The Poyas - Boat people of the Lake District

Today's post will explore the question of the Poyas. They were a group of natives that lived in the region around Lake Nahuel Huapi, and were mainly described by the Jesuit missionaries who established their Mision of Our Lady of Nanhuel Huapi among them in 1670-74, and again in 1704-1717 when the project was abandoned.

When the Spaniards defeated the Araucanian tribes (Mapuches) and established the cities of Villarrica, Arauco, Angol, Osorno, La Imperial, Valdivia, and Concepción in the mid 1550s, they crossed to the eastern side of the Andes in pursuit of the Mapuches who had escaped there, fleeing from the invaders. They captured natives to enslave them (in raids known as malocas), for transport to the silver mines in Peru.

They called these natives Puelches (from the Mapuche words for "people of the east"). They also opened a cart trail across Neuquén, into the current provinces of La Pampa, and Buenos Aires, reaching the city of Buenos Aires which had been founded for a second time in 1580.

But the Mapuche rebelled, and the great uprising of 1598 destroyed all of the towns except Valdivia and Concepción, and the Spaniards had to retreat north of the Bio Bio River, and south into Chiloé, protected by the sea and Chacao Channel.

The Spaniards occasionally conducted malocas, one, in 1620 was authorized by Diego Flores de León, governor of Chiloé, who sent Captain Fernández across the Andes. Fernández was the first to report the existence of Lake Nahuel Huapi, where they met the Puelches, and learned about the Poyas for the first time.

Another maloca took place in 1666 when another governor of Chiloé, Juan Verdugo de la Vega sent an expedition that captured many Poyas and Puelches, this was done in the midst of the three-century-long Arauco War with the Mapuche people, but the Poyas and Puelche had nothing to do with this war.

The Jesuits petitioned to the Viceroy in Peru to have the Poyas released, and Father Nicolás Mascardi (who also wanted to find the lost City of Caesars), returned them to the Nahuel Huapi area and established a mission there in 1670. One of these Poyas was a woman who was supposedly named Huanguelé (which means "Star"), Mascardi called her "Reina" (Queen, in Spanish), because she was the leader of the local Poyas.

Mascardi had learned the Poya language during their four-year stay in Castro, Chiloé, and could communicate with them. The mission lasted until 1673 when Mascardi was murdered by the natives on his fourth and final expedition into Patagonia seeking the lost city. And the mission was abandoned for 30 years.

Father Miguel de Olivares (1674-1770) wrote a History of the Jesuits in Chile in 1736-38, in which he mentions the Nahuel Huapi Mission among the Poyas and describes them as follows:

"In the Cordilleras that run towards the south there are many Indian nations, each with its language, though all understand the Poya language which is very used among all of these Indians...
[...]The Poyas are also called Puelches [by the Spaniards] but it should be known that there is no nation that is called Puelche and holds themselves as such, because Puelche means inland people, or people who live further away. That is why thosew who live in Concepción, Valdivia, and Chiloé call these people Puelches, because they live further away, but these, call Puelches those who live further inland to the south, and no nation considers itself Puelche. But as these of Nahuelhuapi the Spaniards call puelches, we will use this same name."

Thomas Falkner (1707-1784). English Jesuit priest who lived in what is now Argentina at several Jesuit missions in close contact with natives of different Patagonian tribes from 1730 until 1767 when the Spanish crown expelled the Jesuit order from South America. Upon returning to Britain (1774) he wrote a book, A Description of Patagonia, in 1774, in which he mentions the Poyas. He compiled information about these tribes from his native informants. Below is an image from his book, describing the Poyas. (source)

Falkner, on the Poyas

Falkner mentions the southern people or Huilliches (that is what the words Huilli and Che mean in the language of the Mapuche). The first group were what now are considered Mapuches, they lived on both sides of the Andes in Neuquén, Argentina and the Chilean region south of the Bio Bio River. The Chonos, or canoe people, in the islands south of Chiloe, and the "Poy-yus or Peyes" who live along the coast between 48 and 51°S. They are followed by the Keyes (maybe Alakaluf?) all the way to the Strait of Magellan.

Falkner says these first three groups (including the Poyas) were big, and tall.

After the expulsion of the Jesuits, the Franciscan order took over their assets and business. One of them, Father Menendez tried to reopen the Mission at Nahuel Huapi in the 1790s, and conducted several expeditions to visit the ruins and the natives. Commenting Father Menendez's journal of these expeditionsm Francisco Fonck (1830-1912) states that the Poyas were of Tehuelche stock. Fonck lived in the Chilean Patagonia, was a doctor, and an explorer, and he had read most of the ancient sources about this region. He said (source):

"Let's point out that the names poyas, pouyas, pauvos, pogyas, poy-yus and payos are very similar variants a the same name. But they don't seem to correspond to the same nation, because there is no agreement between the authors, abouth their territory, which is located by some between the Cordillera and the Atlantic, and by others on the coast of the Pacific."

His point of view was that "It is probable that our poyas belonged to the same nation of the famous giant Patagons of Magellan, and the tehuelches" he mentions that the Araucanians and Poyas have "fought bloody battles" won by the Mapuche, who forced the Poyas further south. Adding that "The Puelo river descends from the east, and they seay in Chiloé that the Poya Indians came down in ancient times along it to raid those who were in Yate."

In other words they came down along this river that drains the Argentine lakes of Epuyén and Puelo, receives the outflow of the Manso River, and lakes Mascardi, Hess, Seffen, Martin, and Fonck. Yate is a small port on Reloncavi Sound, close to the mouth of the Puelo River, at the foot of Yate Volcano.

Toribio Medina (1852-1930), a Chilean historian transcribed many old, and unpublished notes and letters. In one of them, from 1732, it describes the life of a Jesuit, Father José Guillelmo, who was a missionary following the steps of Father Mascardi, at the Nahuel Huapi Mission. Medina quotes this text (Source): "the heathen Poyas live on the other side of Lake Nahuel Huapi and span many leagues, and use a different language."

The language difference, means that they did not speak Mapudungun, the language of the Mapuche.

Medina also included a note on Father Felipe Laguna, who stated that "two nations live in this area, the Puelches and the Poyas."

Ramón Lista (1856-1897) was an Argentine explorer, military and scientist. He explored Patagonia between 1877 and 1887, and also governor of the National Territory of Santa Cruz between 1887 and 1892, where he wed an Aonikenk who gave him a daughter, he had first hand experience with the Patagonian natives. He died at the hands of his guides while exploring the tropical Chaco jungles in northern Argentina.

Lista wrote an article, published in 1896, Los Tehuelches de La Patagonia, in which he states that the language of the Poyas was different the one spoken by the Araucanians and the Chonos.

Lista adds that the Poyas and the Caucaus (who lived further south) were not related to the Mapuche (Araucanians), they were not Tehuelches either. Lista says:

"in my opinion, the Poyas and Caucaus are closely related and belong to the ethnic group of the Southern Andes and Magalleanic lands that includes the Chonos in general, that is, all the ancient people along the Pacific coast, south of the Araucanians, and of the Vuta-huilliches of the oriental slope [of the Andes]... the Alacaluf and Yaghans, canoe people of Tierra del Fuego. We also imagine that the Poyas have not become extinct, nor have they merged into the race of the Patagonian lowlands [Tehuelches]... to the contrary, they form an ethnic group that we identify with the northern tribes of Chacamat and Pchalao... which we had designated as Quirquinchos, name given to them by the Tehuelches who look upon them as a hybrid tribe, and whom they mock because they don't know how to speak their language, and instead mix into their conversation, Tehuelche, Araucanian and other words."

Which was the Poya language? We don't have any records. Francisco Moreno reported the name given by them to Lake Nahuel Huapi but does not provide any details: "Stretia Lafquen" note that Lafquen is the Mapuche word for "lake", but Stretia is not a Tehuelche or a Mapuche word.

From Mascardi we have several Poya names: a tribal chief, Manqueunai which has a definite Mapuche sound. Salatil, Aquillo, "Reina's" brother. Father Laguna mentions a Poya named Maledica,

Chilean ethnologist and archaeologist Ricardo E. Latcham (1903-1965) in his Prehistoria Chilena mentions the Puelches as natives that set up their camps in the valleys on the eastern side of the Andes (Neuquén), north of the Nahuel Huapi, (Limay?) and Negro Rivers. This coincides with the aracuanized natives later known as Manzaneros in Neuquén (Moreno encountered their last chief, Sayhueque, at his encampment on the Collón Curá and Caleufu Rivers, in the 1870s).

Latcham adds that south of the Nahuel Huapi and the Negro River "were the Poyas, who, no doubt, were a branch of the Tehuelches or Patagones. In their raids, they used to reach the beaches of the province of Llanquihue, bathed by the Gulf of Reloncavi and Moraleda Channel where during a certain time of the year they supplied themselves with dried fish and seafood. They figured in this latter region under the name of Taruches."

Latcham on the Poyas.

Finally there is a very interesting article by Fabian Arias, published in 2002, (Los pueblos del noroeste de la Patagonia Argentina) has an interesting and well documented analysis of the Poyas. He puts forward the following hypothesis, that the nomad Tehuelches advanced on the groups that lived by the main lakes and rivers who were related throgh their culture with the Chono people on the western side of the Andes and with other "lake people" of central Neuquén. These Poyas used canoes, cooked in pits with hot stones, and ate fish, all of which were cultural practices that were not adopted by the Tehuelches. They also painted rock art in areas close to the lakes that were only accessible by water, and in the forests, which the Tehuelche were reluctant to enter (they feared the forest spirits).

Arias argues that the Poya people were lacustrine, and that they underwent a process of "Tehuelchization" when the Tehuelche moved northwards into the Poya territories, modifying their language, culture, customs, and, eventually absorbing them.

I agree with Arias. The Poyas had a distinct lake-river-based hunter-gatherer economy, they lived in the woods and on its edge, where it met the steppe (in this area, it was formerly an open forested area with cypress trees. They knew the passes across the Andes, and went along the Pacific basin rivers ocassionally to fish and harvest clams and mussels. They were perhaps related to the Chono people but specialized in freshwater habitats.

The Mapuche irruption from Central Chile into the Chilean lake district altered their territory in Chile, and the Spanish occupation worsened the situation. There is ample evidence of canoe-people in the Chilean and Argentine Lake districts. The migration of Mapuches into Neuquen also displaced them. The Tehuelche probably moved gradually into the Nahuel Huapi and Limay areas. Blending with the Poyas.

By the time the Spainards ment them they used the word Puelche to designate any native living on the eastern side of the Andes, and Poyas for the lake people. They were assumed to be tall like all Patagons that had been reported on the Atlantic coast, and the Caucaue people of the South Pacific (the latter were first describe by General Dionisio de Rueda, governor of Chiloé in 1641, while he navigated to the Strait of Magellan and fought a battle with them at Los Pabellones, in Aysen, these were “gigantic people” of a very belligerent nature).

Taruches

Regarding Latcham and the "Taruches". Little is known about them. I found a reference (source) from which the following image was taken:

It is a report by a Spanish Viceroy of Peru Amat y Junyent, and former Governor of Chile, sent to the King of Spain in 1761, it mentions some coastal natives, the Juncos, named after the Junco River, who assisted by Puelches and "others who live beyond the [illegible] that do not use horses, but move very fast on foot, called Taruches" attacked a fort by the Bueno River (40° S).

According to Robert Lehmann-Nitsche (Source) the word Taruche is "people" = "che" and "Carancho", a bird of prey ="taro". He assimilates them to a Tehuelche group,the Táluliet.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Melimoyu volcano, the growling mountain

p>Patagonian volcanos were the home of fantastic beings, one volcano known as Melimoyu, Mapuche for "four tits" because it had four horn-like prominences on its summit which have since vanished. By 1843 Captain Juan Guillermos called it "tres puntas" (three tips), and now it only has two.

One source says that the earthquake that ravaged Valparaiso and southern Chile on August 16, 1906 (8.2 magnitude) which was accompanied by mysterious lights in the sky, caused the collapse of two of the four horns. The mountain became "Epumoyu" (two tits).

Melimoyu volcano (notice two, not four crests). Source

It is 2,400 m (7,900 ft.) tall and is located southwest of Chiloé close to the sea, on the mainland (44°04’S, 72°52’W). It is reputed to make odd sounds.

José Manuel de Moraleda, a Spanish naval officer who explored the coastline south of the Arauco between 1786 and 1793 mentioned that the Chilotes (Natives of Chiloé) said they "heard cannon shots or rifle shots" in the mountains and assumed they were made by the inhabitants of the lost City of Caesars. The Palena River is 20 km (12 mi.) north of the volcano.

But Moraleda attributed these strange sounds to strong gales that beat the coast and produce "a sound that imitates a distant thunder, a canon or musket shot […] the frequent avalanches in the Cordillera make a similar sound."

Map

This map (which I am preparing with Musters' itinerary across Patagonia, with all the encampments), shows the spot where he heard the cannon shot, and the location of the volcano.

The legend of the City of Caesars began in the mid-16th century. It revolved around an incredibly rich city set in Patagonia; its roads were paved with gold. It was inhabited by people of European origin who led secluded lives there. Several expeditions were sent to find it, and it was not until the late-18th century that it lost credibility.

Melimoyu volcano's crests

One century later (1885), in his report to the government after exploring the Palena River, Serrano Montaner wrote about an Indian called Caucalán who was seeking the City of Caesars along this river, when one "night the explorers heard loud and ugly roaring." Caucalán’s party attributed it to the spirit of the river, and full of fear they returned to Chiloé. Serrano asserted that "you can usually feel in that spot, and along the course of the river, certain strange noises similar to those that frequently accompany earthquakes." Serrano believed they were caused by avalanches in the high summits of the Andes.

Fortunately, we have a comment penned by Musters in 1870, who wrote about this phenomenon while camping at Chiriq Aike (now known as Arroyo Cherque) close to the town of Gobernador Costa in Chubut, on the eastern side of the Andes roughly 100 km (65 mi.) east of the volcano:

"During our stay here an incident occurred which led to the collection and comparison of the traditions concerning the hidden or enchanted city which still are current and believed among the Indians and Chilotes. One day while hunting we were startled by a loud report, as of the discharge of a cannon, and looking to the west saw a black cloud of smoke hanging above the peaks of the Cordillera. My companion Jackechan told me that on several previous visits to this station the Indians had observed similar columns of smoke in the same direction. On one occasion so convinced were they that it was caused by human agency, that a party set out to endeavour to penetrate the forests and reach the dwellings of the unknown residents, which the smoke was believed to point out. They proceeded some distance into the recesses of the mountain forests, but the extreme difficulties of travelling compelled them at last to abandon their purpose and retrace their steps. It is of course most probable that both the explosion and the smoke proceeded from some unknown active volcano in the range; but the Indians firmly believe in the existence either of an unknown tribe, or of an enchanted or hidden city."

Map

See this map, it is part of an ongoing project, mapping Musters' itinerary across Patagonia, with all the campgrounds he stopped at with the natives. It shows the Ciriq site and Melimoyu volcano (red icon) and the straight line linking them (yellow line).

Once again, a reference to the legendary City of Caesars. The sounds caused by volcanos can resemble cannon shots. see this video with the sounds of Villarrica volcano (Chilean Patagonia) before its 2015 eruption.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

The Kofkeche

My previous post explored the genetics of Southern Patagonia. It mentions final migratory wave that finalized around 2,000 years ago. I mentioned evidence supporting the movement of people of Amazonian origin into what is now Argentina, and then, across the Andes into Chile.

I also mentioned the possibility that the Mapuche people were latecomers to the region.

In today's post I will mention the people that the Mapuche displaced.

Kofkeche, the bread people

It is an interesting fact that the island of Chiloé and the Arauco region, home of the Trauco dwarf, were also the home of a branch of the Mapuche people, the “Huilliche” group (southern people).

Before the arrival of the Spaniards, pushed by the other Mapuche groups in Central Chile, these Huilliche left their homeland in the Arauco and invaded Chiloé, where they displaced and absorbed the original Chono “boat people” who lived there.

They also brought along their beliefs, among which was the devilish Trauco. American naturalist, Dillman Samuel Bullock Lytle (1878-1971), excavated the Huilliche’s Arauco homeland during the mid-twentieth century and uncovered funerary urns that were different from those used by the Huilliche and whose size indicated a small race. An adult’s mummy, five hundred years old, recently found in Angol was barely 1.30 m tall (4 ft. .2 in.)

Kofkeche funerary urns. Source

These findings led Bullock to believe that the Mapuche (including the Huilliche) were not the area’s original inhabitants. He assumed that they had originated in the Argentine Pampas and then migrated to Chile. When they arrived there, they came across a race of “small people,” which he named Kofkeche.

Bullock’s archaeological proof and conjectures received corroboration from oral tradition; he uncovered a Mapuche legend that mentioned “small people” or “Kofkeche.” The Mapuche words kofke and che mean “bread” and “people.” They got that name because they were small like country loaves. Bullock also mentioned a story told by an old Mapuche woman named Cayetey Anteu, whose grandmother had told her that “when the first Mapuche arrived, there were people very different from them […] they were short and thick, somewhat fat, and the Mapuche called them Kofkeche.” (Source)

"Land of the Kofkeche" (Tierra de los Kofkeches). Source

Mapuche cosmogony also mentions the Kofkeche; they are evil, dwarfish creatures from an underworld that interact with ours. The Mapuche conceive the universe as a series of platforms piled upon each other in space; below our platform, where the humans live, is another level, the land of the dwarves. It is named Kofkeche Mapu or Laftrache Mapu (land of the tiny people).

Maybe the Kofkeche were related to the other groups of “small” (short statured) people inhabiting the Pacific Ocean coast northwards, into Perú (like the Chinchorro-Chango people), and lived in peace until their destruction by the invading Mapuche groups who migrated to Chile later on.

Argentine historian Rodolfo Casamiquela suspected that the Mapuche of the Arauco area were alluding to the Chono boat people “who are short,” and mentioned that in 1975 they still considered the Chubut natives as “short people, one meter tall [3 ft], who speak another language.”

In other words, the arrival of the Mapuche around 2000 years ago displaced and replaced the Kofkeche, Poya, and Chono people from the Lake District area in Chile's northern Patagonia, between the Bio Bio River and the Gulf of Ancud.

Poyas

The mysterious Poya people are mentioned by different early explorers, but little is known about them. They used canose, and lived by the lakes of this area, and may have been related to the Chonos. I will write about them in a future post.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

The Genetics of Southern Patagonia

The genetics of the Southern Patagonian natives is more complex than expected. A paper published in Nature on Aug. 3, 2020 (Nakatsuka, N., Luisi, P., Motti, J.M.B. et al. Ancient genomes in South Patagonia reveal population movements associated with technological shifts and geography. Nat Commun 11, 3868 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17656-w) explains the possible admixtures that led to the native populations in Tierra del Fuego and the Southern continental tip of Patagonia.

The authors noted that the natives that adapted to a seafaring life (marine adaptation) either "adopted the technology or invented it independently", they didn't find support that a there was a "large-scale immigration into South Patagonia of people from the north" who were already skilled in living off the sea.

Instead they found that a group of people came from the Northwest (along the Chilean Pacific Ocean coast) after the initial colonization event, around 5000 years ago (as characterized by the remains found at Ayayema ~4700 BP) these people had adopted a maritime economy and replaced the original people that had settled in this area. These latecomers:

"replac[ed] the lineages related to Punta Santa Ana (~6600 bp) and La Arcillosa2 (~5800 bp) that were previously established in South Patagonia itself. The arrival of this new stream of people could be related to the change in lithic technology between ~5500 and 3100 bp, characterized by the interruption of green obsidian use and the introduction of large biface projectile points in the Western Archipelago and Beagle Channel regions."

Archaeologists had noticed that green obsidian, a sharp volcanic glass that had been used in this region 6700 to 6300 years BP vanished, and later (5500 to 3100 BP) stone tools were made from other materials.

There was a simultaneous change in stone tools at that time.

The authors point out that "The disruption in green obsidian use has been hypothesized to reflect a loss of cultural knowledge about the location of the source of this raw material, potentially due to arrival of new people unfamiliar with the landscape."

There was another migration from the Chilean region, characterized by remains found in Central Chile. (Perhaps these people moved pushed by the migration that brought the Mapuche people into Chile?). This final group brought new genetic traits and spread between 4700 and 2000 BP. The authors wonder if the "shared linguistic family between North, Central, and South Patagonia groups in historical and modern times could be related to this signal." I assume they refer to the language of the tehuelche people, known as chon

Mapuche: Late Arrival

I have posted about the Mapuche-Guaraní link in the past. Now I have included more information on this matter in my book's second edition, a brief snippet is shown below:

Dillehay in 2007,(1) noting the similar cultural traits (ceramic, funeral practices), language similarities, and genetics, suggested an association between the Mapuche and the Amazonian natives.
A study published in 2022 analyzed ancient human DNA from the cement attaching head lice nits and found that they support a “major migration wave, occurring around 2,000 years BP from the ancient Proto Tupí/Tupí of the Amazonian lowlands (northwest Amazon) toward south Amazonia and the east Coast, spanning ∼4,000 km.”(2) The expansion continued across Argentina and reached the Andes.
This migration was probably caused by a growing population requiring new lands for farming or, as a response to a drier climate at that time. The authors concluded that “The three Calingasta [San Juan province, Argentina] ancient mummies analyzed in this study show for the first time that the original peoples of San Juan, Calingasta, came from Amazonia about 2,000 years BP… help[ing] decipher a piece of the puzzle of pre-Columbian ancient migrations within South America, of an impressive move spanning 5,000-6,500 km. [3,100-4,040 mi.]” Interestingly, Calingasta is only 160 km (100 mi.) to the east of the Mapuche homeland in Central Chile. Another study from 2023 pointed out that “the fact that together, regional varieties of Mapudungun [Mapuche language] still form a coherent single language is consistent with a relatively recent common origin, followed by geographical expansion and divergence over a timescale of the order of many centuries, but not millennia.”(3)

(1) Pedersen MW, Antunes C, De Cahsan B, et al., (2022). Ancient Human Genomes and Environmental DNA from the Cement Attaching 2,000-Year-Old Head Lice Nits. Molecular Biology and Evolution, Vol. 39, Issue 2, February 2022, msab351.
(2) Arango-Isaza E., Capodiferro MR., et al., (2023), The genetic history of the Southern Andes from present-day Mapuche ancestry. Current Biology, Vol 33:13, pp. 2602-2615.e5.
(3) Dillehay T.D. et al., (2007). Cultivated wetlands and emerging complexity in south-central Chile and long distance effects of climate change. Antiquity. 949–6.

The timing of this Out-Of-Amazon migration seems to coincide with the displacement of people into Patagonia from Central Chile

My next post will look into the Kofkeche myth, and its relation to the arrival of the Mapuche in Chile.

CAPTION HERE. Copyright © 2025 by Austin Whittall

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025by Austin Whittall © 

Chono mummies of Patagonia

Chilean naval officer Enrique Simpson Baeza (1835-1901) conducted four expeditions, exploring the Patagonian coast, and its rivers in the 1870s. In those days, the sources of these rivers, and the geography of the inland region was unknown. Simpson had a great career, and eventually attained the rank of Admiral.

He recorded his expeditions in meticulous journals. In them, he mentions the Chono mummies.

Chonos

The Chono people were canoe people, they lived nomadic life, boating in their three-plank canoes (dalcas) in the Pacifc Ocean south of Chiloé Island, in the islands north of Taitao Peninsula.

They fished, collected shellfish, and hunted sea wolves, sea lions, gathered seaweed (kelp), and also bred long-haired dogs with which they wove crude blankets.

Their lifestyle was similar to the Fuegian canoe people, the Yagans and Alakaluf, but being closer to the Spanish colony in Chiloe, they were soon affected by European disease, raids, forced relocation (with the good intention of civilizing them, a labor conducted by Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries). This led to the loss of their culture. They died out or were absorbed by the "Chilote" mestizo population in Chiloe by the mid 1700s.

Simpson wrote about them, the remains he saw of their huts and burials. During his third expedition (1871-72) he recorded the folloiwng (source):

"Their homes were caves, and sometimes circular huts whose pegs I have seen. Sometimes they buried their dead close to these homes; but usually they preferred to place them in caves, covering them with branches. In many of them, the naval pilot, in the past, found mummies placed in coffins of cypress bark, shaped like eggs, but they have all been removed or destroyed."

During his fourth expedidion (1872-73) he added more information (source):

"In this channel there is an inlet that I have named Mummies, because it has, in a cliff, about two meters above the water [6.1 ft.] some small caves where remains of the Chono Indians race have been found. Now only some bone fragments can be seen, because the skeletons have been extracted perfectly, years ago, by sealers and sold to museums."

Chono mummies were reported in Victorian magazines and one entry in F. Ratzel's The History of Mankind: The cultured races of America, published in 1897 mentions caves with mummies and stone tools had been found on the Guaitecas Islands.

Report on a Mummy

An article about a Patagonian Mummy. Source

The Smithsonian Institute's annual report of 1862-63 contained an article about a mummy (pictured above) found at "Refujio Bay", 44°S on the Coast of Chile, in a cave, one-hundred feet above the water level. There were many skeletons there with different degrees of preservation. It states that two skeletons were sent to the National Museum in Santiago, Chile, one to the Ratisbon Museum in Bavaria, and the fourth, to the Smithsonian. It was found in a sitting position, and, surprisingly it wasn't of average to small size as the usual Chono native. Instead it had "a height of something like five feet eight inches, thus almost justifying the somewhat poetical epithet of "gigantic", as applied to the Patagonians in general."

I can't help but recall the mummy discovered in 1877 by Francisco Moreno at Gualicho Cave, close to the modern town of El Calafate, and the Perito Moreno Glacier, on the shores of Lake Argentino. Also found in a sitting position.

There is a sketch of a Chono mummy, drawn by a German artist, Carl Alexander Simon (1805-1852), who visited Chile in 1850, and did many drawings in Chiloe in 1852 shortly before his death. On the Island of Quehi, he drew a mummy, painted in situ, in a cave. The mummy is gone, but a replica has been created. (Source).

The sketch can be seen at the Ancud Museum in Chiloe. It is a watercolor with pencil, on paper. The text is in sepia-colored ink reads "Momias Chiloe", some illegible text and numbers (the size of the body?), his name and date "A Simon Quehuy, 18 marz 1852". The image is shown below.

Quehi Mummy. A. Simon, 1852, Source

The amazing part is that the Chilean Patagonian coast is buffeted by rain most of the year, it is damp, cold and wet. How did they manage to mummify their dead?

Further north, in the Atacama Desert region of Chile, the Chinchorro culture, who were also a seafaring people, mummified their dead in the arid and extremely dry desert climate. These are the oldest deliberately mummified remains in the world, dating back to 9,000 years ago. Far older than any Egyptian mummy.

In a future post we will explore the Chinchorro people, the Chango people, who probably descend from them, and if there are links between the coastal people of the Americas with the first peopling wave into the continent.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

On why modern humans succeeded in their Final Out of Africa migration

A paper published in Nature (Hallett, E.Y., Leonardi, M., Cerasoni, J.N. et al. Major expansion in the human niche preceded out of Africa dispersal. Nature 644, 115–121 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09154-0) on June 18, 2025, explains why the final Out Of Africa event, 50,000 years ago, was the successful one.

The premise of the paper is that human beings in Africa adapted to living in different environments within the continent (deserts, savannas, grasslands, and jungles) expanding their niche. They could face the weather, and survive in different habitats. It was this flexibility, not tools or special genes that allowed them to expand and move out of Africa. In the authors words:

"The expansion of the human niche beginning around 70 ka in Africa is driven by a gradual increase in human preference for forest and desert biomes, allowing them to expand into regions that were previously rarely populated: (1) forests of West Africa, (2) forests of Central Africa and, eventually, (3) arid Saharan regions and semi-arid Sahelian regions of North Africa. This increased ability to adapt to new habitats, ranging from the extremes of equatorial forests to arid deserts, would have allowed these populations of humans the ecological flexibility to tackle a range of new environmental conditions encountered during the expansion out of Africa, allowing them to succeed where earlier migrations out of Africa had previously faltered. The expansion of the human niche in Africa starting around 70 ka, therefore, offers an explanation for the successful worldwide expansion of human populations about 50 ka"

The previous Out of Africa migrants that survived

I disagree with this point of view.

It is clear that a first wave of Homo sapiens didn't survive. They left Africa 100 ky ago.

But, we have the Denisovan and Neanderthals thriving for hundreds of thousands of years in freezing Eurasia, from Tibet to Spain. In a climate that never existed in Africa (glacial ice and extremely low temperatures). Yet, they were extremely well adapted to their niche, with tools, social structures, and flexibility to hunt and survive.

They had been preceded by the Homo erectus, and probably Homo habilis by at least 1 million years in their migration into Eurasia. And H. erectus lived there, and prospered for hundreds of thousands of years adapting to tropical climes in Indonesia and freezing winters in Northern China.

Luck and Chance

Perhaps the demise of these other groups was not dictated by modern human "flexibility" adapting to African ecological niches, which gave them tools to survive. We were lucky. It was just chance and good fortune that allowed small groups of hominins to survive the deadly environment (drought, wild beasts, volcanic eruptions, disease, infections, lack of food, etc.)

Human Beings almost became extinct 900 ky ago

See these articles published in Sept. 2023: "Did our ancestors nearly die out?" (Nick Ashton, Chris Stringer, Science 381,947-948 023).DOI:10.1126/science.adj9484) commenting "Genomic inference of a severe human bottleneck during the Early to Middle Pleistocene transition" (Wangjie Hu et al., Science 381, 979-984 (2023).DOI:10.1126/science.abq7487). Hu et al point out that:

"Results showed that human ancestors went through a severe population bottleneck with about 1280 breeding individuals between around 930,000 and 813,000 years ago. The bottleneck lasted for about 117,000 years and brought human ancestors close to extinction"

Our ancestors were reduced from almost 100,000 individuals to a mere 1,280 individuals some 900,000 years ago, and this went on for 117,000 years. It was touch and go. This dreop in population was caused by climate change with glaciations becoming long-term events, cooling the oceans and provoking drought which in turn affected the animals in Africa, Europe and Asia.

Then, population recovered and a speciation event took place, and the ancestor of modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans appared, around 750 to 550 ky ago.

Ashton and Stringer add that " Europe was probably completely depopulated after a previously unrecognized cold phase about 1,100,000 years ago" (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf4445) this event eliminated the first hominins to people Europe 1.5 Ma, the the Sima del Elefante people, perhaps descended from the Dmanisi hominins from Georgia (1.8 MA). "these extreme conditions led to the depopulation of Europe, perhaps lasting for several successive glacial-interglacial cycles." It was only later (1 Ma - 900 ky) that Europe was repopulated "by Homo antecessor, which may have been a more resilient species with evolutionary or behavioral changes that allowed survival under the increasing intensity of glacial conditions."

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Neves and Pucciarelli's paper on affinities between Australians and Paleoindians

As promised, in this post I share a link to a paper by Neves and Pucciarelli (Neves, W.A. and Pucciarelli, H.M. (1991). Morphogical affinities of the first Americans: an exploratory analysis based on early South American human remains. J. Hum. Evol. 21: 261-273).

It tells how they compared the remains of three ancient South American remains (from Tequendama in Colombia, and Lagoa Santa in Brazil) with ancient and contemporary Eurasian and Australian remains. They used thirteen different cranial parameters in their analysis.

This was in the days before DNA was used to compare human groups. Neat and interesting. I thank Marcelo Bruyere for having shared the paper.

I have uploaded it to one of my websites: here.

The authors point out that "The comparison showed that early South Americans clustered very tightly with South Pacific populations, when size and shape were used as taxonomical criteria. When size was removed, the three series occupied an intermediate position".

And conclude that:

"the morphological affinities derived from our study can be perfectly matched to an Asian origin if we assume that Australians and Americans shared a common ancestor until just before they arrived at the New World. Accordingly, both branches, the one that migrated northwards and the one that migrated southwards, did not have a long, independent evolutionary history in northern and southern Asia prior to their settlement in the Americas and Australia. At least not enough to have changed their cranial morphology. If we accept the association detected in this study between Early South Americans, Early Australians and the Zhoukoudian Upper Cave people, Northern China can be suggested as the starting point of both migration branches."

So the remains from the upper Zhoukoudian Cave, which are between 20 and 30,000 years old would belong to a group which is the root of the first wave of Paleoindians and Australians.

It is possible, in my opinion, that this date could even be earlier, considering the date that humans reached Australia (some 50-70 ky ago).

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

A great book about "Pre-Columbian Transoceanic Voyages" America and the Old World

For those interested in an extensive and exahustive analysis of plants, animals, and pathogens that support ancient (or older than 1492 AD) contact between America and the rest of the World, please check out this link to a great book, (online).

Aware of the fact that websites vanish or content changes over time, I saved the link to the Wayback Machine Internet Archive, to preserve the link and the original content it lead to).

This is the book:

John L. Sorenson and Carl L. Johannessen. (2004), Scientific Evidence for Pre-Columbian Transoceanic Voyages. Sino-Platonic Papers, Number 133 April, 2004. Victor H. Mair, Editor

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Austronesians and America: the Transpacific Route

A few days ago, I posted about the possibility that an ancient wave of people from what is now known as Melanesia (including Australia), reached America long before the Polynesian contact that has been suggested took place around AD 1200-1400. Today we will look into this scenario.

Polynesians are said to have originated in an "Out of Taiwan" migration that swept in a wide arch south, across the islands of Indonesia, and then across New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, Bougainville, and the Solomon Islands. There they originated the Lapita Culture and established the Polynesian languages around 3,500 years ago. They then moved to the Islands southeast of the Solomons such as Vanuatu and Fiji (3,000 years ago). They stood still there for a long time before spreading into distant Polynesia around 800 AD, and Micronesia around AD 1250 their expansion ended in New Zealand.

The discovery and peopling of Eastern Polynesia required advanced sailing skills. An interesting paper delves in depth with this matter, and states that: "The immense seascape of East Polynesia and increasing contrary winds required advances in navigation and technology. The settlement of East Polynesia involved a package of technological innovations." The inner islands around New Guinea and Melanesia were easy to navigate with wind blowing in two directions, but crossing the ocean towards distant Polynesia meant sailing against the wind.

The invention of the sprit sail, more efficient V-shaped hulls (vs. U-shaped ones), and larger planked double-hulled canoes that could carry more cargo and people, all favored the exansion across Polynesia.

Peopling of Polynesia. Source. See original image

An Earlier Date for Arrivals of Human Beings the Southwestern Pacific

A study published in 2011 reports an "older" age for the first humans in the region:l

"Our results show that the maternal ancestors of most Remote Pacific islanders split from Asian mainland lineages ∼10–20 ka, rather than ∼5.5 ka, as would be the case if they were to be explained by the “out of Taiwan” model. They had established themselves in the Bismarck Archipelago by at least ∼6 ka, rather than arriving there ∼3.5 ka with the advent of Lapita pottery, as the model predicts."

This earlier date is interesting. Did these people have the seafaring abilities of the later ancestral Polynesians? Could their boats cross long ocean distances? It is doubtfull. The Aboriginal population of Australia who has lived on the Island-Continent for +60,000 years, possessed limited seafaring abilities.

See this interesting webpage with images drawn by Europeans during the discovery period (late 1700s) of the watercraft used by Aboriginal people. They used rafts, simple dugout, or bark canoes, tied-reeds, and similar rudimentary vessels, like the one picture below.

They resemble the canoes used by the Fuegian Yamaná and Alakaluf, and the Chono people of southwestern Patagonia. The reed canoes are similar to those used by the Uros of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. This shows that the ancestral skills of making simple watercraft were shared by all ancient human beings.

They couldn't have crossed the Pacific Ocean in one of these canoes.

The "Kelp Highway"

Another route using calm coastal waters was proposed by Jon Erlandson et al in a 2007 paper (The Kelp Highway Hypothesis: Marine Ecology, the Coastal Migration Theory, and the Peopling of the Americas). In it, they put forward the theory that the kelp seaweed forests along the North Pacific coasts of Asia and North America would have allowed people to find food, on their journey from Australia to Japan, Siberia, Alaska, California. South of this point, mangroves and coral reefs replace the kelp, but, serve the same purpose, guiding the migrants into South America. This kelp highway avoids the risky transpacific oceanic route.

Interestingly, the fuegian people thrived in an area with kelp-rich waters. Kelp algae form underwater forests, which support rich marine life such as fish, sea urchins, crabs, and sea otters. In the North Pacific they were the home of the herbivore Steller's Sea Cow, extinct since the 1700s.

Kelp and seals in the Beagle Channel, Tierra del Fuego. Source

Kelp Forests around the globe. Source

An interesting theory!

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Polynesian - Amerindian admixture

Another post on the contact and admixture between Polynesians and Native Americans. I cite my book's second edition:

A paper published in 2020 found evidence of Amerindian admixture in Polynesian people due to an early “one-time-only” event that took place around 1150-1230 AD in eastern Polynesia. Suggesting that Native Americans from Colombia or Ecuador navigated across the equatorial Pacific Ocean region and reached the Marquesas Islands, which at that time were uninhabited. Then came the island-hopping Polynesians from the west, and they met there, admixed, and then spread across the Pacific. A plausible alternative is that the Amerindians never set sail across the ocean. Instead, the Polynesians kept on sailing eastwards and reached America, where they fraternized with the locals and returned with Amerindian DNA back home. (1)

Human remains from Mocha Island, which is located 30 km from the Patagonian coast in Chile, were analyzed in 2010, and the shape of the skulls “suggests they may be of Polynesian ancestry.” (2)

A paper published in 2016 reported that genetic studies found Ameridian DNA markers among Easter Island Polynesians:

" [This] suggests that some Native Americans arrived early at Rapa Nui, probably as early as AD 1280–1495. Whether they sailed directly from South America to Rapa Nui on their own rafts or whether they came with Polynesians returning from visits to South America cannot be established … but the latter possibility may be the most likely given other evidence of early visits by Polynesians to South America. In any case, our data suggest that some Native Americans arrived on Rapa Nui not long after its first settlement by Polynesians, but long before the island was discovered by Europeans in 1722. (3)

Transpacific or Polynesian contact may not seem relevant, but as we will see in the coming chapters, the myths and legendary beings of the native Patagonians had many similarities to those of the Australians and Polynesians.

Refrences

(1) Ioannidis, A.G., Blanco-Portillo, J., Sandoval, K. et al., (2020). Native American gene flow into Polynesia predating Easter Island settlement. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2487-2.
(2)Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith, E. & Ramirez J.M. (2010). Human Skeletal Evidence of Polynesian Presence in South America? Metric Analyses of Six Crania from Mocha Island, Chile. Journal of Pacific Archaeology – Vol. 1 No. 1. Online.
(3) Thorsby, E. (2016). Genetic Evidence for a Contribution of Native Americans to the Early Settlement of Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. 4. Online.

Additional information

The original paper published in Nature (1), included the following image (it is not included in my book), which shows the two possible explanations on how Amerindian and Polynesians intermingled and exchanged genes 800 years ago).

Click here to see a large sized view of this map

Contact. From Nature (2020). Source

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Polynesian - Mapuche contact: The chickens

Continuing with my previous post on Transpacific contact, I will quote from my book below with some additional proof

From my Book's 2nd Edition

The Araucanian chickens that lay blue eggs. Juan Ignacio Molina described the chickens of the Mapuche, a breed known as Araucana, which he considered autochthonous, as follows:

"The domestic chickens, that the Chileans call Achau are also of the same species that is bred in Europe; there is a persistent tradition about them being here since time immemorial; this can also be inferred from their name in this country’s language, which is lacking in which all other birds of foreign origin. In the past they had been found wild on the mainland, towards the Orinoco River."

J. de Acosta in his História natural y moral de las Indias published in 1590 also suggested that the chickens preceded the arrival of the Spaniards:

"... of the domestic fowl I was marveled by the chickens, because in fact there were [there] before the Spanish went, and a clear indication that there are names of over there, the chicken is called Gualpa, and the egg, Ronto and the same saying that we have, of calling a man a chicken to mark him a coward, is used by the Indians."

The Chilean chickens are special because they lay blue colored eggs, the color is caused by a pigment they produce, called oocyanin, that dyes the eggshell.

Araucanian chickens and their blue eggs.

The linguistic proof is strong, the Mapuche names are completely different to the Spanish ones: chicken = achawal vs. gallina in Spanish, cock = alka achawal vs. gallo in Spanish, and egg = kuram or runtu vs. huevo in Spanish.

The chicken was probably introduced into Chile from the Polynesia, but DNA evidence hasn’t been conclusive, nevertheless, chicken bones found in the Arauco peninsula in Patagonia have been dated to 1364 ± 43 AD, 140 to 180 years before the arrival of the Spaniards.

This adds support to the transoceanic contact between Polynesians and Amerindians.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025by Austin Whittall © 

Easter Islanders met Amerindians before 1492

A study published in Nature in Sept. 2024, reported that the ancient inihabitants of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) admixed with Amerindians before the arrivals of Europeans to their island (meaning that the Native American - Polynesian contact wasn't caused by Europeans taking Polynesians to America or Amerindians to Rapa Nui). It was the Polynesians who reached South America by navigating the Southeastern Pacific Ocean.

This is the paper: Moreno-Mayar, J.V., Sousa da Mota, B., Higham, T. et al. Ancient Rapanui genomes reveal resilience and pre-European contact with the Americas. Nature 633, 389–397 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07881-4

"cs, we detected about 10% Native American admixture (and no European admixture) in all of the 15 Ancient Rapanui—a genomic diversity pattern not consistent with a post-European contact admixture event. We confidently dated this admixture event to about 1250–1430 ce (that is, well before Columbus arrived in the Americas and the 1722 European arrival in Rapa Nui)...
our favoured model gave a range of 1336–1402 ce (at 68.3% probability) and 1246–1425 ce (95.4%). These estimates overlap significantly with the most recent estimates for the peopling of Rapa Nui (1150–1280 ce) and strongly suggest that the admixture event did not pre-date the peopling. Moreover, they show that the Polynesian ancestors of Rapanui were in contact with Native Americans significantly before the first appearance of Europeans on the island (364 ± 41 years before 1722)...
we infer the Native American component in Ancient Rapanui to be most closely related to Pacific Coast South Americans and not North Americans or populations east of the Andes further substantiates trans-Pacific contacts between Polynesians and Native Americans"

This suggests that they reached the Chilean, or Peruvian Pacific coast at a time the Inca Empire was expanding in the region.

Polynesian ship. Source

Easter Island was discovered by the Polynesian people around AD 1250, and it is the easternmost point they reached on their voyages across the Pacific Ocean, settling the islands they reached. It is isolated, 1,900 km (1,180 mi.) further east than the other inhabited islands of Polynesia, and 3,700 km (2,300 mi) west of the South American continent.

This contact probably took place during the discovery phase of Rapa Nui, because materials for building Polynesian vessels may have been lacking on the island (see reported by B.R. Finney: "Sailing back and forth between central East Polynesia and Rapa Nui would have been much more difficult than between Hawaii and Tahiti despite the shorter distance involved. To begin with, Rapa Nui probably never was rich in good canoe-building timber, and as the population grew the island was deforested forcing the islanders to build their small fishing craft out of scraps of wood or out of reeds.")

Polynesians used double canoes (catamarans) rigged with sails. A medium-sized one measured around 20 m (60 ft.) they carried their dogs, chickens, pigs, and gear with them on their journeys across the Pacific.

However, in comparison to the peopling of America c.20,000 years ago, the Polynesians are a recent event. They had reached Tonga and Samoa 3,500 yearws ago, but then stayed there for 1,500 years before setting out, island-hopping eastwards. They then peopled the Marquesas and Society Islands (Tahiti), around 1000 AD, and reached Hawaii, Rapa Nui and New Zealand around 1200 and 1300 AD.

Could other human beings have crossed the Pacific Ocean long before the Polynesians? Setting out from Melanesia, or Australia long ago?

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025by Austin Whittall © 

Parasites and early contacts with America

In 2014, I posted about hookworm and how they could be linked to the peopling of America. Today I came across an article published 37 years ago, that discusses the presence of intestinal parasites in Pre-Contact Amerindians and its implications.

The article is: A. Araújo, Ferreira L. Confalonieri U., and Chame M. (1988). Hookworms and the peopling of America, Saúde Pública 4 (2), June 1988 https://doi.org/10.1590/S0102-311X1988000200006.

The fact that these parasites require warm climates for their life cycles makes it difficult for them to have crossed the Beringian land bridge into America during Glacial times with the freezing weather that prevailed at that time. This raises the question of how did they reach America?

The first explanations were that they came via Europe after the 1492 discovery of America, or from Africa with the slave trade into America, or, from Asia and Oceania with trade during the post-discovery period. However, when these parasites were found in ancient Pre-Columbian remains, so, these explanations had to be rejected.

Below, I quote the 1988 article's most substantial part on the ancient remains and their implications.

"But the discovery of the infection at 7230 ± 80 years in Brazil (Ferreira et al., 1987) is a new fact and two possibilities can be raised. First the transpacific contacts dates from before 7230 years BP (Before Present) and the paleoparasitological data indicates that archaeological research in the Pacific coast of South America may reveal more remote relations with Asiatic population than is known today. Second, if transatlantic migrations were responsible for the hookworm infection in South America, the neolithic people coming from Europe or North Africa introduced the parasite.
It is also to be noted that paleoparasitological data show that navigation technology had been known to man for more than 7230 years.
It is interesting to note that together with hookworm infection two other prehistoric helminth infections, found in human coprolites in America, support these hypothesis: Trichuris trichiura (Pizzi and Schenone, 1954; Ferreira et al., 1980; 1983; Reinhard et al., 1987), and Strongyloides stercoralis (Hall, 1972; Fry, 1980; Reinhard, 1985)."

7,000 years BP is well before Stonhenge or the Egyptian pyramids were bult. This is the Stone age. Did these people have watercraft and the knowhow to navigate them across the Pacific or the Atlantic Oceans? (see my post on the The North Atlantic Route into America).

Stone Age Navigators

Could the parasites have reached the New World during a warmer period in Beringia?

This does not seem feasible because the sea level only remained low enough to form a land bridge during the peak of an Ice Age (Glacial Maximums), and that means freezing temperatures in this polar region.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

On Dogs, Agriculture and Amerindians

TThe oldest dated dog remains in America are 10 150 ± 260 cal BP years old. More or less 10,500 years BP. (Source).

Dogs, forged a symbiotic relationship with humans during our hunter-gatherer days. They shared our prey's meat and fat. However, once we discovered agriculture, and included more complex starches and carbohydrates in our diet, dogs adapted to our new diet.

Natural selection favored dogs who could digest starch, and those who had genes coding for enzymes that degrade carbohydrates fared better than those who didn't.

Nodern dogs have up to 30 copies of an enzyme known as α-2B-amylase or AMY2B, but wolves only have 2. (Source)

This fact could explain the turnover in dog breeds mentioned in my previous post linked to the expansion of maize farming in Central and South America.

The paper analyzed in that post stated that maize agriculture spread into South America with dogs and that there were no dogs in that region before the invention of agriculture, the suggest that the evidence supports that "the spread of agriculture" introduced dogs into South America, and does not support the notion "hat dogs were introduced during the initial peopling of South America by hunter–gatherers...This dispersal happened in a context of early agrarian societies" some 7,000 years BP.

This scenario implies two possibilities:

1. The first wave that peopled South America, 20,000 or more years ago did so before dogs evolved in Eurasia, so of course the didn't bring any dogs into America when they migrated. This first wave of Paleoindians was swamped by a later wave (see this post), and the dogs that they brought with them occupied a vacant niche.
2. Dogs are older than we think, maybe 50 or 70,000 years old (we don't have proof of this, however, a 2023 paper pushes the dog-domestication date back to 40,000 years ago. So, the first wave into America brought dogs, they were adapted to the hunter-gatherer lifesytle of these First People. When farming reached South America, farmers replaced the original human population there, and the second wave of dogs did displaced the dogs of the first wave, which could not digest carbohydrates.

Interestingly, a study reported that a now extinct canid (Dusicyon avus) could produce fertile offspring if mating with domestic dogs. This could explain their extinction some 400 years ago, with successive matings with domestic dogs watering down the D. avus until their genetic pool was lost. However, the authors believe that even though hybridization could have played a role in their extinction, it was caused by the effects of the Europeans on the environment and habitat that led to their demise.

Coincidentially, 400 years ago, the Europeans began displacing the Natives, and this altered their relationship with the environement, as they moved further from the European settlements. Another factor, observed in Patagonia, was that the Natives adopted the more docile domestic dogs introduced by the Spaniards. This verly likely pushed their domesticated foxes into decline, and ultimately, extinction.

D. avus. Source

This paper also found that an D. avus specimen they studied, called CS/91, shared the diet of the humans with which it interacted: "the diet of the CS/91 canid varied from that of other wild carnivores in the region, pointing to a higher intake of C4 resources (probably maize) and a higher distinct trophic level. Furthermore, the isotopic results of CS/91-1 are more similar to the values obtained from adult humans found in the same archaeological context."

It mentions that the CS/91-1 specimen was found in the same burial with human remains:

"it is possible that the fox was intentionally inhumated in this burial context, becoming the first record of a complete skeleton of this fox species buried alongside humans. The co-burial of humans and foxes is a rare archaeological record worldwide and suggests a cultural or symbolic significance. Although the reasons for its inclusion in a mortuary context remain unclear, the most plausible explanation is that this fox was a valuable companion to the hunter-gatherer groups. Its strong bond with human individuals during its life would have been the primary factor for its placement as a grave good after the death of its owners or the people with whom it interacted.
The stable isotope analysis of carbon and nitrogen further supports this interpretation, revealing a similar dietary pattern between CS/91 and the human individuals found in the same archaeological context rather than a typical carnivorous diet. In other words, the hunter-gatherers fully incorporated this wild animal into their ecological and cultural niche, possibly through systematic feeding."

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Dogs and the peopling of America

An interesting article on the arrival and dispersal of dogs in America. It was published last June and has some interesting points regarding the dating of their introduction into the New World. (Aurélie Manin, et al., (2025). Ancient dog mitogenomes support the dual dispersal of dogs and agriculture into South America. Proceedings of the Royal Society, June 18 2025. Volume 292 Issue 2049 https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2024.2443)

I will quote the main points:

Dogs (Canis familiaris) accompanied early waves of people who entered North America at least 15 000−16 000 years before present (BP)... Ancient DNA analyses have shown that all dogs preceding contact with European settlers (hereafter referred to as pre-contact dogs) possessed mitochondrial haplotypes belonging to the mitochondrial A2b clade that is specific to the Americas...
Dogs belonging to the A2b clade spread throughout the Americas, except in the Amazon basin where linguistic data suggest that they were unknown until the Europeans arrived, during the sixteenth century...
The earliest commonly accepted dog remains in Mexico, Ecuador and Peru are dated to 5200−5000 BP...
the reasons for their delayed dispersal in the region remain contentious...
The indigenous American A2b mitochondrial clade, and its associated nuclear ancestry, has now almost vanished from the continent. Pre-contact maternal lineages have only been found in two modern American dogs so far: a village dog from Nicaragua and a Chihuahua from the United States...
Evidence from nuclear DNA indicates that the proportion of Native American ancestry in modern American dogs (such as the Chihuahua and the Xoloitzcuintli) is approximately 3–4% at most

It makes me wonder if there was a large variety of Native dogs and all but the A2b haplogroup was the only survivor.
Did the American dogs suffer from death due to diseases brought to America by the European dogs? Did they die out in droves like the Amerindians did when confronted with new diseases?

Perhaps there were other lineages, vanished and ignored because we have not yet found remains of these dogs?

The authors of this study acknowledge that "To date, archaeogenomic studies of American dogs have largely focussed on North America while ancient Central and South American dogs are poorly represented." So they analyzed canine remains across this region and 42 newly mitochondrial genomes, all of which are part of the A2 lineage. It should be noted that they excluded some dogs belonging to B, C, D, haplogroups assigning them to post-contact dogs.

The authors suggest that maize agriculture spread into South America with dogs: "[evidence supports that ] movement of people and dogs in association with the spread of agriculture rather than supporting the hypothesis that dogs were introduced during the initial peopling of South America by hunter–gatherers. This dispersal happened in a context of early agrarian societies" some 7,000 years BP.

Meaning that dogs and farming went together into South America. There were no dogs there before 7,000 BP

Does this mean that the original Paleoindians living in South America since at least 15,000 BP did so without dogs? They didn't hunt with them, or share their company?

The paper addresses these concerns as follows:

"This long delay is surprising, as human populations were already present in South America for at least 8000 years prior to the arrival of dogs and different hypotheses can be proposed. The earliest fisher–hunter–gatherers that inhabited central America and reached South America may have not found many subsistence advantages from keeping dogs. Moreover, crossing the Central American land bridge required the dogs to adapt to a tropical environment characterized by many new diseases, insects and parasites, and they may have been easy prey for local predators...
Under this scenario, only few dogs may have reached South America during its initial peopling, albeit it is important to note that, to date, no dog remains have been confidently identified in these early settlements. According to the data produced in this paper, this (still hypothetical) early population would have been replaced by the later arrival of dogs accompanying the development of agrarian societies"

It should be noted that both the Chono and the Fuegian boat people had dogs when encountered by Europeans in the 1500s. So dogs did provide subsistance advantages, at least to these natives. These dogs have not been dated, but, they may have reached this region later, after the wave that this paper argues brought dogs into South America 7,000 years ago.

Patagonian Dogs

As I mention in my book's second edition, the first evidence of pre-Hispanic dogs in Patagonia comes from two sites: Angostura site, in Rio Negro Province, on the river of the same name, and in Lihuel Calel, La Pampa, dated to around 1,080 AD. We do know that all Patagonian and Fuegian peoples had “dogs” before 1,080 AD, but they were not necessarily of the modern domestic dog variety (Canis lupus familiaris) derived from wolves. The South American Culpeo and Dusicyon avus fox-like canids were domesticated in lieu of wolves. The remains of the prehistoric dog Canis (Dusicyon avus) have been found across southern Patagonia in Paleo-Indian sites. Avus was a big and wolf-like animal that shared several features with the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) warrah wolf-fox.

Dusicyon avus was the only carnivore that became extinct after the late Pleistocene extinction 2 million years ago, and it died out before the arrival of the Spaniards to America. Why?

It was a large foxlike animal like the culpeo fox (Lycalopex culpaeus) but bigger (weighing around 15 kg – 33 lb.) Its habitat covered all of Patagonia, including the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, and north of it, the Pampas, and parts of the Cuyo region in Argentina.

In 2024, the remains of D. avus that were found in Cañada Seca, Mendoza, were dated to 1,500 years ago. They were buried beside humans. Isotopic analysis showed that it shared a human diet which was different from that of other foxes, suggesting it “could have been a companion, even a pet of the hunter-gatherers […] that lived there.” The study also found that Dusicyon avus didn’t disappear due to interbreeding with domestic dogs. D. avus was “the most commonly identified canid in Fuego-Patagonian archaeological sites until its extinction” around 400 years ago. Something else led to its demise, but what? We don't know.

Current consensus is that dogs were domesticated around 40,000 years ago (source). Could the first Amerindians have reached the New World Before this date? This could explain why they didn't bring dogs with them.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall ©