Cosmos Magazine reports that a new genetic study suggests that the Rapa Nui of Easter Island had contact with the peoples of South America and maintained a stable population before Europeans reached the remote island in the Pacific Ocean in 1722. The DNA samples in the study were obtained from 15 Rapa Nui individuals who lived between 1670 and 1950, and whose remains are currently held in France at the Museum of Mankind. "We looked into how the Indigenous American DNA was distributed across the Polynesian genetic background of the Rapa Nui," said Víctor Moreno-Mayar of the University of Copenhagen....