Indigenous Americans had contact with Polynesians 800 years ago, DNA study confirms

[wnylib]

1. I believed this was the case for many years.

Now science confirms evidence that people could not accept before.

In a strange coincidence, the day before this information was publicly released, I was reading a chapter of an old book (published 1977) about possible Pacific crossings. It mentioned Heyerdahl's raft, the sweet potato appearance in Polynesia with a nearly identical name in both places, the exceptional sailing skill of the Polynesians, and Asian chickens in South America.

Then it concluded that the notion of contact between Polynesians and South American Native people was unfounded. It gave very strained and stretched "reasons" why the idea was far fetched. I was so anmoyed at reading it that I wrote up a rebuttal essay which will go nowhere and never leave my laptop hard drive. But it was satisfying to get it out of my system.

Then yesterday evening it was even more satisfying to hear the DNA results reported on BBC.

This also means that the Vikings in the east and the Polynesians in the west both beat Columbus as early foreign arrivals to the Americas by a few centuries. I think the main reason why the evidence of Polynesian contact was discounted before had less to do with an interest in scientific or historical accuracy, and more to do with an assumption that "primitive" people could not have accomplished such a feat before Magellan's crew did.