[EdwardDiego]

Kon-Tiki was interesting, but I can't handle the implication of Heyerdahl's beliefs - that the Polynesian people, supreme sailors and navigators who travelled huge distances across the open ocean while Europeans were still hugging the coast, were somehow incapable of sailing to South America and back.

We know that there has been some contact between the Americas and Polynesia, for example, the staple food of the Maori of New Zealand was the kumara, a sweet potato, which are native to the Americas.

His main objection was based, I believe, on predominating currents and winds. However, in an El Nino year, the currents shift and winds shift, and there is evidence that Polynesian migrations eastward coincided with El Nino events.

[pacala]

Australians != Polynesians. Polynesian migrations are relatively recent, starting 3000BC ~ 1000BC from Taiwan. They got to New Zealand and Easter Island only about 1200 AD, which is only 300 years before Columbus. I don't recall any evidence that they sailed all the way to the Americas between 1200AD and 1500 AD, the time of Pizzaro's conquest of the Inca Empire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesia#Origins_and_expansio...

[EdwardDiego]

Yeah, I'm well aware of that fact, on account of living in New Zealand. ;) I was directly responding to the person I, erm, directly responded to, who posted a link to Kon-Tiki.

> I don't recall any evidence that they sailed all the way to the Americas

We have obvious evidence of contact between Polynesia and South America before the 1200s, as the Maori arrived in NZ in the 13th century with a sweet potato, as I mentioned.

As for "all the way to the Americas", the distance from Rapanui/Easter Island to Chile is less than the distance from the Marquesas Islands to Hawaii (which was colonised in the 10th century), or from Tuabai / Tahiti / Cook Islands (whichever identity of 'Hawaiki' you prefer) to New Zealand.

So, we have evidence that Polynesians contacted the Americas sometime before the 13th century, and we have evidence that the Polynesians were capable of navigating distances greater than that from Easter Island to Chile in the 10th century.

I'm not aware of any evidence of any similar ocean-going prowess of South American natives, as such, Occam's Razor probably applies.

[pacala]

There are two points here:

A. Polynesians are definitely not "first South Americans", regardless at which date the conjectured sweet potato journey happened. Simply because the other South Americans we know of arrived about 15,000 years ago, way before Polynesians even left Taiwan.

B. "The distance from Rapanui/Easter Island to Chile is less than the distance from the Marquesas Islands to Hawaii", true. But since Polynesians reached Easter Island only in the 1200s, their conjectured sweet potato journey must have been either post 1200s, or much longer than the journey from Easter Island.

As of the sweet potato, who knows how it got in Maori hands? Super alternative conjecture, maybe some people during the glacial age, beneficiary of low ocean levels, brought it to the islands, and Polynesians picked it up from there?

[EdwardDiego]

> Polynesians are definitely not "first South Americans"

Who are you correcting? Certainly not me. I'm discussing which side of the Pacific drove the pre-Columbian contact. The obvious answer is the "sea-faring people who colonised islands across the vast distances of the Pacific Ocean".

> "The distance from Rapanui/Easter Island to Chile is less than the distance from the Marquesas Islands to Hawaii", true. But since Polynesians reached Easter Island only in the 1200s, their conjectured sweet potato journey must have been either post 1200s, or much longer than the journey from Easter Island.

They only settled Easter Island in the 1200s. There is ample evidence of Polynesian temporary occupation of otherwise uninhabited islands, such as Raoul Island in the Kermadecs, New Zealand's sub-Antarctic islands (Campbell, Auckland in particular), and Norfolk Island. Polynesian colonisation was largely driven by population pressure, so it's quite likely that they had discovered Easter Island long before they decided to colonise it.

> Super alternative conjecture, maybe some people during the glacial age, beneficiary of low ocean levels, brought it to the islands, and Polynesians picked it up from there?

Occam's Razor definitely applies, especially when you'd have to drop the sea level by several kilometres to have a lower ocean level make any difference to travel to Polynesia from America. Highest mountain on earth is Mauna Loa, in Hawaii, 9km from bottom to top.

[pacala]

The title of this thread is "First South Americans Were Australian Aborigines", just making sure we are all aware that this sub conversation concerns a different population at a different time. Might as well throw in some Vikings ;)

Super interesting point about evidence of Polynesian travel in New Zealand. Now if there were some of that evidence with regard to South America, we'd be all clear. But there isn't as far as I know, which raises even more questions about the sweet potato conjecture.

With regard to the glacial maximum, nobody is claiming the oceans were plains to roam around. But a sea level 100 lower may uncover some new islands and make island hopping a whole lot easier. For example, Baral Guyot is a barely submerged island https://earthref.org/SC/SMNT-257S-0866W/ along the Sala y Gomez ridge and Nazca Ridge.

Obviously there is no archeological confirmation of the conjecture I made, but that leaves both conjectures in the same uncomfortable spot.

Edit: Here's some actual research on sweet potato: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/01/22/169980441/how.... I hereby retire my glacial travel counter theory :)

This places the sweet potato travel around 1000 AD, which matches pretty well our conversation, but it's definitely not evidence for "first americans".

[EdwardDiego]

> The title of this thread is "First South Americans Were Australian Aborigines", just making sure we are all aware that this sub conversation concerns a different population at a different time. Might as well throw in some Vikings ;)

Fair enough.

> Super interesting point about evidence of Polynesian travel in New Zealand. Now if there were some of that evidence with regard to South America, we'd be all clear. But there isn't as far as I know, which raises even more questions about the sweet potato conjecture.

It would be rather easy, presumably, for the evidence of transitory usage to be destroyed or at least rendered indistinguishable by several hundred years of settlement. We have that problem in NZ - Maori legend speaks of the greate explorer Kupe who found New Zealand (Aotearoa) and returned to Hawaiki to bring people back. Nearly all Maori tribes claim to descend from an original migration canoe (waka) from Hawaiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Māori_waka

However, archaeologically, we can't really tell where they, or Kupe the Great, specifically landed first - we can date earliest settlements, but how would you distinguish evidence of temporary occupation from evidence of permanent occupation?

So yeah, I would speculate that any travel to South America from Polynesia would probably have transited via Easter Island in the first instance - especially as it used to have dense forests before the Polynesian induced deforestation - thus making it an ideal staging post for resupplying by fishing and hunting, and providing materials to repair your canoes.

> With regard to the glacial maximum, nobody is claiming the oceans were plains to roam around. But a sea level 100 lower may uncover some new islands and make island hopping a whole lot easier. For example, Baral Guyot is a barely submerged island https://earthref.org/SC/SMNT-257S-0866W/ along the Sala y Gomez ridge and Nazca Ridge.

That is a very good point, I was only thinking Bering Sea-esque 'land bridges' and didn't consider seamounts becoming islands.

> Obviously there is no archeological confirmation of the conjecture I made, but that leaves both conjectures in the same uncomfortable spot.

The chicken DNA hypothesis needs more investigation IMO. Although it still leaves the question of the 'navigators' vs the 'navigees' unspoken. Who knows, maybe I'm manifesting extreme modern privilege and ignorance by assuming that seafaring was extraordinary to the Polynesians in the 10th century. It may well have been that contact between Polynesia and South America was driven from both sides mucking about in boats and having a great time. I guess I'm being a bit defensive of the Polynesians who were summarily dismissed by Heyerdahl - I hesitate to call him racist, but he overlooked what I consider to be an extraordinary amount of persuasive evidence that the Polynesians could easily have made the trip.

> This places the sweet potato travel around 1000 AD, which matches pretty well our conversation, but it's definitely not evidence for "first americans".

It's an interesting time for it to arrive - Hawaii was settled in the 900s, so we can speculate that population pressure (or perhaps food pressure?) drove a wave of exploration and migration from Polynesia. Tying it all together :D Some of those explorers found Hawaii, and some of them found kumara and Mapuches. :D

[robbiep]

It kind of makes you wonder if there was any contact between aboriginals and Maori. I was never taught anything at school, but the distances don't seem too far...?

[EdwardDiego]

There's evidence of Polynesian visitors to Norfolk Island, so it's entirely possible they went further afield, but in terms of the Maori doing it, it's less likely - once the archaic Maori arrived in New Zealand, and saw its abundant feathered protein, ample natural resources and space, their culture lost their ocean-going expertise reasonably quickly as it adapted to the very different environment of NZ - even when travelling between New Zealand's islands, Maori tended to use waka which were designed for lakes and rivers rather than the open ocean.

Which makes the journey of the Moriori's ancestors from New Zealand to the Chatham Islands in the 1500s even more amazing.

[robbiep]

Thanks. Fascinating.

[EdwardDiego]

No worries, if you ever get interested in the history of the last populated landmass, I really recommend this book by one of our pre-eminent historians: http://www.penguin.co.nz/products/9780143567578/penguin-hist...