First South Americans Were Australian Aborigines (1999)
news.bbc.co.uk
news.bbc.co.uk
Nature http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vnfv/ncurrent/full/natu...
Science http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6250/aab3884.abstract
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.
The Nature article states "some Amazonian Native Americans descend partly from a Native American founding population that carried ancestry more closely related to indigenous Australians, New Guineans and Andaman Islanders than to any present-day Eurasians or Native Americans. This signature is not present to the same extent, or at all, in present-day Northern and Central Americans or in a ~12,600-year-old Clovis-associated genome, suggesting a more diverse set of founding populations of the Americas than previously accepted." That's basically saying "mainstream academia has been wrong to date on an issue as basic as how and when people reached the Americas". There was, however, prior evidence:
Research by Ludwik and Hanka Herschfeld during World War I found that the frequencies of blood groups A,B and O differed greatly from region to region. The "O" blood type (usually resulting from the absence of both A and B alleles) is very common around the world, with a rate of 63% in all human populations. Type "O" is the primary blood type among the indigenous populations of the Americas, in-particular within Central and South America populations, with a frequency of nearly 100%. In indigenous North American populations the frequency of type "A" ranges from 16% to 82%. This suggests again that the initial Amerindians evolved from an isolated population with a minimal number of individuals.
I have been studying traditional navigation techniques of the pacific ocean over the last year or so and visiting museums across the world with surviving traditional and reconstructed craft. After learning the amazing variety of techniques used for navigation (celestial and otherwise) and the innovative food preservation and water collection techniques in recorded use for long sea voyages, I really don't doubt the ability of people to have crossed the Pacific in early craft.
http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2013/01/aborigin...
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesia#Origins_and_expansio...
> 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.
Which makes the journey of the Moriori's ancestors from New Zealand to the Chatham Islands in the 1500s even more amazing.
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?
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.
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/ 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.... 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".
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
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/ 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
"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.