LA Times: Chicken bones say Polynesians beat Europeans to New World
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.