Did Polynesians Reach America? DNA evidence

The genetic evidence for one of the greatest voyages in history.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
4:06 Spanish Potatoes?
5:32 Thor and Lapita
10:30 Oral History Meets Genetics
14:34 Rapa Nui DNA
21:00 The New Study
29:18 When
35:14 Where
38:14 Caveat
41:34 Tei Tetua

Sources:

Disclaimer: Use my videos as a rough guide to a topic. I am not an expert, I may get things wrong. This is why I always post my sources so you can critique my work and verify things for yourselves. Of course I aim to be as accurate as possible which is why you will only find reputable sources in my videos. Secondly, information is always subject to changes as new information is uncovered by archaeologists.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[StefanMilo]

What's extremely important to note here, is that I appreciate you watching.

[paiwanhan]

Taiwanese here. Austronesian speaking Taiwanese cultures were famous for several thing in prehistory. 1. Pottery, which they would decorate by pressing shell or rope to make indentations. 2. Making clothes from the bark of paper mulberry trees. 3. Tattooing both face and body. 4. Removing front teeth, as well as blacken teeth for beauty. 5. Betel nut is culturally important because it's a symbol of love. 6. Manufacturing jade accessories including long jade tubes and jade pendants, and traded them to the Philippine islands and Vietnam. 7. Musical instruments such as Austronesian styled Jew harp and nose flute. 8. Wearing really long tubes, such as jade tubes mentioned above, as earrings, through pretty big holes in the ear lobes.

Many of these traditions made it all the way to Polynesia, especially the paper mulberry trees, which can be traced back to Taiwan using DNA.

[garygreen]

I am a Maori New Zealander, thank you for this upload about pre-European Polynesian and Indigenous people of the Americas. This basically gels with our own oral histories, nice to see scientific research catching up with Polynesian traditional knowledge

[SenorTucano]

I visited RapaNui last year and heard some of them talking in their language. Incredibly I could understand them and they were astonished when I greeted them in New Zealand Māori.

[hernawanrahmadi]

How ironic that Thor Heyerdahl met 'tei tetua' and informed that their ancestors are from The East. While I am from Java and living in Sumatra, half a globe away west of Fatu Hifa, I linguistically understood that 'tei tetua' literally means ancestor or elderly.

[MNVelo]

This is one of my favorite subjects.

The discovery of the pacific islands by Polynesian navigators is one of mankind’s most awe inspiring achievements and their navigation techniques are amongst the greatest pre-industrial technologies.

[modusartsgroup]

What a great channel. Really refreshing. No "ancient aliens" artifices and, bonus, a sandbagged frontline against them. Many thanks, Stefan Milo! Really good.

[darrensmith]

This is one of my favourite YouTube channels. This is how science is supposed to be presented. Lays out complex hypotheses in an easy to follow way. I love the fact that you don't pretend to know everything and present all competing theories and evidence to support them. Keep up the good work

[MrThrashmetal]

Hey man, I’m from New Zealand. Polynesian Māori. I appreciate the effort you put into this, you pretty much nailed it 👍🏾. In our oral history our tribes (iwi) discovered different parts of New Zealand to settle in as far back as the 1200s.

[PhotoTrekr]

Polynesians might well have reached South America in the past. It's amazing how they navigated the Pacific ocean.

[stankythecat]

I have flown back and forth across the pacific MANY times . It’s insane how vast it is. You can fly for 10 hours and not see. Land .

[pcatful]

Respect for the Polynesian Voyaging Society and Native Hawaiian activists for revitalizing the Polynesian culture, along with other Pacific Islanders, and helping people understand the capabilities and cultural significance of all the Polynesian expansion in the Pacific. This legacy is largely why you see the pictures of the beautiful voyaging canoes being built today (from all over Polynesia and beyond) and the other indigenous cultural examples in the this video. I would think the genetics of the kumara should tell us more.

[michaelwale]

Stefan has single handily opened up my interest in DNA studies and archaeology.

[nicholassmith]

In Hawai’i, sweet potato is called uala. When I was in Peru for WIPCE in 2011, I got to listen to a super interesting conversation between a Tahitian elder, Quechua man, and another from Lebanon if I remember correctly. The Tahitian and Quechua men made the connection that their respective names for sweet potato were too similar to discount. The Tahitian man talked about a story they have from antiquity, about a prince visiting Tahiti from the east, bringing with him the knowledge to improve the Tahitian stone working and building techniques, and the sweet potato. The Quechua man likewise, talked about their cultural knowledge of the sons of a particular Inca king, one of whom went on an adventure to the west.

The man from Lebanon (it was either Lebanon or somewhere close) chimed in and said that strangely enough, the word they were using for sweet potato was his word for prince.

In Hawai’i, we all hear stories growing up about a race of smaller people who were expert builders called menehune, or in some cases Mu, the stone people. I have been thinking it would be so cool if menehune were inca.

[tydli]

As a Colombian, it's fun to explore our genetics because they are all over the place. I somehow felt that there could be a relationship between Polynesia and the Americas, but it thought it was from the Pacific to the land, not the other way around. It's fascinating!

[whatdamath]

The world's longest trip to get a bag of patata chips

[youtube_moderator]

Māori here. We knew that post migration, there was still back and forth trade in obsidian with the islands and that there are stories of migration ancestors returning to the islands from which they came - after - landing and settling in Aotearoa (NZ). We have origin myths about a mythical ancestral homeland called Hawaiki, but no-one knows if it refers to a specific location. In 1350 CE a 'great fleet' of seven canoes – Aotea, Kurahaupō, Mataatua, Tainui, Tokomaru, Te Arawa and Tākitimu – all departed from the Tahitian region at the same time, bringing the people now known as Māori to Aotearoa.

[Demandroid]

I’m wondering if anyone had examined the genetics of the sweet potatoes to see when/where they ended up in Polynesia?

[andywhelan]

Videos like this are why Stefan is one of the best science communicators in the world. Fantastic work.

[yuraqmisi]

I personally think that the Polynesians came to the coast of Ecuador, not Colombia. This is because there seem to be certain similarities between their cultures:
- On the coast of Ecuador, the Manteño-Huancavilca culture developed, a culture with an affinity for the sea.
- The people of the Manteño-Huancavilca culture were great merchants who used to travel by sea in large rafts to Central America to exchange their products.
- The currency of exchange of these transactions was the spondylus shell. To obtain them they had to dive great depths using large stones as weights.
- Their rafts were characterized by using sails, something unusual in the American continent before the arrival of the Europeans.
- These sails were triangular in shape, not square like the Spanish ones.
- Their main crop was probably sweet potato, due to the forested environment in which they lived. Potatoes, on the other hand, were a more common crop in the Andean highlands.

Tal vez existió cierta influencia entre ambas culturas. Nada es seguro, pero si realmente existe una respuesta creo que se encuentra en la costa de Ecuador.