Posted on 06/04/2007 5:58:20 PM PDT by blam
Polynesians beat Columbus to the Americas
22:00 04 June 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Emma Young
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Prehistoric Polynesians beat Europeans to the Americas, according to a new analysis of chicken bones.
The work provides the first firm evidence that ancient Polynesians voyaged as far as South America, and also strongly suggests that they were responsible for the introduction of chickens to the continent - a question that has been hotly debated for more than 30 years.
Chilean archaeologists working at the site of El Arenal-1, on the Arauco Peninsula in south-central Chile, discovered what they thought might be the first prehistoric chicken bones unearthed in the Americas. They asked Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and colleagues to investigate.
The group carbon-dated the bones and their DNA was analysed. The 50 chicken bones from at least five individual birds date from between 1321 and 1407 - 100 years or more before the arrival of Europeans.
Two-week journey
However, this date range does coincide with dates for the colonization of the easternmost islands of Polynesia, including Pitcairn and Easter Island.
And when the El Arenal chicken DNA was compared with chicken DNA from archaeological sites in Polynesia, the researchers found an identical match with prehistoric samples from Tonga and American Samoa, and a near identical match from Easter Island.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
More info on the Hokuleia experiment.
http://www.k12.hi.us/~waianaeh/PolyVoyage/ealahoku/hokuleia/hokuleia.htm
I saw an article a while back, sorry no reference, about an abacus found in South America, made of native South American wood and so forth, and dated to around 1200 AD, that was basically identical to Chinese ones of the same time, in terms of style, number of rows of beads, and so on. The implication was that trading ships from China had probably made it to the west coast of South America around that time.
It is written in China that 250,000 'took to the sea' at the collapse of the Shang Dynasty.
Google "Japanese" "pottery" "Meggers" and "Ecuador" and see what you get.
"Her most crucial discovery to date is the relationship between the people of Ecuador and the people of Japan. She noticed that fragments of pottery from Japan were appearing in Ecuador, and theorized that the Japanese had traded trans-Pacifically."
“Life boat” navigation uses a lot of the methods early islanders used as their primary navigation including wave reflection, bird and plant identification to name a few.
80’ feet at the water line, nice to be making way (just popped into my head so I typed it)
“DNA studies have found no evidence South American Indians settled Polynesia thus proving Heyrdahl’s theories of the settlement of Polynesia from South America incorrect.”
Agreed. But in the bigger picture, he demonstrated the possibility of long distance ocean travel, previously not considered.
bump for later reading.
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...and by a weird coincidence, Quetzalcoatl, the name of the deity or demigod who taught the Indians of Mexico about corn, translates as, “kernal sanders”.
Okay, I made that up.
Polynesian GPS? (Guidance Pickup Sticks?
Now this is cool!
Hey, the question I’ve never seen addressed, which some of you might know, is when did the bow and arrow arrive? I believe the atlatl was what was being used until 600 Ad (the points are smaller than arrow points), which would give an early point for European contact.
But I might not know what I’m talking about, couldn’t find anything but tenuous references.
A lot of the great viking explorers were essentially escaping death, having been exiled or been in a feud with some king or other. It could be the same sort of thing.
True, but at least he showed that people in general could have travelled much farther than previously thought.
"Science does not know just how primitive the bow and arrow is or exactly where it was first used. Beautiful Paleolithic carvings in caves at Castellon, Spain indicate that the weapon is at least 10,000 years old."
Interesting article blam, BUT I have yet to see a definitive history of the bow in the Americas.
http://www.uiowa.edu/~osa/learn/ancient/archery.htm
That sight says 500 AD in Iowa. My point is, it was probably a European introduction, which would be a way to mark the first Atlantic transit.
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