Posted on 06/05/2007 5:31:36 AM PDT by DieHard the Hunter
Chicken bones show Polynesians went to Chile By MAGGIE FOX - Reuters | Tuesday, 5 June 2007
A chicken bone found in Chile provides solid evidence to settle a debate over whether Polynesians travelling on rafts visited South America thousands of years ago – or vice versa, New Zealand researchers have said.
The DNA in the bone carries a rare mutation that links it to chickens in Tonga and Samoa, and radiocarbon dating shows it is around 600 years old – meaning it predates the arrival of Spanish conquerors in South America.
"These chickens are related to hens from Polynesia," said Alice Storey, a doctoral student at the University of Auckland who worked on the study.
Her team's finding, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that best-selling author and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl was only partly right when he sailed on the raft Kon-Tiki from South America to Polynesia to prove prehistoric contact across the Pacific.
"He had it backwards," Storey said in a telephone interview.
"Heyerdahl had proposed that people were coming out of South America and into Polynesia," she added. "We know the Polynesians were actually going to South America and probably trading chickens for (sweet potatoes) and bottle gourds."
Chickens originally come from southeast Asia, and many researchers had assumed that Spanish conquistadors carried them there in the 16th century.
Other experts were not sure, and when a team stumbled on some old chicken bones at an archeological site in Chile, they decided to carbon date them and look at the DNA.
Luckily for the researchers, the chicken DNA carries a rare mutation.
It is identical to bones from two prehistoric archeological sites in the Pacific: Mele Havea in Tonga, dating to 2000 years ago, and one from American Samoa, about the same age as the Chilean site.
"Argument about the origins and date of introduction of the domestic fowl or chicken (Gallus gallus) to the Americas has raged for over 30 years," Storey's team wrote.
"Here, we provide the first unequivocal evidence for a pre-European introduction of chickens to South America and indicate, through ancient DNA evidence, that the likely source of that introduction was Polynesia," they added.
GGG ping
Its a well known fact that the Polynesians considered the coast of Chili a premier vacation spot ....
The LDS will be ecstatic!...........Chicken Soup in Pre-Columbian South America!..........
Where do people in Hawaii go for vacation?.........
> Its a well known fact that the Polynesians considered the coast of Chili a premier vacation spot ....
I still find that the ease with which the stone-age Polynesian civilizations seemed to glide across the vast Pacific ocean astounding: yet the evidence is there, for all to see, that they did. Deliberately.
Imagine the effort it would have taken to mount a Polynesian trans-Pacific expedition. To chop down a huge tree, hollow it out with tools made out of rock, carve it with elaborate carvings, make it thoroughly sea-worthy (the Polynesians invented catamarans and trimarans), equip it with food and water and weaponry and a bunch of burly warriors of both sexes to row, then launch it into the Blue Horizon for points uncharted and unknown...
...and a couple years later have it return accurately to home base?
It is not a mission I’d want to undertake, even with modern equipment. No thanks!
Polynesian civilization was a fair bit more clever than we have been willing to grant, to date. They knew stuff about crossing huge expanses of water that we still haven’t figured out. And, as each day passes, this knowledge becomes more and more extinct!
*DieHard*
Everyone knows that the chicken originated in Kentucky.
Michener’s “Hawaii” was interesting for me because it explained (in Michener’s opinion- but I found it convincing) how people from the S. Pacific found their way to what is now called Hawaii and most likely further east. Michener’s “Alaska” did the same regarding the migration of people from northern Asia over the land bridge to what is now called Alaska.
This makes perfect sense to me.
So are the Pictii that Hadrian encountered Egyptians or Polynesians?
so I guess they ate all the polynesian chickens ‘cause there were none here when Columbo arrived.
Wonder if these are related to auracana chickens- the green/blue egg-laying breed is supposed to have originated in a South American indian village but it’s said nobody knows for sure when they were developed.
There was world trade before the great flood.
Now this thread is making me want some Chicken Tikka Masala.
Where do people in Hawaii go for vacation?.........
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Nome.
Ames Iowa?
Descendants of survivors of Atlantis. Pay attention would ya?
Not during the Flood Season............
It snows in Hawaii, from time to time...........
DNA tests indicate that they're R1b's/R1a's haplogroup just like about everyone else in Scotland.
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