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

Indigenous Americans and Polynesians crossed thousands of miles of open ocean and made contact with each other as early as 1200 A.D., centuries before the arrival of Europeans, a new study has found.

Archeologists have long believed the two regions made early contact, pointing to the early, widespread cultivation of a South American plant in Polynesia, a collection of more than 1,000 islands scattered over the Pacific Ocean.

The results of a genomic study now confirmed they did.

According to a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers found "conclusive evidence" for the early encounter between the two groups, after analyzing the DNA of more than 800 individuals from 17 Polynesian islands and 15 indigenous American groups on the Pacific coast.
The researchers were looking for signs that prehistoric Polynesians and Indigenous Americans had children together, which would leave a clear genetic signature in their offspring -- called an admixture.

What they found was that people from several eastern Polynesian islands, including Rapa Nui -- also known as Easter Island -- have genetic traces in their DNA linked to indigenous South Americans. The genetic signatures showed a strong connection to the Zenu, an indigenous group from Colombia.

Researchers then traced the timing of their encounter by analyzing the length of the indigenous American genomic segments, and decided the initial admixture took place in the eastern islands of Polynesia around 1150-1230 A.D.

But in Rapa Nui, that admixture was dated much later to around 1380 A.D., despite the island being the closest to South America.

"Our analyses suggest strongly that a single contact event occurred in eastern Polynesia, before the settlement of Rapa Nui, between Polynesian individuals and a Native American group most closely related to the indigenous inhabitants of present-day Colombia," the study said.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/09/asia/polynesia-america-intl-hnk-scli-scn/index.html

🗿 There it is—Thor Heyerdahl is vindicated. A good reminder to keep thinking outside the box. There is an astonishing theory that, after the 3rd Punic War, Carthaginians made their way to South America and founded the Chachapoyas culture. Looking forward to additional evidence there. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/carthages-lost-war