This is the last warning before a full-blown doxx.
New paper is out that pretty much proves contact between South America and Polynesia ~1200AD. Something that has been long postulated, including controversially by Thor Heyerdahl who went as far as build a raft (Kon-Tiki) to prove his point that it's possible to sail across the southern Pacific on a simple Polynesian raft (along with claims that Vikangz were involved in the whole thing because we wuz Vikangz, after all).
Native American gene flow into Polynesia predating Easter Island settlement
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2487-2
tl;dr the old Amerindian admixture in Polynesia is mostly around 800 years old, derives from equatorial Pacific South America (Ecuador, Colombia), which is also in agreement with introduction of south potato into Polynesia – together with loaning the word kumara into old Polynesian (also kumar in Quechua, camotli in Nahuatl)
So.
If we look at terms for sweet potato in Polynesian, we find the following reflexes:
Fijian: kumala
Gilbertese: kumara
Hawaiian:[i]'uala[/i]
Mangareva: kūmara
Maori: kūmara
Rapa Nui: kūmara
Rarotongan: kūmara
Samoan: 'umala
Tahitian: 'umara
Tongan: kumala
There is regularity in reflexes of Proto-Polynesian *k one would expect from development of the languages, not from later loaning from external source. (Variation between /l/ and /r/ is mostly free in Polynesian languages, some preferring the first and others preferring the latter.) Exception here would be Fijian which is not part of core Polynesian, where the word is loaned from one of the core Polynesian languages. This implies that the acquisition must have already taken place in the Proto-core-Polynesian stage, understood to have been spoken around Tonga and Samoa, and we know from historiographic evidence that the spread of Polynesians from there has taken place no earlier than 700AD, reaching Hawaii by 1000AD, Rapa Nui (= Easter Island) by 1200AD, and New Zealand also by 1200AD. There is evidence of some earlier inhabitation of several of those islands, however, common Polynesian culture and language derives from this wave of settlement.
This dating is quite well synchronous with what the genetic clock says. The spread of Polynesians must have taken (and was probably undertaken by the same group) that received contact from South America – the converse, however, being unlikely.
So, who were the Amerindian people that presumably established this trade contact across the Pacific?
Considering close linguistic affiliation with Incas, (aforementioned kumar in Quechua is very close to the loaned word *kumara in Polynesia), genetic clues, as well as sea currents, one should look at the region around Ecuador first and foremost.
Here we can find two realms that flourished in this time period:
- the Chimú, who were a powerful kingdom centred on Chan-Chan further south in Perú, with a developed bureaucracy, extensive irrigation systems and extensive trade (with Spondylus seashells being the associated luxury item, along with precious metals traded the other way, from mountains inland), that later collapsed and was absorbed by Inca empire
- the Manteños (also called Huancavilca by the Inca), a loose group of chiefdoms centred on Manta, corresponding to large part of Pacific coast of Ecuador, who also traded in Spondylus seashells and remained independent after Inca expansion. Coastal Manteños were mainly fishermen while inland practised agriculture similar to the Chimú. Interestingly, it is said that north of Salango, the coastal Manteños practiced facial tattooing, as do Polynesians...
Neither Chimú nor Manteño language are directly attested, meaning we can have no direct confirmation of word loan source... It is assumed that the two cultures spoke related languages of what linguists call Chimuan language family. Likely descendants of the Chimú language is Mochica, still widely spoken in northern coastal Peru around 1700 but extinct by 1920 and poorly attested, and of Manteños, Huancavilca and Manabí, very poorly attested but apparently related to somewhat better known Puruhá and Cañari spoken further inland, of which Cañari might still be surviving into 21st century in remote mountain communities.
We can conclude that Manteños are perhaps the most likely source of transpacific contact.
Thor Heyerdahl's Kon TIki was a balsa raft, like the one Manteños traditionally used. However, he picked a starting point way further south in Callao, and even had trouble getting far enough into open sea for more favourable winds and currents at the start. His group supposedly found pre-Columbian artifacts on Galápagos islands, including an Inca flute, but no graves, indicating that fishermen probably ventured far out into the ocean – similar to how Portuguese already fished far into the Atlantic and discovered Azores and Madeira long before planned settlement of the islands. However, the main mistake Thor Heyerdahl made was to naively assume that since Inca state was an empire, it must have been them who sailed west into Polynesia, and scholars who knew Inca didn't bother with seafaring just disregarded his ideas completely, instead of noticing it was more likely some other group, in shadow of the empires further inland in the Andes...
Descendants of Manteños preserved the traditions related to traditional fishing enough that Ecuador could get the locals to larp them back to life for an annual festival.
And what does the obtained genetic evidence imply for Thor Heyerdahl's fanciful historiography, of original Hanau epe inhabitants of Rapa Nui, whom Heyerdahl assumed were settlers from South America, that were eventually wiped out by Hanau momoko? Radiocarbon dating gives a late date for first settlement of Rapa Nui, around 1200AD. This is around the same time as introduction of South American genetics into Polynesia, but the earliest found introductions occurred elsewhere, further north, in the Marquesas. However, there is also a late introduction dated to around 1380AD specific to Rapa Nui. While it would be possible that Manteños or some other seafaring South American culture already lived on Rapa Nui, and this event would mean a hybridisation between Polynesians and the original settlers, it is remarkable that there would be that little hybridisation going on. Therefore, it is much more likely that this represents introduction of genetic material from a sailor who stopped on the island (similar to how a study managed to find genetic evidence of a hidden Eastern European male ancestor on Tristan da Cunha, who left his haplogroup but not his surname on an island, in a time when Russian ships were recorded to be visiting). Similarly, Heyerdahl tried to draw parallels between the Moai statues of Rapa Nui and Carajía sarcophagi in Peru – belonging to the Chachapoyan culture. Chachapoyan location on the wrong side of the Andes mostly discounts the possibility that there was a direct link between the two.
I'll be submitting the text of this threda to kohlzine and you can't stop me
eventually I've finished off the text with a short mention of previous studies which also align with this view:
Perhaps it should be noted that there have also been earlier studies giving evidence to transpacific contact in other ways. 7 years ago an attempt was made to do genetic analysis of Polynesian sweet potato, which showed variation consistent with introduction by 1100ᴀᴅ[2] (sweet potato in SE Asia, however, seems to be derived from a separate introduction from Mexico to Philippines by the Spanish, transmitting the Nahuatl word camotli, hispanicised as camote) and 13 years ago a study was published[3] which showed evidence of chicken remains in El Arenal, Chile, dating to 1321-1407ᴀᴅ and showing a Polynesian genetic signature. All those are chronologically consistent with each other.
Nonetheless, regardless of mistakes Thor Heyerdahl made, and his far-fetched assumptions, he has correctly intuited that there was such transpacific contact, and his Kon-Tiki expedition (along with subsequent expeditions, done by both him and other explorers, both in the South Pacific and in other regions) has successfully demonstrated that even with very primitive seafaring technology, an experienced navigator would be capable of sailing across oceans.
[2] Caroline Roullier, Laure Benoit, Doyle B. McKey, and Vincent Lebot. Historical collections reveal patterns of diffusion of sweet potato in Oceania obscured by modern plant movements and recombination. PNAS 110 (6), 2205–2210 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1211049110
[3] Alice A. Storey, José Miguel Ramírez, Daniel Quiroz et al. Radiocarbon and DNA evidence for a pre-Columbian introduction of Polynesian chickens to Chile. PNAS 104 (25), 10335–10339 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0703993104
it's now ready for publication ins kohlzine's
thanks for reading and for feedback