[HN Gopher] Polynesian DNA Suggests Epic Voyage to South America...
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Polynesian DNA Suggests Epic Voyage to South America 800 Years Ago
Author : digital55
Score : 87 points
Date : 2020-07-08 16:56 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| theklub wrote:
| When I found out about William Bligh I figured these types of
| things must certainly been possible for a long time.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bligh
| troughway wrote:
| There was a thread last week that brought up Graham Hancock.
|
| This is yet another thing that his work speculated some 25 years
| ago, and I think he did a 4-part BBC documentary that tries to
| connect parts of the world to a single, ocean-faring civilization
| due to the construction methods and whatnot used in the
| archaeological remains we have today.
|
| Of course, he's been dismissed as a crackpot so nevermind that.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| So that Norwegian guy[0] who built a raft and floated to
| Polynesia from Peru was right all along.
|
| Edit: Oh actually it looks like they're claiming the direction of
| travel went the other way. I can't see the full article, but I
| wonder how they can distinguish between the two directions.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Heyerdahl
| mjw1007 wrote:
| The full article considers both possibilities, and doesn't
| settle on one of them as more likely.
| irrational wrote:
| It looks like they aren't sure which direction the travel might
| have gone:
|
| "Our earliest estimated date of contact isad 1150 for Fatu
| Hiva, South Marquesas. This is close to the date estimated by
| radiocarbon dating for settlement of that island group13,
| raising the intriguing possibility that, upon their arrival,
| Polynesian settlers encountered a small, already established,
| Native American population. It was on the island of Fatu Hiva--
| the easternmost island in equatorial Polynesia--that Thor
| Heyerdahl hypothesized that Native American and Polynesian
| individuals might have contacted one another, based on
| islanders' legends stating that their forefathers had come from
| the east39. The Marquesas lie at the latitude of Ecuador, and
| wind- and current-based simulations indicate that they are the
| islands most likely to be reached from South America via the
| strong east-to-west currents and winds at these equatorial
| latitudes4,40,41.
|
| We cannot discount an alternative explanation: a group of
| Polynesian people voyaged to northern South America and
| returned42 together with some Native American individuals, or
| with Native American admixture, as speculated in ref. 10. We
| have dated the contact event to the time when Polynesian
| explorers were, according to some studies, making their
| longest-range voyages (the century surrounding ad 1200)--a time
| when these studies suggest that the Polynesian settlers
| discovered all remaining island groups in the Pacific, from
| Hawaii to New Zealand to Rapa Nui13,38,42. The Tuamotu
| Archipelago, which lies at the centre of the Polynesian islands
| in which we found a Native American component, is known to have
| been a Polynesian voyaging hub, and according to simulations it
| is the second most likely location to be reached when voyaging
| from South America4. Further population genetics collaborations
| with these genetically understudied island populations are
| needed to resolve these alternative hypotheses."
|
| By "single contact event" I think they mean that all the
| contacts between Polynesia and South America happened around
| the same time period and stopped thereafter for some reason. So
| the contact could have been groups going in either (or both)
| direction around that time period.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Thanks, that's interesting.
| anonAndOn wrote:
| Perhaps they lost their wayfinder before the knowledge was
| sufficiently passed on? [0]
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau_Piailug
| airstrike wrote:
| That's an incredibly interesting link. Thanks for sharing!
|
| Posts and comment threads like these are the reason why HN
| is so damn good
| [deleted]
| abrowne wrote:
| The great book _Pathway of the Birds_ , about Polynesian
| voyaging, navigation and settlement, mentions the possibility
| of travel to the South American mainline. I don't remember the
| details, but the winds and currents support travel east and
| then north along the coast, then back west further north.
| danans wrote:
| They can't distinguish at this point. I wonder if examining the
| Y DNA and mitochondrial DNA patterns of the same populations
| might shed light on the gender breakdown of the genes, which
| might be something that can be correlated with patterns of
| gender representation in migrations.
| simonmd wrote:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000292970.
| ..
| sradman wrote:
| https://sci-hub.st/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-02...
| KhoomeiK wrote:
| This is a super interesting read! In my previous conversations
| with Prof. Fehren-Schmitz he was highly skeptical of any Pre-
| Columbian contact based on his findings in [1]. He says the issue
| is pretty strongly politicized, because there's a modern
| Polynesian immigrant community in Peru that would "benefit" if
| admixture is found, while the Polynesians in Polynesia are a lot
| more skeptical due to nationalist tendencies. I might be getting
| this backward, not completely sure, but his point was basically
| that it's super hard to study this specific issue because of the
| surprising amount of politicization there is surrounding it.
|
| [1] https://www.cell.com/current-
| biology/pdfExtended/S0960-9822(...
| sosborn wrote:
| Anyone interested in Polynesian exploration would enjoy learning
| about Hokule'a: http://www.hokulea.com/voyages/our-story/
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > One explanation: Polynesians came to South America, and then
| took South Americans onto their boats to voyage back out to sea.
|
| Isn't it easier to assume that both groups reached Easter Island
| independently and reproduced on the island with each other?
| tuatoru wrote:
| AFAIK there isn't much (if any) evidence of ocean-going vessels
| in pre-Colombian South America. So probably not.
| runarberg wrote:
| Not to dismiss your rebuttal (I don't believe the technology
| for voyages cross the south Pacific existed in the Americas
| [south of Greenland] prior to European contact either), but
| it is also possible that some unlucky fishermen got caught in
| a storm off the coast, and was unable to return to land. They
| miraculously managed to survive while being carried with the
| currents to e.g. Rapa Nui where they were saved by the local
| population, nurtured back to health, and lived there, had
| children and then died.
| oxymoron wrote:
| There's a good book that came out earlier this year about the
| Polynesian expansion called _Sea People_ by Christina Thompson. I
| thoroughly enjoyed it.
| medion wrote:
| Yes, loved this book too!!
| mywacaday wrote:
| There is one thing I don't understand for these epic journeys,
| whether it's trans Pacific/Atlantic, the Bering straight etc,
| what was the motivation to risk your life? Unless there was some
| kind of local conflict why would you risk the move given there
| was relatively unlimited resources at source destinations at the
| time comparef to population. What makes the first person decide
| I'm going to sail past the horizon and everything we know and
| risk my life, it boggles my mind.
| sradman wrote:
| From the paper [1]:
|
| > Here we analyse genome-wide variation in individuals from
| islands across Polynesia for signs of Native American admixture,
| analysing 807 individuals from 17 island populations and 15
| Pacific coast Native American groups. We find conclusive evidence
| for prehistoric contact of Polynesian individuals with Native
| American individuals (around ad 1200) contemporaneous with the
| settlement of remote Oceania. Our analyses suggest strongly that
| a single contact event occurred in eastern Polynesia, before the
| settlement of Rapa Nui, between Polynesian individuals and a
| Native American group most closely related to the indigenous
| inhabitants of present-day Colombia.
|
| Rapa Nui is Easter Island. No surprises on the genetic front but
| the navigational path sailed holds intriguing possibilities.
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2487-2
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Isn't the headline wrong then? If the contact occurred in
| Polynesia, then the "epic voyage" should be from South America
| to Polynesia.
| irrational wrote:
| If you read the article you will see that they aren't sure if
| there were people going from Polynesia to South America, or
| from South America to Polynesia. Or it could have been both
| ways.
| ravenstine wrote:
| It's also possible that Polynesians visited North America. The
| Chumash people had relatively sophisticated canoes called tomols
| which have planks that are sewn together, which was a technique
| unique to them in North America, but has been seen in Polynesian
| and South American boat construction.
|
| https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fo...
|
| http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=24433
|
| > Archaeologist Terry Jones of California Polytechnic State
| University acknowledges that the Malibu Lagoon Chumash could have
| encountered Polynesian master navigators, who gave their tomol
| building skills to the Chumash.
|
| > Among North American Indians, only the Chumash, and later the
| neighboring Gabrielino, built sewn-plank canoes. In the Western
| Hemisphere, this technology is otherwise known only from the
| coast of Chile and among Pacific Islanders. The tomols were able
| to carry large loads for long distances which could allowed for
| navigation across the Pacific.
|
| I can't seem to find information on whether there's a confirmed
| Polynesian genetic connection to the Chumash. Probably unlikely,
| but I've always found it an interesting hypothesis.
| pigscantfly wrote:
| There is some additional physical evidence for this in the form
| of plants and animals with American origin appearing in the
| archaeological record in Asia well before 1492. This paper [1]
| lists around 100 cross-hemispheric species. I'm not an expert on
| this, but I found the Phaseolus species (lima bean) evidence
| particularly compelling -- they are species of clear American
| origin with multiple unambiguous archaeological examples in India
| from as far back as 1600 BC. It seems hard to explain that
| without pre-Columbian trans-Pacific contact.
|
| [1] http://www.sino-
| platonic.org/complete/spp133_precolumbian_vo...
| TheGallopedHigh wrote:
| Well seed dispersal via wind and/or currents is relatively
| common over great distances. Hence flora on far flung
| islands...
| runarberg wrote:
| The technology to voyage over the south pacific definitely did
| not exists in 1600 BCE. So trans pacific human contact is an
| unlikely explanation. More likely these particular species
| might have migrated them selfs (e.g. by floating) or with non-
| human animals (like birds) and later picked up while still
| alive by human farmers in India.
|
| There is also the possibility of more crossings over the Bering
| straight. Inuits and proto-inuit cultures have crossed the
| Bering multiple times. I find it dubious that they never
| crossed westwards. However, the technological niche which the
| cultures of the far north have mastered over the centuries have
| less values in warmer climates so I don't think much would have
| been brought from the Americas to as far south as India via the
| Bering.
|
| Anything crossing the south Pacific from around 500 AD however
| can definitely be attributed to human crossings as the
| Polynesian cultures from that time period for sure had the
| technology for such voyages.
| danans wrote:
| Without humans involved, it's not as unlikely as you might
| think. 2 examples:
|
| The Silversword plant found on Haleakala volcano in Hawaii
| descends from ancestors found in California, presumably
| transmitted by birds carrying seeds.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyroxiphium_sandwicense_su...
|
| Several separate groups of primates that inadvertently rafted
| to South America on floating storm debris:
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/09/world/prehistoric-monkeys-cro...
| ancorevard wrote:
| Highly recommend reading the book Kontiki (or watch the movie)
| for the incredible story of Thor Heyerdahl demonstrating that
| sailing on a raft from South America to Polynesia is possible and
| a theory that now seems even more likely with the current DNA
| evidence.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kon-Tiki_expedition
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