Posted on 09/16/2009 1:07:41 PM PDT by Nikas777
Chicken Bones Suggest Polynesians Found Americas Before Columbus
By Heather Whipps, Special to LiveScience
Which came firstthe 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 Chiledating prior to Columbus discovery of America and resembling the DNA of a fowl species native to Polynesiamay challenge that notion, researchers say.
Chickens could not have gotten to South America on their ownthey 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Sorry...I am so out of step!
Yes, but were they FRIED chicken bones?
Maybe the ....
No. Better not finish that thought.
Columbus didn’t “find” crap.
Perhaps it was African slaves.
“Chickens could not have gotten to South America on their own”
The Vikings brought them
Go to Hawaii, the island is riddled with wild Chickens, the joke is that the Chicken is the state bird.
A wild turkey and a domestic turkey differ primarily in intelligence. Wild Turkeys are smart and cautious. Domesticated turkeys are about as stupid as a really smart Liberal.
But, all else aside, no Chicken - wild or tame - has the body mass to wing ratio for any significant flights. You will never see the Great Chicken Migration of 2009, Chickens are just not built to fly. Far too much mass.
Turkeys can’t fly? I best not shove them out of a helicopter then.
“Chicken Bones Suggest Polynesians Found Americas Before Columbus”
Or chickens found Polynesia before Captain Cook.
(OK, I said that for some yuks...)
“What is the in-flight airspeed of an unladen Chicken?”
Which came first the unladen Chicken or the unladen egg?
“Native American” is so readily confused with “Naive American”.
A chicken walks into a bar founded by Polynesians that just happen to be open on Columbus Day...
I’ve had yard chickens that did pretty good. My neighbor raised peacocks and those suckers were scary, they couldn’t turn very well. You just had to duck!
How high did they get? Flying across the yard at a height of 3 to 5 ft ain’t gonna cut it.
When you start seeing flocks of Chickens at 10,000 ft heading south - let me know and I’ll microwave up a big batch of crow.
There is little doubt that Columbus was the first to find America.. however that’s not even the point. None of these other pre columbus cultures that evidence suggest found the continent successfully colonized it.
They all failed in their attempts to colonize or left. The European discovery of America by Columbus lead to the Americas we have today.
The Chinese or polynesians finding it prior had no lasting impact.
So, for historical purposes one can argue Columbus may not have been the first to discover the continents, but he’s the one that matters long term.
who cares? columbus was the first guy with guns to ‘discover’ america. and those are the people who write history.
Agreed. One could argue that Columbus's 1492 voyage marked the beginning of sustained nation-state sponsored discovery and exploitation of the results of those discoveries. Anything before that (the Vikings, the Polynesians, the Basque fishing fleets on the Grand Banks, the Chinese, if that happened) lacked long lasting settlement and associated cultural impact on peoples in both the Americas and Eurasia.
I think Columbus's voyages also have importance because they are fairly bright line marker for the ascendancy of Europe on the world stage.
There are some very good reasons why this is so ~ sea currents are the big one, PLUS, the problem of icebergs in the North Atlantic combined with the incidence of Hurricanes in the Caribbean and along the Gulf Stream, leave only a very narrow window of opportunity to return.
Columbus figured out when to go and when to come back ~ and told folks about it. So he gets all the credit.
Take a good look at different Indians ~ the Chinese made it to America, stayed here, thrived, built their own civilizations, end of story ~ until whites and blacks took over circa 1550 or thereabouts as they moved in off the islands they settled first.
I’ve seen them 30 feet up in the pines. I told a friend he could get some eggs, I came home and my rooster had him cornered in the chicken house. The guy was 6 foot plus and over 200 pounds but Red was strutting back and forth ready to kick butt, LOL
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.