Polynesian seafarers discovered America long before Europeans, says DNA study

[KamaAina]

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/polynesian-seafarers-discovered-america-long-before

Clues about the migration patterns of the early Polynesians have been revealed thanks to a new DNA analysis performed on a prolific Polynesian crop: the sweet potato, according to Nature. The origin of the sweet potato in Polynesia has long been a mystery, since the crop was first domesticated in the Andes of South America about 8,000 years ago, and it couldn't have spread to other parts of the world until contact was made. In other words, if Europeans were indeed the first to make contact with the Americas between 500 and 1,000 years ago, then the sweet potato shouldn't be found anywhere else in the world until then.

The extensive DNA study looked at genetic samples taken from modern sweet potatoes from around the world and historical specimens kept in herbarium collections. Remarkably, the herbarium specimens included plants collected during Capt. James Cook’s 1769 visits to New Zealand and the Society Islands. The findings confirmed that sweet potatoes in Polynesia were part of a distinct lineage that were already present in the area when European voyagers introduced different lines elsewhere. In other words, sweet potatoes made it out of America before European contact.

The question remains: How else could Polynesians have gotten their hands on sweet potatoes prior to European contact, if not by traveling to America themselves? The possibility that sweet potato seeds could have inadvertently floated from the Americas to Polynesia on land rafts is believed to be highly unlikely.

Researchers believe that Polynesian seafarers must have discovered the Americas first, long before Europeans did. The new DNA evidence, taken together with archaeological and linguistic evidence regarding the timeline of Polynesian expansion, suggests that an original contact date between 500 CE and 700 CE between Polynesia and America seems likely. That means that Polynesians would have arrived in South America even before the Norse had landed in Newfoundland.

[Agnosticsherbet]

1. Shades of Kon-Tiki.

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. Perhaps they migrate.

"The swallow may fly south with the sun or the house martin or the plover may seek warmer climes in winter, yet these are not strangers to our land?"

Not migratory? Fine. But Polynesians didn't have a flag. No flag, no "discovery".

[AngryAmish]

10. Was the swallow laden or unladen?

[msongs]

3. thor heyerdahl sailed from SA to Polynesia on a raft, proving it could be done and likely was nt

[hunter]

4. This is an interesting one.

There are other hints of such contact, going both ways; sudden changes in technology, the presence of chickens and cotton, both from southeast Asia, in the Americas before Columbus got here, etc.

[KamaAina]

5. Consider the totem pole.

It looks to me like a bunch of Hawaiian ki'i (tiki) stacked on top of one another.





Hawaiians are familiar with the concept of totem animals, called 'aumakua.

[AngryAmish]

11. I seem to recall some Siberian native peiple did something similar to totem poles.

Came up empty with quick google search. Am I thinking of Japan?

[iandhr]

6. Interesting stuff.

Don't understand the why Columbus gets all the credit he wasn't even the first European to reach the new world. Viking explorers reached the cost of Newfoundland about 400 before Columbus. (If I know my history correctly)

[KamaAina]

7. The Yale Precision Marching Band has not been invited to New Haven's Columbus Day parade

for many years. The organizers still hold a grudge from decades ago, when they marched down Chapel Street with tape on the bass drum that read "Leif Erikson Was First"!

[Johonny]

13. Because something fundamentally happened after Columbus voyage that did not happen prior

The post Columbus world is fundamentally different than anything the world had seen before it. The first discover is often not the person that gets remembered so most people don't get hooked up on trivial things of that nature.

[csziggy]

23. What happened was genocide

Aside from the deaths from disease - in some cases estimated at 90% of the population - there was wide spread enslavement, torture, rape and pillaging.

Earlier European contacts may have introduced disease but were not followed up with wholesale destruction of cultures and peoples.

[Johonny]

24. More than that

The wholesale transplant of species from different continents at an accelerate rate that had never occurred before. Not just diseases, but plants, animals, etc... Europe, Africa, Americas, Asia, India, and Australia would transform rapidly in just 200 years.

[yuiyoshida]

8. I have read some where

That those same DNA strands from Polynesia may be in many Japanese, (Besides, Chinese and Korean).

Origin of Jōmon and Yayoi
Glacier cover in Japan at the height of the last glaciation about 20,000 years ago

Currently, the most well-regarded theory is that present-day Japanese are descendants of both the indigenous Jōmon people and the immigrant Yayoi people. The origins of the Jōmon and Yayoi people have often been a subject of dispute, and a recent Japanese publisher[41] has divided the potential routes of the people living on the Japanese archipelago as follows:

Aboriginals that have been living in Japan for more than 10,000 years. (Without geographic distinction, which means, the group of people living in islands from Hokkaido to Okinawa may all be considered to be Aboriginals in this case.)
Immigrants from the northern route including the people from the Korean Peninsula, Mainland China, Sakhalin Island, Mongolia, and Siberia.
Immigrants from the southern route including the people from the Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia, and in some context, India.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_people

[Hekate]

9. Polynesians were the greatest seafarers the world has ever known.

Thanks for this interesting bit.

[AngryAmish]

12. The United States Navy would like a word with you.

Spending 6 months underwater while circumnavigating the globe is pretty impressive. Polynesians did not have submarines and did not split the atom. Then again, the Russian had a hot tub in their boomers.

[Johnyawl]

15. It's pretty easy to be a seafarer when you have satellites to tell you where you are...

...the Polynesians had neither compass, sextant, chronometer or even a stationary pole star to guide them, yet they found their way from Samoa to Tahiti, Easter Island, New Zealand and Hawaii, and then retraced their steps home. Take a good look at a globe and try to understand the difficulty of traveling those distances and finding some rather tiny specks of islands using nothing but their knowledge of sea currents, wind and star charts made of shells.

The USN is a technological marvel, but as sailors they are nothing compared to the sailors during the age of exploration. European sailors mapped the world during the age of exploration using compass and sextant and hand drawing the charts. The modern USN sailor wouldn't be able to find his way out of Puget Sound using the tools and vessels the polynesians used to explore and settle the vast pacific.

[AngryAmish]

20. As an institution, the United States Navy has institutionalized

Knowledge and science. They go out, write incredibly detailed logs, cane back and spread the knowledge . Did the Polynesians?

Again , did the Polynesians incorporate all technology until then invented by mankind? Did they invent a technology even close to the mapping technology of The USN?

Did the Polynesians send gigantic explosive tubes into outer space with clocks and radios on top (gps)?

In a few thousand years we may or may not have human civilization. If there is and they say, on a message board, drawing an artificial line at 2015, who were the greatest seafarers up to that point? Polynesians or the USN?

The question reminds me of all questions about who was the most advanced in 1100, christendom or islam. It was China, and for the rest of human history it will be China.

Not even close.

[Hekate]

16. Open sea navigation in outrigger canoes aiming, not for contintinental masses, but islands...

... across unimaginable distances. They did this in the centuries when Europeans were still hugging coastlines, fearful they would sail off the edge of the Earth.

Polynesians did not have the mineral resources of continental peoples, but they had brains and an intimate understanding of the patterns of clouds, winds, waves, stars, and the sun. They made charts with twigs, twine, and seashells.

Wholly admirable.

That they have been surpassed by modern people with resources and technologies known only to gods in previous centuries takes nothing away from what they accomplished in their time and compared with other humans of the same time.

Aloha no.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

19. I've heard they could tell an island was over the horizon by the different type of waves they felt

when they bent over and hung out of their canoes with their backs in the water.

[AngryAmish]

21. Just because europe was backward all mankind was not.

China.

[Hekate]

22. China assayed some sea travel, it is true, but for the most part the Middle Kingdom faced toward...

...the vast interior of its continent. They did indeed create quite a civilization, one that included the first Civil Service exams and the binding of female feet. One thing for certain: the Chinese were very sure of who they were. But the Pacific Ocean did not sustain their interest in the same way other things did.

I can tell you want to double down on your diminishment of island peoples -- even as the South Pacific atolls drown in the 21st century and the world fails to notice. We are taught about the Greek and Roman sailors of the Mediterranean (Western Civilization being their heirs, so we imagine), and the much later voyages of the British, Spanish, and Portuguese as they circumnavigated the globe -- but the accomplishments of the ancient Polynesians still stand as a wonder of open-sea voyaging across the vastest ocean on the planet.

Imua.

[scarletwoman]

14. Not really surprising at all. Some of the coastal Pacific NW tribes have traditional stories passed

down for centuries about meeting with the Polynesian voyagers. If I remember correctly, the New Zealand Maori also have their own stories about voyages to this continent.

[Luminous Animal]

17. "The Daughters of Copper Woman" retell ancient stories about tribal traveling

back and fourth between Hawaii and Vancouver Island.

[scarletwoman]

18. Thank you. I had forgotten about that book, which I read many years ago.

I was thinking about a gathering I had been invited to in an Alaskan village, nearly 30 years ago, which included honored visitors from both the Tlingits and the Maori, and how they embraced and called each other long-lost cousins and recounted their respective stories of their peoples meeting in the long ago times.