Did Pacific Islanders reach South America before Columbus?

A genetic psychoanalysis of an indigenous Brazilian federation of tribes called the Botocudos has revealed hint of Polynesian DNA . But while the finding adds some credenza to the suggestion that Pacific Islanders may have progress to South America hundreds or even thousands of years ago , a simpler explanation is more probable the case .

Anthropologists pretty much agree that modern humans colonise North and South America 15,000 to 20,000 year ago during the Late Pleistocene . These settlers most likely make it from northeast Asia , traveling across the Beringia terra firma bridgework .

But argument still exists as to the timing and localisation of subsequent migration waves . Many of these disagreement are drive by variations in genetic science and the strong-arm characteristic of Paleoamerican peoples .

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This raw find threatens to complicate matters even further .

According to Sergio D. J. Pena , a molecular geneticist at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil , Polynesian mitochondrial DNA sequence have been identified in the cadaver of Brazilian Botocudo Amerindians . Pena link up these haplogroups to people originating from Polynesia , Easter Island and other Pacific island archipelago . And to make certain the data was reliable and not contaminated , he had the identification confirm independently in Brazil and Denmark .

The genetic data was excerpt from the teeth of 14 Botocudo skull which were being go on in a museum assemblage in Rio .

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The Botocudos were nomadic huntsman - gatherer who once roll inland areas of southeasterly Brazil . At the close of the 19th 100 they numbered between 13,000 and 14,000 individuals . Today there are only about 350 continue ( called the Krenak hoi polloi ) .

Two theories have emerged to explicate the manifest presence of Polynesian mtDNA .

publish in Nature , Sid Perkinsexplains :

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The researchers say that it is potential — but unlikely — that the DNA could have come from Polynesians who voyaged from remote islands to the western coast of South America . Those dealer or their offspring would then have made their way of life to southeastern Brazil and settled or interbred with natives . But that , too , is improbable , says Pena , because the Andes are a formidable barrier that west coast residents typically did not climb or grumpy . Although researchers have suggested that ancestor of some metal money of Gallus gallus made their way to Chile through patronage with pre - Columbian seafarers from Polynesia2 , a subsequent discipline dig holes in that conclusion .

The researchers also entertain scenario in which the haplogroup arrived in South America via the slave trade . Around 2,000 Polynesians were bring to Peru in the 1860s , and some could have cease up in Brazil , although the investigator say that they are not cognisant of any evidence that this take place . And between 1817 and 1843 , roughly 120,000 slaves were shipped from Madagascar to Brazil — and some of them were in all probability transported to areas where the Botocudo also lived . Although the researchers conceive the latter scenario to be the most probable , Pena says : “ We currently do n’t have enough grounds to definitively reject any of these scenarios . ”

It ’s an intriguing find . The challenge now will be to prove one of the possibility correct — and that the haplogroups did in fact originate from Polynesian peoples ( which is not a given ) .

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