Chicken Bones Suggest Polynesians Found Americas Before Columbus

livescience.com ^ | 04 June 2007 | Heather Whipps

[Nikas777]

Chicken Bones Suggest Polynesians Found Americas Before Columbus

By Heather Whipps, Special to LiveScience

Which came first–the chicken or the European?

Popular history, and a familiar rhyme about Christopher Columbus, holds that Europeans made contact with the Americas in 1492, with some arguing that the explorer and his crew were the first outsiders to reach the New World.

But chicken bones recently unearthed on the coast of Chile—dating prior to Columbus’ “discovery” of America and resembling the DNA of a fowl species native to Polynesia—may challenge that notion, researchers say.

“Chickens could not have gotten to South America on their own—they had to be taken by humans,” said anthropologist Lisa Matisoo-Smith from the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Polynesians made contact with the west coast of South America as much as a century before any Spanish conquistadors, her findings imply.

[Nikas777]

ping

[ClearCase_guy]

“Chickens could not have gotten to South America on their own—they had to be taken by humans,”

Soft tyranny of low expectations.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

A chicken with a tailwind could make it!

[mmichaels1970]

Chickens could not have gotten to South America on their own

Supposing TWO chickens did it together with a line between them?

[Hodar]

What is the in-flight airspeed of an unladen Chicken?

[LottieDah]

The native Americans were here before Columbus, so someone had to find it first.

[dinoparty]

Why did the chicken cross the sea? To confuse politically correct anthropologists.

[Nikas777]

A chicken with a tailwind could make it! What was that line from WKRP? "As God is my witness I thought chickens could fly"?

[Born Conservative]

Polynesians associated with chicken bones. Why, that’s pure RACISM!

[DogBarkTree]

African or European chicken?

[JoeProBono]

[Nikas777]

The native Americans

They prefer to be called American Indians now. Native Americans is now considered Un-PC. No joke.

[Military family member]

Columbus wrote that he had read accounts of Leif Ericsonn’s trip.

[mnehring]

Everyone (not really) found the Americas before Columbus. His was just a major milestone in history when the ‘discovery’ was used on a mass scale.

[Nikas777]

LOL!

[DBrow]

Not laden with a coconut, they couldn’t.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

Wild chickens aren’t much like the ones Col. Sanders raises.
They can fly just fine. It’s like the difference between a dowmestic turkey and a wild one, night and day!

[US Navy Vet]

It was turkeys.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

I prefer to be called “Sir”!