Native Americans travelled to East Polynesia

A decade ago member Hanslune and I debated the veracity of claims about American/Polynesian contact.
We had many a good discussions on the subject yet I was unable to convince Hanslune of the merits of an East to west expansion within east Polynesia.
A paper published in today's Nature has finally started to shed light in the subject.

Traces of Native American ancestry have been found in the genomes of modern inhabitants of some Polynesian islands, suggesting that ancient islanders met and mixed with people from South America hundreds of years ago.

Polynesia was one of the last corners of the world that humans settled, as island-hopping groups from Asia and Oceania began to push further east some 1,000 years ago. A new study, published in Nature on 8 July, supports the long-standing, though unproven, theory that ancient Polynesians had contact with Native Americans1. Researchers had thought that this was most likely to have happened on Easter Island, also called Rapa Nui, because of its proximity to South America. But the latest data suggest that these encounters — or perhaps a single meeting — happened on other islands thousands of kilometres farther away from the continent.

www.nature.com...

They still haven't hit on the complex nuance of the peopling of the Pacific Basin and the relationships between seemingly unrelated people.
This is the gist of my theory.
~200BCE a group of Native Americans leave Northern British Columbia and find themselves in Hawaii.
They settle there and live in small numbers until around 400 CE, when another group again leaves, maybe to find their now legendary home land in the east.
They make landfall at several places on the west coast; California, Mexico, Panama, Columbia and Ecuador.
Some continue on to Rapa Nui and arrive there 600-800CE.
Actual polynesians arrive around 800 as well and mixed ethnicity people move back into Polynesians, particularly the Marquesas and Tahiti.
The Marquesans in turn journey to Hawaii, where they conquer and absorb the Native American first Hawaiians.
The rest we know.
This idea is back up by several independent lines of evidence from the genetics in this study, the bottle gourd and sweet potato conundrums, Hawaiian and South American mythologies, actual archeological evidence from B.C., California, Panama, Ecuador and Columbia.

a reply to: [post=25291846]punkinworks10[/post

How did they make the ocean trip to Hawaii?

originally posted by: PhilbertDezineck
a reply to: [post=25291846]punkinworks10[/post

How did they make the ocean trip to Hawaii?

It's not like boats were a far-future foreign concept, check the rest of the world during the same time periods -- man has known how to traverse oceans for a LONG time.

originally posted by: PhilbertDezineck
a reply to: [post=25291846]punkinworks10[/post

How did they make the ocean trip to Hawaii?

By boat, the coastal peoples of the PNW were very accomplished sailors and had been for thousands of years by that time.
In fact when a Tahitian sailing group wanted a voyaging canoe built, they went to the Haida and they built a traditional haida canoe, whish was for all intents and purposes a "polynesian" canoe.
There is an archeological site on the island of Haida G'waii(British Columbia) that dates to the appropriate time frame, that was a coastal village, drowned by a tsunami, then kept under water by seismicly related subsidence.

a reply to: punkinworks10

It's more likely that Polynesians visited South America. They were known to be great ocean navigators. They did find Hawaii, after all.

“I favor the Polynesian theory, since we know that the Polynesians were intentionally exploring the ocean and discovering some of the most distant Pacific islands around exactly the time of contact,” said Stanford University computational geneticist Alexander Ioannidis, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature.

“If the Polynesians reached the Americas, their voyage would likely have been conducted in their double-hulled sailing canoes, which sail using the same principle as a modern catamaran: swift and stable,” Ioannidis added.

www.reuters.com...

I grew up on Maui and Oahu, Hawaiiana class was mandatory all throughout K-12. Also Native American

There is no legend or evidence that a foreign culture came through and conquered or changed anything. The lineages and culture is very easily traced based on traditions. There is no tradition or deity that echoes anything outside of Polynesian let alone NA cultures.

a reply to: punkinworks10

In fact when a Tahitian sailing group wanted a voyaging canoe built, they went to the Haida and they built a traditional haida canoe, whish was for all intents and purposes a "polynesian" canoe.

This is a Polynesian voyaging canoe. It is nothing like a haida canoe.
www.hokulea.com...

But logs from the mainland have been used to make wooden replicas of the Polynesian canoes. Maybe that's what you had in mind?

The search took the builders to Alaska. When told about the unsuccessful search for logs, the SeAlaska Corporation (owned by the Tlingit, Haida, and Tshimshian tribes of Southeast Alaska), offered to donate two Sitka spruce logs.

archive.hokulea.com...

a reply to: punkinworks10

There is a western coast tribe in SA that has traits and DNA that links them to Japanese and Ainu

originally posted by: punkinworks10
A decade ago member Hanslune and I debated the veracity of claims about American/Polynesian contact.
We had many a good discussions on the subject yet I was unable to convince Hanslune of the merits of an East to west expansion within east Polynesia.
A paper published in today's Nature has finally started to shed light in the subject.

Traces of Native American ancestry have been found in the genomes of modern inhabitants of some Polynesian islands, suggesting that ancient islanders met and mixed with people from South America hundreds of years ago.

Polynesia was one of the last corners of the world that humans settled, as island-hopping groups from Asia and Oceania began to push further east some 1,000 years ago. A new study, published in Nature on 8 July, supports the long-standing, though unproven, theory that ancient Polynesians had contact with Native Americans1. Researchers had thought that this was most likely to have happened on Easter Island, also called Rapa Nui, because of its proximity to South America. But the latest data suggest that these encounters — or perhaps a single meeting — happened on other islands thousands of kilometres farther away from the continent.

www.nature.com...

They still haven't hit on the complex nuance of the peopling of the Pacific Basin and the relationships between seemingly unrelated people.
This is the gist of my theory.
~200BCE a group of Native Americans leave Northern British Columbia and find themselves in Hawaii.
They settle there and live in small numbers until around 400 CE, when another group again leaves, maybe to find their now legendary home land in the east.
They make landfall at several places on the west coast; California, Mexico, Panama, Columbia and Ecuador.
Some continue on to Rapa Nui and arrive there 600-800CE.
Actual polynesians arrive around 800 as well and mixed ethnicity people move back into Polynesians, particularly the Marquesas and Tahiti.
The Marquesans in turn journey to Hawaii, where they conquer and absorb the Native American first Hawaiians.
The rest we know.
This idea is back up by several independent lines of evidence from the genetics in this study, the bottle gourd and sweet potato conundrums, Hawaiian and South American mythologies, actual archeological evidence from B.C., California, Panama, Ecuador and Columbia.

Beat me to

www.bbc.com...

Harte just posted that on another board

Very kool, if this is true then my 5 decades search for their landing on the west coast of SA is complete. Will have to wait for the full paper. Great

Looks like my idea they would land in northern Chile was off a tad! Oh, well.

The lead investigator seems solid too: profiles.stanford.edu...

However we were betrayed and disappointed by the chicken bone disaster. So confirmation will be necessary.

It is of note that the paper notes that the SA came to Polynesia (it is also possible that Polynesians got to SA and brought back spouses)

Hats off to Punkin!

originally posted by: Butterfinger
I grew up on Maui and Oahu, Hawaiiana class was mandatory all throughout K-12. Also Native American

There is no legend or evidence that a foreign culture came through and conquered or changed anything. The lineages and culture is very easily traced based on traditions. There is no tradition or deity that echoes anything outside of Polynesian let alone NA cultures.

Yeah I grew on Oahu, I was living there doing the time of Hokulea. I agree with you. Other than a possible Spanish wreck they remained isolated after voyages from the SW stopped.

originally posted by: Butterfinger
a reply to: punkinworks10

There is a western coast tribe in SA that has traits and DNA that links them to Japanese and Ainu

Yes all of the native Americas had common ancestors in NE Asia so they would have shared ancestors with the folks who became the Ainu and Japanese. There was a theory from the 80s(?) that proposed that the Japanese had gone to Ecuador in more modern times.

anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

a reply to: punkinworks10

I also believe that it was a native American culture that were the one's bringing south American drug's such as 'C' rhymes with pain (the site automatically censors certain words) and Tobacco such as controversially found in dynastic mummy's from Egypt to either an unknown trading partner culture in western Africa or even all the way to the classical world of the Mediterranean.

The only other possibility is that it was actually a Chinese agency or other advanced ancient Asian society unknown to modern that may have been doing this trading but despite the presence of native American genetic signatures in the Polynesian genetic lineage I believe it far more likely that it was an unknown American society that was the one doing this early trade due to the phenomenally vast tract's of the pacific being all but impossible at such an early period, that said the Asia has a lot of strange similarity to meso American architecture such as near identical stepped pyramid temples that look almost identical to there south American competitors which may indicate rather more strongly than some would like to accept the increasingly accepted likelihood of diffusion.

@PhilbertDezineck

a reply to: LABTECH767

but despite the presence of native American genetic signatures in the Polynesian genetic lineage

And the fact that Polynesians were sailing all over the Pacific at the time? Using boats that could sail circles around any other vessel of the time or much later. Using sophisticated navigation techniques.
en.wikipedia.org...

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: punkinworks10

It's more likely that Polynesians visited South America. They were known to be great ocean navigators. They did find Hawaii, after all.

“I favor the Polynesian theory, since we know that the Polynesians were intentionally exploring the ocean and discovering some of the most distant Pacific islands around exactly the time of contact,” said Stanford University computational geneticist Alexander Ioannidis, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature.

“If the Polynesians reached the Americas, their voyage would likely have been conducted in their double-hulled sailing canoes, which sail using the same principle as a modern catamaran: swift and stable,” Ioannidis added.

www.reuters.com...

I think I saw something on exactly that where there was a domesticated chicken that was only found is Polynesia yet there are the same chickens found in isolated parts of South America or vice versa suggesting ancient trans-Pacific boating and travelers... searching for the link

LO< strike that new info LOL

www.nationalgeographic.com...


The new research appears to have laid these old bones to rest, but questions remain. One thing is certain: If the dates of the 2007 study are correct and there were indeed chickens in pre-Columbian South America, they had to come from somewhere. There is also the matter of the sweet potato, a definite South American native, which had spread throughout the Pacific by the time Europeans arrived on the scene.

"The sweet potato is a good question," conceded Cooper. "The bottle gourd was recently shown to have probably crossed to South America by marine currents, not human trade, as previously assumed, so I also wonder about the potato's ability to be dispersed in that fashion."

If the presence of pre-Columbian chickens is a good indicator that Polynesians succeeded in crossing the Pacific, the absence of one of their old shipmates—Rattus exulans, the Pacific rat—makes an equally compelling case against it. The Pacific rat is known to have traveled everywhere with their Polynesian hosts, and wherever they landed they invariably established thriving local rat populations that live on to this day. There are no Pacific rats in South America.

a reply to: putnam6

There were not many predators on most of the islands which the Polynesians colonized. No snakes.
I wonder if that's been considered.

originally posted by: putnam6

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: punkinworks10

It's more likely that Polynesians visited South America. They were known to be great ocean navigators. They did find Hawaii, after all.

“I favor the Polynesian theory, since we know that the Polynesians were intentionally exploring the ocean and discovering some of the most distant Pacific islands around exactly the time of contact,” said Stanford University computational geneticist Alexander Ioannidis, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature.

“If the Polynesians reached the Americas, their voyage would likely have been conducted in their double-hulled sailing canoes, which sail using the same principle as a modern catamaran: swift and stable,” Ioannidis added.

www.reuters.com...

I think I saw something on exactly that where there was a domesticated chicken that was only found is Polynesia yet there are the same chickens found in isolated parts of South America or vice versa suggesting ancient trans-Pacific boating and travelers... searching for the link

LO< strike that new info LOL

www.nationalgeographic.com...

The new research appears to have laid these old bones to rest, but questions remain. One thing is certain: If the dates of the 2007 study are correct and there were indeed chickens in pre-Columbian South America, they had to come from somewhere. There is also the matter of the sweet potato, a definite South American native, which had spread throughout the Pacific by the time Europeans arrived on the scene.

"The sweet potato is a good question," conceded Cooper. "The bottle gourd was recently shown to have probably crossed to South America by marine currents, not human trade, as previously assumed, so I also wonder about the potato's ability to be dispersed in that fashion."

If the presence of pre-Columbian chickens is a good indicator that Polynesians succeeded in crossing the Pacific, the absence of one of their old shipmates—Rattus exulans, the Pacific rat—makes an equally compelling case against it. The Pacific rat is known to have traveled everywhere with their Polynesian hosts, and wherever they landed they invariably established thriving local rat populations that live on to this day. There are no Pacific rats in South America.

The chicken thing turned out not to be Polynesian. However, this new finding may survive scrutiny.
www.csmonitor.com...

a reply to: Hanslune
Both the OP study and the one you provided support the SA people traveling to Polynesia.
At the moment, there isn't anything to indicate they ever returned to SA.

Harte

Maybe I'm misremembering but I seem to recall reading/hearing about the likelihood of trade between North America/South America and Polynesia.

Certainly the ancient Polynesians were capable of making the voyage.

I don't recall the specifics of the theory, though, as it's been some time.

originally posted by: Harte
a reply to: Hanslune
Both the OP study and the one you provided support the SA people traveling to Polynesia.
At the moment, there isn't anything to indicate they ever returned to SA.

Harte

Yep

OR the Polynesian went to SA and some returned either with spouses or perhaps as returning children generations later. They then (I presume) died out in SA. The SA used rafts to trade along the coast - the Spanish encountered these. So that remains a method but the reasons or motivation to launch into the Pacific - well driven off course by storms, escape from death due to politics or conquest- curiosity?

en.wikipedia.org...

originally posted by: seagull
Maybe I'm misremembering but I seem to recall reading/hearing about the likelihood of trade between North America/South America and Polynesia.

Certainly the ancient Polynesians were capable of making the voyage.

I don't recall the specifics of the theory, though, as it's been some time.

Polynesians had a robust deep sea traveling science. The SA a much cruder ability.

en.wikipedia.org...

That the SA made the first contact is surprising but then Polynesian reaching SA would have run into well run cultures/civilizations that would have destroyed or absorbed them easily.