-600 AD, thode Hawiians were descended from native Americans from northern British Columbia that arrived in Hawaii around 200 BC.
You can tell when the Tahitians arrive in both Hawaii and Rapa Nui by the transition to a highly stratified and rigid "Big Man" society.

Sounds kind of like the British Isles. One group after another rolling through and conquering whoever was already there, until you end up with a sort of mix that becomes its own culture?

In a way, maybe it is for the best to just let mainstream archaeology slowly work its way back, then.

Maybe there was habitation in the ice age by some moderately advanced culture. Maybe there wasn't. But if we just jump to that, we end up missing out on all that interesting history that happens in between, right?

a reply to: bloodymarvelous

Right on, Well said.
So much interesting stuff in between.

Britain's history is complex indeed

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

Maybe there was habitation in the ice age by some moderately advanced culture. Maybe there wasn't. But if we just jump to that, we end up missing out on all that interesting history that happens in between, right?

'wasn't' has a lot evidence so far....

Quite true about Britain and most places in the old world not so much with Rapa Nui. Very small island made out of volcanic rock and having a very thin layer of soil. Probably one of the few places in the world where the entire surface has been field surveyed by archaeologist numbers of times, hundreds of known excavations - if there was any type of 'civilization' or advanced culture there the possibility of no hint ever being found is slim to none. I've been all over the island and you can clearly see where habitations were, graves, etc. Even the volcanic tubes have been explored.

Off the top of my head it is about a 160 km2 or 60 sq miles.

a reply to: schuyler

I believe it was organics in the bottom of some of the statues carbon dated. Pretty common in archaeology to dig underneath the focus and date that material for your dates.

a reply to: Butterfinger

This study looks at the dating of a number of places in Pacific and in particular Rapa Nui.

High-precision radiocarbon dating shows recent and rapid initial human colonization of East Polynesia

www.hilites.org.uk...

Conclusions Improvements in the reliability of radiocarbon dating, including greater rigor in the selection, identifi cation and pre-treatment of samples, together with a rapid increase in the total size of the radiocarbon date assemblage for East Polynesia, provide the conditions necessary for constructing a reliable model of the regional chronology of colonization. The model presented here has the advantages of a geographically wide coverage and a large sample of radiocarbon dates that was selected systematically by the elimination of poor quality and imprecise data. The results show that, after a relatively brief period of establishment in central East Polynesia, there was a remarkably rapid and extensive dispersal in the thirteenth century A.D. to the remaining uninhabited islands. This rate of human expansion is unprecedented in oceanic prehistory. Our model, although falsifiable, is likely to prove robust with further high precision radiocarbon dating of short-lived materials from those East Polynesian is- lands that currently lack secure chronologies based on such materials.

a reply to: Hanslune

Hans have you seen the latest paper on sweetpotato gentics?
I found it interesting to the point of being entertaining.

Howdy Punkinworks

Yeah it was very interesting, I presume you mean Robert Scotland paper? Yeah I've been following the sweet potatoes epic odyssey for a long time. This is if stand muddies the water still further! We'll see if it stands - considering what happened to Polynesian chicken claims I am standing on the side lines - waiting.

I'm holding out that Proto-Polynesians and a Proto-South Americans exchanged a chicken for a basket of sweet potatoes hundreds of thousands of years ago.....lol

In a study focused on the origin of Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam. (the sweet potato) and its close relatives [1], the authors claimed that a specimen of sweet potato collected by Banks and Solander in 1769 in Polynesia was distinct and along with some other varieties had levels of genetic variation of more than 100,000 years. This timeframe, along with several other lines of evidence, was interpreted, by the authors, as questioning human-mediated transport of the sweet potato to Polynesia within the last 1,000 years. This aspect of the paper received widespread media coverage as well as a number of critical remarks, and correspondence. The criticism questioned whether claims in the paper were justified. Here, three authors from the paper take the opportunity to fully explain the reasoning for calling into question the need to invoke human mediated transport of the sweet potato to Polynesia.

a reply to: Hanslune

Hans,
The part of the recent sweetpotato paper that I found entertaining was the assertian that the polynesian sweet potato was widepsread in the pacific islands when settled by the polynesians, yet not one instance of the "progenitor" strain has ever been found anywhere in the pacific, anywhere or in any time period.
One would think it would still be around, just as the progenitor of the other strains is still found in the wilds of SA and carribean.
And have you seen the latest in the chicken dance? a re date that shows the bones are too old to have been colonial period.

a reply to: schuyler

I guess if you have an issue with facts of history i.e. what DNA says about when those islands were colonized and by which people.

a reply to: schuyler

And that's how almost all dating is done.

Is there anything unreasonable with this assumption? Not really. If the statues were put into the bogs and the pollen can be carbon dated, there's very little reason to assume that the statues predated the pollen that is in it.

This is literally how all archeological dating is done. Seems more unreasonable to pursue a theory with no evidence to support it (beside waterworld memorabilia) than one with indirect but reasonable evidence to support it - given the burying of the statue and biotic material trapped within it.

What's your alternative? Your alternative goes against the entirety of archeology and anthropology. A book you may have read told you that South Americans founded easter island before the ice age... And yet the vast majority of archeological sites in the Americas indicate that a human presence probably wasn't there until 10,000 years ago, and even then, we're talking about hunter-gatherers, who don't have the means to travel an entire ocean.

On the other hand, we know that the pacific islands were colonized by waves of people from southeast Asia, and then a later one from people with Austronesian genetics. Your scenario asks us to ignore all of that, ignore the carbon dating of material from the bogs these heads were buried in, and hyperfocus on the slim possibility that ann "Atlantean" type civilization is responsible for these.

Perhaps this sort of thinking passes for "truth" between librarians, but not scientists. Occams razor is the only tool in the kit.

originally posted by: punkinworks10
a reply to: Hanslune

Hans,
The part of the recent sweetpotato paper that I found entertaining was the assertian that the polynesian sweet potato was widepsread in the pacific islands when settled by the polynesians, yet not one instance of the "progenitor" strain has ever been found anywhere in the pacific, anywhere or in any time period.
One would think it would still be around, just as the progenitor of the other strains is still found in the wilds of SA and carribean.
And have you seen the latest in the chicken dance? a re date that shows the bones are too old to have been colonial period.

Ah I'm not sure what paper you are referring to not the El Arenal 2007 paper that found 5 chickens that were dated what...900-1390 or somewhat. Or are you speaking of something else?

a reply to: Hanslune

Yes
a new paper using a different method confirmed the older dating.
I'm not sure where I read it, most likely on science daily, it's been within the last year or so

a reply to: punkinworks10

Hmmm I don't recall that - I'll take a look tomorrow. Thank for the update!

OK...try this.
Sweet potato, called kumara in NZ,has the same name in India and a very similar name in some pacific islands,and was a staple part of the diet of said peoples. Coincidence? I think south Americans populated most of the pacific islands.

a reply to: hiddenNZ

India is very far from South America. But yes, Indo-Pacific languages are quite thoroughly related.
Migrations do that. Maui is all over the Pacific. South America, not so much.

a reply to: Phage

Also a few similarities between Maori and Egyptian legends. Ra is the Maori name for the sun,as is the Egyptian sun god. Maui is also the name of a captain of a ship that sailed from Egypt in the Ptolemaic times. I'll find the link and return.

a reply to: hiddenNZ

www.google.com...://www.nzherald.co.nz/northern-advocate/news/article.cfm%3Fc_id%3D1503450%26objectid%3D11058 240&ved=2ahUKEwjr9Y3u-KDeAhVNeXAKHbqCB6wQFjAAegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw08idxZbxbnXBohnvaBR8-W


Linky link.

a reply to: hiddenNZ

Can't make it work.