Question: Other than the Sweet Potato, are there other possible connections between the Pacific islands and the New World?

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Question: Other than the Sweet Potato, are there other possible connections between the Pacific islands and the New World?

On the island of Rapa Nui, there are stone walls which were built and without the aid of mortar, with stones fit so precisely together than there are no visible gaps

The island of Rapa Nui (also known as Easter Island), there are stone walls which were built and without the aid of mortar. The stones fit so precisely together than there are no visible gaps. The workmanship of these stone walls very closely resembles that of similar walls found in Peru.[1] There is now DNA evidence that at least some of the ancestry of Easter Islanders definitely came from South America.[2] Perhaps they brought some of their technological know-how with them, which may explain the similarity in the walls. Another connection between Polynesia and South America came to light in 2007 when the bones of a chicken native to Polynesia were found in an archaeological dig in El Arenal. The bones pre-date the arrival of the Spaniards by approximately 100 years.[3] A variety of cotton in Hawaii has been genetically linked to the most common variety of cotton grown in Mexico.[4]


Notes

  1. Liesl Clark, "First Inhabitants," Nova Online Adventure
  2. Michael Marshall, Early Americans helped colonise Easter Island, published in New Scientist, June 6, 2011
  3. "Chicken Bones Suggest Polynesians Found Americas Before Columbus", LiveScience, June 4, 2007. "Study: Spaniards didn’t get to South America first", Los Angeles Times, June 5, 2007.
  4. John L. Sorenson, "New Technology and Ancient Voyages," in Pressing Forward with the Book of Mormon: The FARMS Updates of the 1990s, ed. John W. Welch and Melvin J. Thorne (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1999), 177-179. off-site