[DieHard the Hunter]

Told ya so! I have said elsewhere that Polynesians are more likely to have visited South America (and brought Kumara and other innovations with them) rather than the other way 'round. This article seems to support that notion.

[DieHard the Hunter]

GGG ping

[WorkerbeeCitizen]

Its a well known fact that the Polynesians considered the coast of Chili a premier vacation spot ....

[Red Badger]

The LDS will be ecstatic!...........Chicken Soup in Pre-Columbian South America!..........

[randita]

Michener’s “Hawaii” was interesting for me because it explained (in Michener’s opinion- but I found it convincing) how people from the S. Pacific found their way to what is now called Hawaii and most likely further east. Michener’s “Alaska” did the same regarding the migration of people from northern Asia over the land bridge to what is now called Alaska.

This makes perfect sense to me.

[frithguild]

So are the Pictii that Hadrian encountered Egyptians or Polynesians?

[Vaquero]

so I guess they ate all the polynesian chickens ‘cause there were none here when Columbo arrived.

[piasa]

Wonder if these are related to auracana chickens- the green/blue egg-laying breed is supposed to have originated in a South American indian village but it’s said nobody knows for sure when they were developed.

[bmwcyle]

There was world trade before the great flood.

[John Will]

Now this thread is making me want some Chicken Tikka Masala.

[blam]

Polynesians Beat Columbus To The Americas

[philly-d-kidder]

Can you say Kon Tiki.. some students from St Joseph’s University went on a Reed like Boat...... I am Not sure they went to Chile or ecuador or both it Happened when I was in Grad school 40 Plus years ago..

[Grut]

"He had it backwards... Heyerdahl had proposed that people were coming out of South America and into Polynesia," she added. "We know the Polynesians were actually going to South America and probably trading chickens for (sweet potatoes) and bottle gourds."

So, who were they trading with? It's perfectly compatible with Heyerdahl's theory -- that humans spread across the Pacific from South America -- that they then traded back with 'the old country' which they knew was there. The chicken would have been just a novel critter they acquired in their travels.

[Vaquero]

Controversy on Origins

There has long been debate whether araucanas were bred from chickens brought by Europeans to South America after Columbus or rather arose from chickens brought directly over the Pacific Ocean from someplace nearer to all chickens’ presumed ancestral home in Southeast Asia. If, as sometimes claimed, auracanas predate the Europeans in South America, their presence implies pre-Columbian trans-Pacific contacts between Asia and South America. A direct Asian, non-European, but not necessarily pre-Columbian origin has received some support in a recent study of modern araucanas’ mitochondrial DNA. However, the authors of the study have stressed that to establish that araucanas are indeed a breed developed in pre-Columbian South America would require analyzing apparent chicken remains from a pre-Columbian site. (J. Gongora, et al., “Mitochondrial DNA sequences reveal a putative East Asian ancestry for old Chilean chickens,” Proceedings of the International Conference on Animal Genetics, ISAG 2006, Porto Seguro, BA, Brasil.)

Now (June 2007), researchers led by Alice Storey at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, report finding evidence that may ruffle some scholarly feathers. They found chicken bones of Polynesian origin at a site in what is now Chile. Radiocarbon dating of chicken bones at the site on the Arauco Peninsula in south central Chile indicated a range of A.D. 1321 to 1407, well before the Spanish arrival in the Americas. The researchers were able to obtain DNA from some of the bones of these early birds, and found they were identical to ancient chicken bones previously found in Tonga and Samoa. Chicken had been used in the Pacific for at least 3,000 years, spreading eastward across the region as Polynesians gradually populated the islands. The DNA from these chickens also shared some unique sequences with modern Araucana chickens from South America and some current chicken types in Hawaii and Southeast Asia, the researchers found. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070604/ap_on_sc/fowl_finding250 (Study: Chickens beat Columbus to America)

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks D the H! This one also is going into the catalog.

Polynesians Beat Columbus To The Americas
New Scientist | 6-4-2007 | Emma Young
Posted on 06/04/2007 8:58:20 PM EDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1844873/posts

First Chickens in Americas Were Brought From Polynesia (came before Columbus)
NYT | 06/05/07 | JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Posted on 06/04/2007 9:55:26 PM EDT by TigerLikesRooster
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1844910/posts

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks DieHard the Hunter.

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[Jack Hammer]

I hope they didn’t drink the water.

[From many - one.]

Sorry but my reading indicates only that Polynesian chickens ended up in South America, not how they got there.

It could have been in either direction...S.A. to Polynesia or vice versa.

[RightWhale]

600 years ago the Chinese had trading colonies up and down the west coast of N and S America. They were newcomers even then. Trade goes back at least 3000 years.