Atlantis Online
March 29, 2024, 07:16:16 am
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Ancient Crash, Epic Wave
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/14/healthscience/web.1114meteor.php?page=1

 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

Diffusion - Cultural similarities between Old and New Worlds - Atlantis ?

Pages: 1 ... 5 6 7 8 9 10 [11] 12   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: Diffusion - Cultural similarities between Old and New Worlds - Atlantis ?  (Read 8960 times)
0 Members and 118 Guests are viewing this topic.
Bianca
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 41646



« Reply #150 on: October 11, 2008, 09:28:48 pm »








                               Polynesians beat Spaniards to South America, study shows


  Analysis of chicken bones found in Chile shows Polynesians reached thecontinent no later than 1407.






By Thomas H. Maugh II
Times Staff Writer

June 5, 2007

After decades of contention, New Zealand researchers have provided the
first direct evidence that Polynesians sailed across thousands of miles of
the Pacific Ocean to reach South America long before the arrival of the
Spanish around AD 1500.




Their proof? Chicken bones.


Using genetic analysis and radiocarbon dating of chicken bones found in
Chile, the researchers showed that the fowl originated in Polynesia, not
Europe as was previously believed, the researchers said Monday.

"The Polynesian contact probably didn't change the course of prehistory,
but I think maybe it makes us recognize the ethnocentrism in our
long-standing views of the prehistory of the New World," said archeologist
Terry L. Jones of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, who was not involved in the
research.

"The basic premise has always been that there was only one civilization
capable of crossing the ocean and discovering the New World," he said. The
new findings, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, indicate that "the prehistory of the New World was probably a
little bit more complicated than we thought in the past."

The possibility of contact between Polynesia and the New World has been a
subject of contention since Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl's famous 1947
voyage aboard his crude raft Kon-Tiki.

Heyerdahl believed that an ancient, fair-haired race originating high in
the Andes around Lake Titicaca sailed to the Pacific islands.

He attempted to prove his ideas by setting off on a trip from the west
coast of South America on a raft based on Inca designs.

The 4,300-mile trip from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands took 101 days, but
subsequent trips were much faster once researchers learned how to steer the
boats.

Despite Heyerdahl's demonstration, the idea that Polynesians could have
routinely — or even occasionally — navigated across the Pacific was
considered farfetched, primarily because of the lack of proof.

"Scientists have not been willing to fully accept the idea" of prehistoric
contact between Polynesia and South America, Jones said, "but it is hard to
understand why."

The most convincing previous evidence of cultural contact was the presence
of sweet potatoes — a native American plant — at archeological sites
throughout Polynesia.

Most notably, sweet potatoes dating from about AD 1000 have been found on
the Cook Islands. Equally important, Jones noted, the name of the potato
used throughout Polynesia is the same name given it by South Americans.

Heyerdahl's trip and the discovery of the sweet potatoes showed South
Americans could have taken the sweet potato to the islands but did not
demonstrate that the islanders could have come to South America.

The new findings show that definitively, said the senior author of the new
report, archeologist Elizabeth A. Matisoo-Smith of the University of
Auckland.

The chicken bones were recovered from a site called El Arenal-1 in
south-central Chile, about a mile and a half inland on the southern side of
the Arauco Peninsula. Thermoluminescent dating of ceramics from the site
indicates it was occupied from AD 700 to 1390.

Analysis of the bones was conducted by graduate student Alice A. Story in
Matisoo-Smith's lab.

Matisoo-Smith said she didn't expect much from the study because finding
evidence of Polynesian contact would be like "finding a needle in a
haystack."

But radiocarbon dating showed the bones were about 622 years old. Even with
potential errors, they dated from AD 1321 to 1407 — before Spaniards first
trod the New World.

Genetic analysis of the chickens showed that they were identical to genetic
sequences of chicken from that same time period in American Samoa and
Tonga, both more than 5,000 miles from Chile.

The sequences were very similar to those of chickens from Hawaii, also
about 5,000 miles distant, and Easter Island, about 2,500 miles away.

"I was pretty excited when the dates came back as clearly pre-European,"
Matisoo-Smith said. "There were no questions. The Europeans didn't pick
them up in Polynesia and bring them back" to South America, she said.

Sailing into the wind from the islands to South America "requires
significant sailing technology and navigational skills," she said. "But if
you look at the winds, leaving from Easter Island, you would actually land
[in South America] around the area where El Arenal-1 is located. You could
then make the return voyage further north."

Jones of Cal Poly is particularly pleased because the find supports his
theory that Polynesians also landed in the Northern Hemisphere. He and
linguist Kathryn A. Klar of UC Berkeley have argued that the Chumash
Indians of Southern California learned to build their sewn-plank canoes
from the Polynesians, in part because the names of the ships are very
similar in the two unrelated languages.

Composite bone fishhooks used by the Indians also closely resembled those
used in Polynesia.

If we know they landed in Chile, he said, "then why is it so difficult to
imagine they couldn't have made it to Southern California from Hawaii?"



thomas.maugh@..



http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-chickens5jun05%2C1%2C6459529.story
« Last Edit: December 29, 2008, 10:31:38 am by Bianca » Report Spam   Logged

Your mind understands what you have been taught; your heart what is true.
Pages: 1 ... 5 6 7 8 9 10 [11] 12   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy