I remember hearing this hypothesis in College. The evidence is pretty skimpy and I'm not ready to buy it without a lot more:

http://m.sfgate.com/news/article/Did-ancient-Polynesians-visit-California-Maybe-2661327.php?cmpid=fb-desktop

Polynesians populated all the islands of the Pacific from New Zealand to Hawaii to Easter Island. I don't find them making it to the Americas all that fantastic.

The stories about Vikings making it to North America prior to Columbus was considered silly until the Viking Settlements were discovered in Newfoundland in the 1960s

JVN087 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Polynesians populated all the islands of the
> Pacific from New Zealand to Hawaii to Easter
> Island. I don't find them making it to the
> Americas all that fantastic.

Given what we already know for a fact that the Polynesians actually did discover, this has always been my stance too, regarding the (at least) possibility that they made it to the Americas---a gigantic land mass running north-to-south from pole to pole.

If they were east of Hawaii (etc.), and they kept sailing on (and why would they have stopped sailing???), the Americas would have been really hard to miss.

If you haven't read it, I'll put in a big plug for Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" (a friend of mine called it the "Consummate Anti-BOM").

Polynesian exploration (which I've posted about here in the past) involved "island hopping," and while they were magnificent sailors whose bodies even show biological adaptation to long sea voyages, what they encountered "east of Hawaii" was largely open ocean. Their culture expanded by settling on islands, bringing their dogs and chickens and domesticated crops with them and then moving out further as the populations expanded and resources became scarce.

After Hawaii, they essentially "ran out of islands" until close to the North American mainland. We know they settled Easter Island, but as this model demonstrates, the native population there eventually "overwhelmed the ecosystem," and an "environmental disaster followed." Whether the Easter Islanders made it to South America--I have no problem with that hypothesis--hasn't been resolved yet.

http://www.geographicguide.com/oceania-map.htm

Incidentally, the distance from Hawaii to Los Angeles is about 2,500 miles, an indication of just how big the Pacific Ocean is. By contrast, the distance across the the entire Atlantic from Portugal to Florida is about 4,200 miles, just over 1 1/2 times that far.

What those Pacific figures do accomplish is exile the Book of Mormon yarn about Hagoth--whom they believe settled Polynesia, the basis of Mormon beliefs that "Polynesians are Nephites"--to the realm of fable and absurdity.

https://www.lds.org/manual/book-of-mormon-student-study-guide/alma-63?lang=eng



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/02/2016 05:02AM by SL Cabbie.

This is an excellent response, Cabbie.

I will RE-read Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel"...because I obviously need the refresher!!!

:)

The evidence so far "is circumstantial" in that there was a "shift" around 1000 A.D (as I recall) in technology used by the Native Americans on the California coast; this involved fish hooks and perhaps canoe construction (I see the article mentions that one). As noted, the other evidence of South America to Polynesian "diffusion" is the sweet potato, but those may have been transported by ocean currents. Okay, reading the article they're placing the "contact" as occurring around 500 A.D. and if that's the case, why wasn't there further contact?

I was working from memory on this one (from Simon Southerton), so I don't have the exact specifics on the fish hook technology.

The "Polynesian Chicken DNA" in South America was problematic, as I recall, and the other "biological evidence" is the bottle gourd.

This claim amounts to "straw man slaying" in my book, and I don't know whether to criticize the journalist or the scientist allegedly being quoted.

>Until now, few scientists have dared to speculate that the ancient Polynesians visited Southern California between 500 and 700 A.D., that is to say, in the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire. This is known as the "transpacific diffusion" hypothesis.

>"The dominant paradigm in American archaeology for the past 60 or more years has been anti-diffusionist, and our findings are already stimulating a rethinking of that paradigm," Klar told The Chronicle.

Good scientists are always willing to revise their hypotheses if the evidence is forthcoming.

Of course you've also pointed out here that "archaeology isn't a science." (big smiley face)

One of my favorite dig shirts (it's common on an archaeological dig to print up T-shirts) said "Archaeology, dangerously close to science". Archaeology is a social science that uses the tools or hard science.

But I'm on the same page regarding the flimsy-ness of the evidence so far.

Any news story about science is not too reliable, its more about ratings or entertainment value

"Any news story about science is not too reliable, its more about ratings or entertainment value"

Yep, it's kinda like The Book of Mormon really exists just to extort tithing money from Mormons, rather than being a work of actual historical and scientific fact.

Always go read the referenced papers (if possible).
Often they say something quite different from the "popular" news report :)

+ a million.

News outlets have to condense and make and article "sexier" for the common person. It's one of the reasons the social sciences are so misunderstood by people outside of the field.

yeah they made it to Cali..... a bunch of them were in my old ward..... ;)

I love them.

The ones that made it to Calif who weren't mormon...were ornery, and angry people towards white people. I tangled with them a couple times and it didn't end pretty.

They get sick of white people making stupid racist remarks, They

are a gentle people and will give you the shirt off their backs

when they are treated nicely, otherwise they will get angry, just

like anyone else would.



The Samoans... I've seen a short samoan lady kick a mans ass at

church they are fierce..... I love them too.

Someone please confirm or set me straight on this.

The potato is native to the new world, and the yam is native to Europe/Asia. It is possible to tell if an island was colonized from the new world or Asia by whether they had the yam or the potato. Almost all of the inhabitants of the pacific islands had yams at the time of discovery by white men except for some islands closest to South America.

Well, not quite...

Yams and sweet potatoes are different things, first off:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yam_(vegetable)

And it's sweet potatoes (not yams) that are helpful in tracking migrations:

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/01/22/169980441/how-the-sweet-potato-crossed-the-pacific-before-columbus

As well as the regular potato, also native to mainland America:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_potato

"As well as the regular potato, also native to mainland America"

You do mean, South America, right?

nonmo_1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You do mean, South America, right?

South America is mainland America.
But wild potatoes existed long before domesticated types in both North and South America. Domestication probably first occurred in Peru-Bolivia -- South America.

ok...gotcha. that's what i thought

The word originated among African slaves because of its resemblance to Old World plant species (totally unrelated). "True Yams" are an important staple crop in Africa where 95% of the world production occurs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yam_(vegetable)

>These are perennial herbaceous vines cultivated for the consumption of their starchy tubers in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and Oceania. There are many cultivars of yam. Although some varieties of sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) are also called yam in parts of the United States and Canada, sweet potato is not part of the family Dioscoreaceae but belongs in the unrelated morning glory family Convolvulaceae.

https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/sweetpotato.html

>In the United States, firm varieties of sweet potatoes were produced before soft varieties. When soft varieties were first grown commercially, there was a need to differentiate between the two. African slaves had already been calling the ‘soft’ sweet potatoes ‘yams’ because they resembled the yams in Africa. Thus, ‘soft’ sweet potatoes were referred to as ‘yams’ to distinguish them from the ‘firm’ varieties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yam_production_in_Nigeria

The "Louisiana Yam" is a variety of sweet potato.

http://new.dhh.louisiana.gov/assets/oph/pcrh/heartdisease/Recipes/yams.pdf

Here's a reasonable article on hypothetical explanations of the introduction of sweet potatoes to Polynesia.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/01/22/169980441/how-the-sweet-potato-crossed-the-pacific-before-columbus

>So how did the sweet potato make the ocean voyage?

>Its seeds could have possibly hitched a ride on seaweed or gotten lodged in the wing of a bird. But Pat Kirch, an archeologist at the University of Berkeley, California, thinks the Polynesians were well-equipped to sail right across the Pacific to South America and pick up a potato.

Evidence of Polynesian/South American contact will have to be stronger than this. Sweet potato plants dropped on the ground will grow, and the slips from stored sweet potatoes will also yield plants. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that they arrived in Polynesia as floatsam on ocean currents.

I yam what I yam...

Ah, you guessed...

(non-scientific me)

the amount of supplies needed for this trip would almost rule it out, food + water alone.

then there's the question of companionship (both men & women aboard?)

would they start this with an eye to establishing a new branch-location of their civilization?

No email, not even letters to home (no postal service!)

If it actually did happen, which is a huge "if", my guess would be that they got hopelessly lost.

My "Great Lehi Boatbuilding and Sailing Challenge" where I needled LDS apologist sorts suggesting they try to "recreate" Lehi's mythical voyage using maritime technology extant in the 6th Century B.C.

Mostly they replied with the usual noteworthy silence occasionally punctuated by some testimony bearing.

That one was born about ten years ago at one of our "Behind-the-Zion-Curtain" secret lunches. Present were a former RFM stalwart, "Nepa" who was marketing "genuine authentic replica Joseph Smith Seer Stones," our friend Cricket who's well known hereabouts, and even the legendary "Deconstructor."

In the "truly evil minds think alike" department, Nepa and Cricket were discussing "Mormon Barbie" and marketing a line of "sacred underwear" for the iconic doll. Cricket went out to his car and produced a collection of temple robes and "historic g's" (both one piece and two piece). The look on a woman's face at the next table was priceless, and Nepa noted she might be offended and say something. Cricket replied, "I hope she does."

Decon asked me what I "was planning," and I brought up my "sailing challenge." Sitting with truly great individuals can be genuinely inspiring...