[blam]

GGG Ping.

[rudyudy]

There is no question about it...records show the Portuguese treated them to a cod fish dinner when they made it to shore.

[El Gran Salseron]

AHA! I KNEW you were a whacko Californian in disguise!

[Bernard Marx]

Great post blam. Closer study of Chumash boat technology has been high on my study agenda for several years now. I live about 4 miles from some amazing Chumash rock art but it's hard to access -- off limits, so to speak. One of them shows a rescue operation after a boat capsized. I've long felt there might be some very interesting diffusion clues lurking there but hadn't tied it to Polynesians. I was thinking more along the lines of clues to boats built like whatever craft were used for the migration down the American coast during the last ice age.

The Polynesian connection is interesting in another way because it brings to mind Thor Heyerdahl's theories about Polynesia being populated by migration from the West, from British Columbia and Peru. The Kon Tiki expedition showed it was possible. So were the Chumash and the Polynesians working from a common earlier boat technology source? The linguistic evidence is intriguing.