Thread by @Afrosmilus

Polynesia and America - a thread.

(1) Of all the daring deeds in the history of Man, few can rival the great voyages of the Polynesians. From their origins in the west, they spread north, south, and east, ever east. Yet what of the furthest east? Were the Americas a sea too far?

(2) The origin of the Polynesians is a mystery that has long perplexed anthropologists. From vagrant Indo-Aryans to castaway Amerindians, it is the latter idea, through the exploits of Thor Heyerdahl, that has captivated the world. Genetics, however, are less kind than the public

(3) Today, we know beyond doubt that the Polynesians came, not from the Americas, but from Asia - almost certainly what is now Taiwan, and before that, the south Chinese coast.
Yet just because the Polynesians did not come *from* America, does not mean they did not go *to* it.

(4) There are, in fact, numerous strands of evidence - individually enticing, collectively overpowering - that point to a period of contact, how long we cannot say, between the voyagers of the Pacific and the folk of the South-American seaboard.

(5) We may begin by noting smaller features, signs of exchange: One is the presence in Hawai'i shortly after first contact of goatweed, Ageratum conyzoides - a weed native to South America. Inversely, turmeric - an Asian plant, was used by the Amahuaca and Witoto tribes.

(6) It has been claimed, based on carbon-dating, that bones of Araucana chickens predate Columbian contact.
If true, this poses an obvious issue, chickens being an Old World species deriving from Indonesia. This particular data-point, however, has been challenged by other dating

(7) Far more difficult to contest is the presence and importance among various Polynesian peoples of the sweet potato - an American plant which, crucially, does not float. Unlike plants such as coconuts, which can disperse across oceans, sweet potatoes must be shipped.

(8) Genetic analyses indicate 2 separate introductions of sweet potatoes to Polynesia - one following European contact, and one *preceding* it.
Even more definitively, the Polynesian word for the plant is kumara - the word in Quecha and Aymara is k'umar/k'umara.

(9) Genetic studies have not only been done on vegetables. Several studies have found links between Polynesians and Amerindians. Even tribes as isolated as the now-extinct Botocudo people of the interior Amazon possessed a haplogroup unique to Austronesians.

(10) Only last year, Ioannidis et al. (2020) found that peoples in the Gambiers, Marquesas and Pallisers, as well as Rapanui, showed clear signs of Amerindian admixture, pointing to a single contact-event prior to the settlement of Easter Island.

(11) Though direct cultural evidence is rarer, it is not absent. The word for "stone axe" in Rapanui is "toki". The word in Mapuche is "toqui", in the extinct Yurumanguí "totoki". There exist strong similarities, down to the ornamentation, between Mapuche and Rapanui stone clubs.

(12) The last point I will mention here is that of boats. Heyerdahl crossed in a square-sailed raft, believing this to be representative of the native Peruvian "balsa" crafts. It most likely was not. Strong evidence indicates the Peruvians at contact had oceanic-style spritsails

(13) Though much debate has raged on this point, largely due to the utter lack of any surviving balsa-crafts, it seems clear that the original sails were in fact of a characteristic, triangular oceanic-style, whose presence pre-dated European contact.

(14) Despite its roaring success in the eyes of the public, the ultimate legacy of the Kon-Tiki expedition was largely to sour anthropology against any talk of trans-Pacific contact. However, we must not let that cloud today's research. Heyerdahl was wrong on much, but not all.