Een geweldig bericht.

Dit mooie bericht is dus precies dé inleiding die ik nodig had voor de presentatie van m'n lopende onderzoek: Contacten via de Pacific tussen de drie Amerika's en Amerika & Polynesië...

Polynesians beat Columbus to the Americas
Emma Young
4-6-2007

Prehistoric Polynesians beat Europeans to the Americas, according to a new analysis of chicken bones.

The work provides the first firm evidence that ancient Polynesians voyaged as far as South America, and also strongly suggests that they were responsible for the introduction of chickens to the continent - a question that has been hotly debated for more than 30 years.

Chilean archaeologists working at the site of El Arenal-1, on the Arauco Peninsula in south-central Chile, discovered what they thought might be the first prehistoric chicken bones unearthed in the Americas. They asked Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and colleagues to investigate.

The group carbon-dated the bones and their DNA was analysed. The 50 chicken bones from at least five individual birds date from between 1321 and 1407 - 100 years or more before the arrival of Europeans.

Two-week journey
However, this date range does coincide with dates for the colonization of the easternmost islands of Polynesia, including Pitcairn and Easter Island.

And when the El Arenal chicken DNA was compared with chicken DNA from archaeological sites in Polynesia, the researchers found an identical match with prehistoric samples from Tonga and American Samoa, and a near identical match from Easter Island.

Easter Island is in eastern Polynesia, and so is a more likely launch spot for a voyage to South America, the researchers say. The journey would have taken less than two weeks, falling within the known range of Polynesian voyages around this time, says Matisoo-Smith.

First real evidence
Other researchers have found indirect evidence that Polynesians might have made it to the Americas before Europeans. "But this is the first concrete evidence - not something based on a similarity in the styles of artefacts or a linguistic similarity," says Matisoo-Smith.

It is also the first clear evidence that the chicken was introduced before the Europeans arrived.

Genetic studies of modern South Americans have not uncovered any signs of Polynesian ancestry.

But this is not surprising, says Matisoo-Smith. Ancient Polynesians were great explorers, but tended to settle only in uninhabited islands.

It seems that if they found other people, they would usually turn around and go home, she says.

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0703993104)
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11987-polynesians-beat-columbus-to-the-americas-.html