![]() ![]() In particular, the team zeroed in on Native American sequences found in Polynesian genomes. The team also charted the wind and ocean currents to see how ancient people may have traveled across the Pacific. For example, the light blue represents Polynesian DNA while the hot pink represents European DNA sequences. The below bar shows what percentages of DNA from different populations were found in each individual. For instance, the yellow dots signify Southern Native Americans. From there, these ancient people moved on, reaching the North Marquesas by 1200, Palliser and Mangareva by 1230 and finally Rapa Nui by 1380.Įach group of colored dots shows where DNA was sampled for this project. Rather, the researchers found evidence that by 1150 Polynesian-Native Americans had reached the South Marquesas, more than 2,200 miles (3,500 km) from Rapa Nui. However, even though Rapa Nui is the closest Polynesian island to South America, it was not the first place to host people with Polynesian-Native American ancestry, the researchers found. 1200) contemporaneous with the settlement of remote Oceania" (a region that includes Polynesia), the researchers wrote in the study. Their results showed "conclusive evidence for prehistoric contact of Polynesian individuals with Native American individuals (around A.D. ![]() In the new study - the largest and the first genome-wide analysis to tackle the Polynesian-Native American mystery - researchers looked at 807 Indigenous individuals from 17 populations spanning the Pacific Islands (which included Polynesian islands and Vanuatu, in Melanesia) and 15 Native American groups from the Pacific Coast of South America. However, these studies tended to have small sample sizes and to look only at certain parts of the genome. However, several genetic studies have produced conflicting conclusions about whether Native Americans had contact with Polynesians prior to the arrival of Europeans on an island in east Polynesia called Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, in 1722. In 1947, the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl even showed the journey was possible with the Kon-Tiki expedition, when he boated on a wooden raft more than 4,300 miles (7,000 kilometers) over 101 days from Peru to Polynesia. ![]()
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