Tupac Inca Yupanqui's voyage to the Polynesian Islands

This series of posts has been exploring the possible trans-Pacific contacts between Polynesia, Melanesia, Australia, and South America. Until now we have looked at a West to East navigation of Polynesian or Melanesian people, in this post we will learn about the East to West route, and in particular, an expedition sent into the Pacific Ocean by the Inca ruler Tupac Yupanqui around 1470 AD.

There are several sources about this Inca voyage, and we will mention them below, but first, let's learn more about this "Inca" or "Inga" ("Ynga") as the Spaniards of the 16th century called him.

Tupac Inca Yupanqui

The Inca (King, or Emperor of the Inca Empire) Tupac Inca Yupanqui (c.1441-1493) - also Topa Inga Yupanqui and Tupa Ynga Yupanqui, was the tenth Inca to rule the empire, son of Pachacúc (also known as Pachacuti Ynga Yupanqui, or Yngayupanqui - see Murúa Chap. XVII). Although he wasn't the firstborn, his military abilities led his father to name him his successor. He ascended to the throne in 1471 and was succeeded by his son Huayna Capac.

During his reign he expanded the empire south into what is now Bolivia, northwestern Argentina and northern & Central Chile, subduing the Mapuche and setting the southern border of his empire along the Maule River in Chile (see my custom Google map). He also set out to explore the Pacific Ocean.

Tupac Inca Yupanqui. Guaman Poma (1615)

Father Acosta - 1590

José de Acosta in his Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1590) was the first to suggest a trans-Pacific contact and its influence in America and its peopling:

"There is a great account in Peru of giants who came to those parts, whose bones of immense size are found today near Manta and Puerto Viejo... They say that those giants came by sea, waged war against the inhabitants of the land, and built magnificent structures... Those men... were consumed by fire that came from the sky. The Indians of Ica and Arica also tell that they used to sail to islands far to the west, and they sailed in inflated sea lion hides. So there is no lack of evidence that the South Sea was navigated before the Spanish came. Thus, we might think that the new world was inhabited by men whom the harshness of time and the force of the North Winds drove there."

See the location of Ica and Arica in my custom map, these inflated boats are far too primitive to have crossed the ocean to Polynesia, they were used by the Chango-Chinchorro people. Manta and Puerto Viejo, in Ecuador (see my map) are sites mentioned in other chronicles as places visited by traders who came from the west, navigating the Pacific Ocean. Here, Acosta depicts them as bellicose giants.

Sarmiento de Gamboa and the Voyage across the Pacific

The first source is a History of the Incas written by Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa (c. 1530-1592). Sarmiento de Gamboa was a Spanish explorer, navigator, historian, and cosmographer, who arrived in Mexico (Nueva España) in 1555. Two years later (1557) he moved to Peru where he had a close encounter with the Inquisition. Later he joined the expedition of Alvaro de Mendaña that in 1567 set out to explore the South Pacific Ocean in an attempt to find the Terra Australis Incognita. They discovered the Solomon Islands in 1568. The viceroy of Peru commissioned him to write a history of the Incas in 1572 (which we quote further down). In 1578, he tried to capture English privateer, Francis Drake, and ended up exploring the coast of Chile and Southwestern Patagonia all the way to the Strait of Magellan (1579). He continued onwards, to Spain, persuaded the King, Philip II to settle and fortify the Strait and returned to Patagonia in 1581, with men, women, tools, and limited supplies. He established two towns on the Strait, but after he left them, the supply ships never arrived, and the settlers died of hunger and exposure. When Thomas Cavendish sailed by them in 1587, he rescued a sole survivor and renamed the place "Port Famine" (close to what is now Punta Arenas in Chile). During his return to Europe (1584) he was captured by the British, and then by the French. Released in 1588, he returned to Spain where he was named Admiral of the Indies Fleet. He died at sea and was buried in Lisbon, Portugal.

I have quoted his journal on the navigation of Patagonia in my book and in this blog as it is very detailed and includes references about the natives and the fauna. Below I quote Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, Historia de los Incas (p.68).

"And while Tupac Inca Yupanqui was conquering the coast of Manta and the islands of Puna and Tumbes, some merchants arrived there who had come by sea from the west on rafts [balsas
sailing by sail. They told him about the land from which they came, which were islands called Avachumpi and Niñachumpi, where there were many people and much gold. And since Tupac Inca was of high spirits and high ideals, and was not content with what he had conquered on land, he resolved to try his luck at sea. But he did not readily trust the seafaring merchants, for he said that the Capac¹ should not trust so easily at first sight, because those were people who talk a lot. And to gather more information, and since it was not usual to be able to inquire about this just anywhere, he summoned a man he had brought with him on his conquests, named Antarqui, whom all these people affirmed was a great necromancer, so much so that he could fly through the air. Tupac Inca asked him if what the seafaring merchants said about the islands was true. Antarqui replied, after careful consideration, that what they said was true, and that he would go there first. And so it is said that he went by his own means, and explored the path and saw the islands, their people, and their riches, and upon returning, he gave Tupac Inca confirmation.
With this certainty, he resolved to go there. And for this purpose, he built a great many rafts, on which he embarked more than twenty thousand chosen soldiers. And he took with him as captains Huaman Achachi, Cunti Yupanqui, Quihual Tupac (these were Hanan-cuzcos) and Yancan Mayta, Quisu Mayta, Cachimapaca Macus Yupanqui, Llimpita Usca Mayta (Hurin-cuzcos); and he took his brother Tuca Yupanqui as general of the entire fleet, and left Apu Yupanqui with those who remained on land.
Tupac Inca sailed and discovered the islands of Avachumpi and Niñachumpi, and returned from there, bringing back black people, much gold, and a brass chair, and a horse hide and jawbone. These trophies were kept in the fortress of Cuzco until the time of the Spaniards. This horse hide and jawbone were kept by a principal Inca, who is still alive and gave this account. When the others corroborated it, he was present and is called Urco Huaranca. I emphasize this because those who know something about the Indies will find it a strange and difficult-to-believe case. Tupac Inca Yupanqui took more than nine months on this journey, others say a year, and because he took so long, everyone thought he was dead, but to disguise and pretend that they had news of Tupac Inca, Apu Yupanqui, his captain of the people of the land, made celebrations; although later they were interpreted in reverse, saying that those celebrations were of pleasure, because Tupac Inca Yupanqui did not appear; and it cost him his life.
These are the islands that I, in the year sixty-seven, on the thirtieth of November, discovered in the South Sea, two hundred and some leagues west of Lima, on my way to the great discovery of which I reported to the governor and licentiate Castro. And Alvaro de Mendaña, general of the navy, refused to take them.
After Tupac Inca disembarked from the discovery of the islands, he went to Tumipampa to visit his wife and son and prepared to go to Cuzco to see his father, who he was told was ill... "

1. Capac originally meant "rich", but later it was used to denote the lord, prince, high, the rich monarch of the Inca people.

Analysis and comments

Manta, and the Islands of Puna and Tumbes, and Cusco can be seen in our custom Google Map, in northern Peru and western Ecuador.

Sarmiento de Gamboa heard the account firsthand, from a person named Urco Huaranca who appears to havet taken part of the expedition. The trophies had been stored in the Inca Temple in their capital city, Cusco, and had also been seen by the witnesses. However, the Spaniards, with Christian zeal, razed the temple, looted the precious metals and burnt the relics.

This voyage took place before the death of Pachacutec (1471), possibly in 1468-70 so Urco Huaranca must have been extremely old to have sailed with Tupac Inca Yupanqui. It is likely that Sarmiento de Gamboa interviewed Urco Huaranca in 1557, and that Huaranca was young, probably a shield bearer when he sailed, meaning that he was born around 1458 so he'd have been 99 years old in 1557.

I also wonder if this story, and the chance to find gold and silver inspired the South Seas voyage conducted by de Mendaña in which Sarmiento de Gamboa took part, as a captain. They must have imagined that the islands were closer to Peru than they really were.

The Version of Miguel Cabello de Valboa

There is a second version of the oceanic voyage by Miguel Cabello de Valboa (or Balboa) see p. 322, Chapter XVII in Miscelánea Antártica, written between 1576 and 1586, and published in the 20th century. de Valboa (1535-1608) was a Spanish clergyman and writer, great nephew of Vasc Nuñez de Balboa, the man who discovered the Pacific Ocean. His sources differed frmo those used by Sarmiento de Gamboa, yet both stories are very similar. Below is an image with the pertinent text, and further down, its translation into English.

The text shown above, can be seen below, translated into English:

"...and he settled in Manta, and in Charapoto, and in Piquaza… it was where King Topa Inca first saw the Sea, which, upon discovering it from a high place, he worshipped in a very profound way, and called it Mammacocha, which means mother of the lagoons, and he had prepared a great number of the boats that the natives used (which are certain remarkably light poles) and by tying them tightly together, and making on top a certain platform of reeds, woven, it is a very safe and comfortable boat: These we have called rafts [balsas], for having gathered a sufficient number for the people he intended to take with him, and having taken from the natives of those coasts the most experienced pilots he could find, he set sail with the same vigor and spirit as if he had experienced its fortunes and trades since birth. On this voyage he traveled farther than one might easily believe; those who recount the deeds of this valiant Inca affirm with certainty that he remained at sea for a period of a year, and they say that he discovered certain islands which they called Hagua Chumbi and Nina Chubi; whether these islands are in the South Sea (on whose coast the Inca embarked) I will not dare to state definitively, nor what land might be presumed to have been found on this voyage. The accounts that the ancients give us of this voyage are that he brought back from there black Indian captives, and much gold and silver, and also a brass chair, and hides of animals such as horses, and from where such things can be brought, it is completely unknown in this Peru and in the sea that extends from it..."

The Inca grandchildren's account

A third reference is the testimony of Tupac's grandchildren in written in 1569 and published by Rowe in 1985 (La Probanza de los Incas nietos de conquistadores), who as proof of their relationship with the Inca mention his conquests and confirm he discovered "aba chumbi, nina chumbi, province that is towards the sea." Since this predates the other chronicles, it is surely based on historic facts, and different sources too!

Murúa's Account

The fourth source was written by friar Martín de Murúa (1525-c.1617) in his Historia General del Peru that he concluded in 1612, (see Chap. XXI) where he mentions a successful military campaign undertaken by Tupa Inga. He was sent by his father (Murúa names him as Inca Yupanqui) while he was still a prince. This is his account:

" Inca Yupanqui ordered his son and heir, who was to succeed him as ruler, named Tupa Inca Yupanqui, to go to war with a very large army, and so he dispatched him...
Tupa Inca Yupanqui and his brothers left Cuzco with a large army from different nations, and began their conquest in the province of the Quechua... and in the province of the Angares... in the province of Jauja... the province of Huailas... and in the Chachapoyas... and then the province of the Cañares... Continuing his conquest, Tupa Inca Yupanqui arrived at the very powerful province of Quito, where there were great skirmishes and battles with its people, but in the end he defeated and subdued them... From there he went down to the Huancas Vilcas, where he built the fortress of Huachalla, and from there he began the conquest of the Huancas Vilcas, and although difficult, through the multitude of his people and the courage and industry of his captains he subdued them, and their principal leaders, Huacapi Huamo and Manta Yucara and Quisiri to Huachumpi and Nina Chumpi"

The last words of this quote mention the "Polynesian" islands recorded by Sarmiento de Gamboa, Cabello de Valboa, and the Inca grandchildren, with a different spelling, but same sounds: "Huachumpi and NinaChumpi" as the last territories to be subdued after the defeat of the local chiefs in Huancavila. But it says nothing about an oceanic voyage.

Joan de Santa Cruz

The final reference is a historic chronicle by Joan de Santa Cruz, whose Inca name was Pachacutec Yamqui Salcamaygua, written in 1613. He was a christianized native, from a noble Inca family; his paternal family name was originally Condorcanqui. He wrote a history of Peru, and regarding our Inca voyager, there is an interesting text published in Tres Relaciones Peruanas (1879) p. 274.

Joan de Santa Cruz, in a similar way to Sarmiento de Gamboa and de Valboa, he writes about the 8th Inca, "Pachacutiyngayupangui" and mentions his military expedition, naming places jist like Murúa did but in this case the Inca is not Tupac, but his father, who "finally, at the Ancoallos enters the mountains deep inside, taking their idol, and from there the said Pachacutiyngayupangui returns with a great sum and abundant gold and silver and umiña [emeralds]. And coming thus, he arrives at an island of the Yungas where there were mothers of pearls, called churoy-mamam; and he finds much more umiña. And from there he went to the town of the province of Chimo, where he found Chimocapac and Quirutome, curaca of that province of the Yungas."

The "Yungas" was a word used by the Incas to name lowlanders, people who lived on the coast, or in the hollows of valleys (Source), the highlanders were "Serranos". The yungas in this case is the land between Trujillo (Chimu) and Tumbes, along the coast of the Pacific Ocean.

The same Inca conducted another campaign towards the South (Arequipa), "and he entered Cuzco and celebrated, and then they say that he brought into Cuzco a great sum of silver and gold and a whale."

So, in this narrative, we have the Inca, his expedition, but the inca isn't Tupac Yupanqui, instead, it is his father Pachacutui. Who reaches the Yungas with gold, silver and mother pearl, and on a second campaign has a triumph when he returns to Cusco with gold, silver, and the bones or remains of a whale (the horse in the chronicles of Gamboa and Valboa!).

The Polynesian Merchants and Giants

The merchants mentioned in Sarmiento's history are also described in an ancient myth of the Yungas people. Pedro Gutiérrez de Santa Clara (c.1522-1603), was born in Mexico, a creole with a Native American mother; he reached Peru in 1543 and wrote about the Civil War raging there between Pizarro and his associate Almagro over the spoils of the Inca empire. Finally settled in 1554 when the Spanish Crown created the viceroyalty of Peru. In his work Historia de las Guerras Civiles del Perú (Vol. III, Chap. LXI, p. 527) he describes balsa rafts, and the myth of their origin:

"The Indians of the towns of Paita and Puerto Viejo de Tumbes, and of the island of Apuna Puná, and those of the entire coast, have used, since time immemorial and still use today, rafts made of light, dry wood and reeds with triangulated lateen sails and a rudder at the stern. When they want to fish, they board them and go out to sea more than four leagues with the sails set. When the land breeze comes, they catch a fish, pluck out its eyes, and eat it without any disgust...
And after midday, when the tide came in, they returned to land with their sails set and their rafts laden with many kinds of fish. They say further that this way of sailing was learned from their ancestors, and that they, in turn, learned it from a man who had come by sea and arrived there on a raft with sails like the ones they use now. And that this man was called Viracocha, which means sea foam or sea butter, and that the sea begot him and that he had neither father nor mother, and since later the Spaniards arrived in these lands in ships, they are called Viracocha to this day. And that this same man spent a long time among their ancestors, teaching them good doctrine and law, and that afterwards they did not know where he had gone, and that he was a good man, and that he spoke like them; it is understood by the Spaniards that he must have been some disciple of the disciples of the Lord, who passed through here preaching to them."

Viracocha, is similar to the man-god Quetzalcoatl of the natives living in Central America and Amalivaca, of the Orinoco indians. He came from the sea, civilized the natives, and then vanished returning to the sea.

Amerindian Balsa rafts were formidable vessels, the story above says they navigated over 4 leagues into the into the Pacific (22 km or 14 mi.). Below is an engraving (See it online), from 1742, showing a balsa in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

de Santa Clara (see p. 566) also mentions the story of the "giants" who arrived in boats from the West, but gives more details than father Acosta gave:

"The very ancient and old Indians who lived in Puerto Viejo, which are those of the province of Manta, said that in ancient times, when Topa Inca Yupanqui reigned, that while that land was at peace, it was all thrown into turmoil by the arrival of a great number of giant Indians, who were of unusual height and size. And that these came in very large boats or rafts, made of reeds and dry wood, which bore triangulated lateen sails, coming from the direction where the sun sets and from the Moluccas Islands, or the Strait of Magellan, and that these, entering the land, began to tyrannize it, conquering some lands and killing many Indians, and driving others out of their villages. The natives of Puerto Viejo, when they saw these aliens arrive with such great fury and pride, and how they treated them so badly, and how they could not defend themselves against them, were filled with great fear, for which reason they immediately sent word by post to Topa Inca Yupanqui, who at that time was in the city of Cuzco..."

The Inca sent his warlords to tell the giants to submit or they would all be killed, they spoke by signs, and the giants surrendered and told their story:

"These giants told the natives of this land how they had come from some very large islands and lands in the southern sea towards the west, and that they had been cast out of them by a great Indian lord who lived there, who was as large and of stature as they were. And furthermore, that they had sailed the sea for many days by oar and sail, and that a certain squall or storm had cast them into those parts, without knowing where they were going but that fortune would take them wherever it wished, and that they were better off being subjected in foreign lands than free in their own, with continuous wars as they had had there, and so they said other things. The weapons with which these people fought were very large stones, which they threw with their hands, and each stone killed an Indian if it hit him, and with knotted sticks and clubs that they made after they arrived on land, because they did not bring any weapons, because their enemies took them from them by defeat... These gave great news of the many islands they had seen in this South Sea..."

Then they were given land to settle at punta de Tangarata, later named Santa Elena by the Spaniards, it lacked water so the idea was that they die of thirst or leave, but they found water and stayed there. Lacking women, they released their natural instincts by becoming sodomites and God punished them with a ball of fire. Some managed to survive.

Polynesian Rafts

Did the Polynesians have rafts similar to those used by the South American natives? Yes, they did. We have mentioned their sewn-plank canoes and outriggers, but they also used rafts. Frederick William Christian mentions them (Source, see p.200): "The Pahi or raft-boat, which somewhat resembled the Balsa of ancient Peru, and the catamarans of the Chatham Islands, also called Pahi by the natives, the construction of which allows the water to wash through the body of the vessel..." Below is an image of a raft seen in the Mangareva Islands (See Captain F.W. Beechey's voyages in the mid 1820s, and his book, which includes this image); see Mangareva in my custom map. Compared to the South American raft it looks rather primitive, but it shows that large rafts were built in Eastern Polynesia.

F. W. Christian (1932) also noted that these rafts may have had a Peruvian influence: "the well-attested fact of the use by the Mangarevans of a large raft-canoe of non-Polynesian model, is just as decisive evidence in its way, of an alien culture - contact as that of the presence of the outrigger - canoe in Chiloe Island." Evidently Christian favored a two-way trans-Pacific interaction between Polynesia and South America.

Trade between South America and Eastern Polynesia would account for cultural exchange such as the Mapuche chickens, the use of ceremonial adzes, and the dispersal of sweet potato from South America to Polynesia and Melanesia (see this paper about the sweet potato).

The Inca people usd knots tied on strings as a mnemonic technique, they were called Quipu, an identical method was used in Polynesia, and it was found in Hawaii (source) and also in the Marquesas as a memory aid where it was known as too mata (source p.117).

Mythical Tupa in Mangareva and Rafts

Several sources mention a paper by F. W. Christian, published in 1924 (Early Maori Migrations as Evidenced by Physical Geography and Language. Report of the 16th Meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science. Wellington, NZ. p.525) which says that a Mangarevan natives' myth mentions "a chief called Tupa, a red man,... came from the east with a fleet of canoes of non-Polynesian model, more like rafts." Another local account recorded by Peter H. Buck, Peter, 1938 (Ethnology of Mangareva. Bulletin of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum Vol. 157. Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu. p.22), is the following: "An important visitor to Mangareva was Tupa... [he] had a brother, Noe, by a different mother. The two brothers landed at an island named Te Rohau. Tupa killed Noe during a quarrel over who should have Mangareva... the body of Noe was placed on a raft (take take)... Tupa... came to Temoe and built a marae [marae = "temple", "altar"], but finding no food, he sailed on... Tupa sailed to Mangareva through the southeast passage subsequently named Te Ava-nui-o-Tupa (Great Channel of Tupa)... Tupa had many gods and it was he who tahught the people about them. Before he returned to Hiva [Hiva = "distant lands"], he told the Mangarevans about a vast land named Havaiki and Takere-no-te-henua which contained a large population ruled by powerful kings."

This visit took place during the 14th Century (this wold place him in Mangareva 100 years earlier than Tupac Inca's voyage). Interestingly, on page 288, Buck mentions that only the Mangarevans did the rafts take the place of canoes, and gives a detailed desceription of their features (p. 281).

The Opinion of Experts

I read Kon Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl (1914-2002) when I was a child, and its black and white pictures of the balsa wood raft crossing the Pacific were fascinating! Heyerdahl was the first to test the feasibility of his theory, in 1947, by crossing the Pacific ocean from Peru to the Raroia (Tuamotu) using the wind and oceanic currents. He wrote several books and in one of them, Seafaring in Early Peru (1996), written book in both English and Spanish, he looked into rafts, and also mentioned the Tupa myth in Polynesia, and suggested that Mangareva in the Marquesas was the spot viisited by Tupac Inca.

José Antonio Salas García in his thorough and excellent work Travesías Ultramarinas de Tupac Yupanqui (Tupac Yupanqui's Overseas Voyage), Ernst & Young, 2024, suggests that the Inca Tupac used the Polynesian merchants as pilots, and was driven by the oceanic current across the Pacific, and used the counter-current to return. That the balsa wood had been impregnated (palm oil, wax) using a technique known to the Ecuadorian natives, to keep them from becoming waterlogged. That he reached the Marquesas Islands (Mangareva), on their return trip the went by Rapa Nui. The gold and silver were taken by his Generals during military campaigns against the Chimu, the mother pearl could be Polynesian or Ecuadorian, and the hide and bones were either of a whale or a seal. Finally, the "black" people were captives, who were called "yana" in Quechua language, which means "servant" or "slave", and later after the Spanish conquest, it was applied to African slaves, hence its other meaning, "black".

Clements R. Markham (Historia del Peru, 1895, p.34) mentions the navigation and suggests that the islands Tupac visited were the Galapagos: "Yupanqui advanced from Quito to Manta, following the coast north of Guayaquil, and according to Bilbao [sic], he gathered a large number of rafts with which he undertook new conquests. He reached the islands of Nina Chumpi and Hahua Chumpi, which mean Island of Fire and Outer Island. If this curious tradition can be believed, it is likely that these are the Galapagos Islands." Markham had already suggested this in his Discovery of the Galapagos, published in The Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography, Vol 14, No. 5, May 1892 p, 314 identifying them and using the meaning of their Quichua names: "... and discovered two islands which he named Nina chumpi and Hahua chumpi Chumpi means a girdle or encircled space in Quichua hence an island Nina means fire and Hahua outside The Fire Island and the Outer Island Albemarle and Narborough Islands it is supposed With regard to Nina chumpi there is later evidence of the activity of Galapagos volcanoes In 1546 smoke was seen issuing from a crater Darwin saw a small jet of smoke issuing from the summit of one of the craters in 1836."

The Galapagos have a volcano, several islands, but no gold, silver, or inhabitants (see this paper that states they were uninhabited until their discovery by the Spaniards in 1535).

José Antonio del Busto in his work "Tupac Yupanqui" offers two different alternative explanations. The first is that the balsa fleet sailed to the Galapagos Islands. The "bronze" chair could have come from Colombia, where the locals used an alloy that the Spaniards called "tumbaga" that blended gold and copper (and sometimes silver), it was unknown in Peru. The horse head could have been a seal head, a rare thing for a highlander Inca ruler to have seen before, and the black people could have been the dark people seen by Balboa in the Gulf of San Miguel, the Carecuá people (see my post on the "black Indians" that Balboa encountered there). The second is that they reached Polynesia where they captured some Melanesians, the bones and hide belonged to pigs, and the gold, and the bronze chair, absent in Polynesia (no metals there), was obtained on the Colombian coast, when the returned.

Final Comment

This post closes the series on Trans-Pacific contact in Prehistoric America and Polynesia. The index to all of these posts will be posted tomorrow.

Merry Christmas!

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

Did the Polynesians or the Amerindians reach Juan Fernández Archipelago?

The Juan Fernandez Archipelago lies roughly 80°W and 33.5° S, around 700 km west of Santiago de Chile (435 mi.), there are two islands, named for a famous castaway and the character he inspired: Alexander Selkirk Island to the west, and Robinson Crusoe Island to the east.

They were discovered by chance in 1574 when Juan Fernández set sail from Callao, Peru to Chile and decided to avoid the doldrums along the coastal route which extended the voyage duration to up to six months. He sailed west, and then south, shortening the trip to only 30 days, and discovered the Juan Fernandez Archipelago and the islas Desventuradas (Unfortunate Islands) 26°19'S and 80°W.

They were uninhabited, and soon became a stopover on the voyage from the Strait of Magellan to Polynesia. They offered water, food, and vegetation that helped restore the ailing mariners.

Over the following centuries, they were settled and abandoned by Spaniards, Chileans, Peruvians, they faced occupation attempts by the French and British, until finally, they became a Chilean National Park and an UNESCO Biosphere reserve. Work is in progress to protect its endangered fauna and flora, endemic and unique, that has been under siege due to the introduction of goats, cats, rabbits, cows, dogs, and foreign plants. See this book by Vicuña Mackenna (1883) on the island's history.

The question of pre-European discovery and settlement has been addressed, and a paper details the work by Atholl Anderson et al., (2002): Archaeological exploration of Robinson Crusoe Island, Juan Fernandez Archipelago, Chile, January 2002, New Zealand Archaeological Association.

They did not find any artifacts showing the presence of pre-European people on the island, but they found charcoal that is older than 1574, the discovery date of these islands. Fire is always a suggestion of human activity, even though it can occur due to natural reasons (lightning strikes in a dry environment with combustible plant material).

At Cumberland bay, the most sheltered area of the island, and one close to the largest expanse of flat ground in the abrupt island, the authors found charcoal "below the level of modern and historical artefactual remains these suggest that there have been forest firing in the pre-European , around the late first millennium and early second millenium AD. While interesting and potentially significant, they do not provide a strong indication of prehistoric occupation in the absence of cultural remains or of any horizon of charcoal, burnt rocks, etc."

The dates in the table 2 of this paper give these charcoal remains the following dates: 1340 ± 40 AD, 1010 ± 170, and 640 ± 210. The authors say that until the rockshelters are excavated nothing more can be said about prehistoric presence in the islands Nevertheless they consider it unlikely due to several reasons: the great distance from the main Eastern Polynesian bases, a vast ocean with no islands (Only Rapa Nui to the west), and for South American sailors, strong easterly head winds and choppy sea. The conclude "As in the case of remote western islands of Polynesia, occupation was likely to have been either very brief (Norfolk Island) or absent (Lorde Howe Island)."

Robinson Crusoe Island. Source

I am curious why the paper shows a midden at La Vaquería, when it mentions the island sites that they analyzed, but does not mention it in the text. Midden is a dump of refuse, of ancient domestic garbage, coastal midden piles are mainly sea shells piled up by those who consumed them, and accumulated over hundreds, even thousands of years. The term may also apply to more recent dumps or heaps, containing potsherds, bricks, etc.

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

The sewn canoe: a link between Amerindians and Polynesians

The Chumash natives that lived in the Santa Barbara Channel area, near what is now Los Angeles, California, U.S., (see map) built sea-worthy canoes called "Tomol", made with sewn planks of wood.

The word Tomol means "House of the Sea". (Source). The Chumash fashioned the planks from the logs of redwood driftwood which they curved using hot water (a clay pit, filled with water into which hot stones were placed, causing it to boil). They drilled holes along the planks' edges and used cord to lash them together. They caulked it with a blend of pine pitch and tar called "yop" (La Brea tar pits are very close to the sea in Los Angeles). (Source). The Chumash died out around 1850.

The Chumash used the tomol to reach the Channel Islands that are 34 km - 21 mi. from the mainland, and for deep-sea fishing. As the islands in that area were populated around 10,000 years ago, and that would have required sea-going watercraft, it is likely that these canoes are an ancient technology.

A paper by Brian Fagan (2004), The house of the sea: an essay on the antiquity of planked canoes in Southern California. American Antiquity, No. 69+1, p.7) argues they were first built around 8,500 years ago. There is no surviving specimen, though a replica was built (pictured below) based on notes taken by anthropologist John Peabody Harrington from information provided by a Chumash informant, Fernando Librado (1804-1915) who had seen them during his youth.

Chumash tomol (plank canoe) built under the direction of Fernando Librado Kitsepawit for J. P. Harrington : 1912. Source

They were big canoes with several planks used on the side of the hull. Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, who navigated up the coast of California in 1542 wrote a journal and said the canoes he encountered in what is now Ventura, CA, were "Very good canoes, each of which held twelve or thirteen Indians". Impressed by them and their number, Cabrillo called the village there, "Pueblo de las Canoas" (Canoes Village).

Polynesian influences?

The idea was first proposed by Alfred Kroeber in 1939 in his work Cultural and natural areas of native North America (p. 44-45). I cite him below, the underlined text is my highlighting.

"There is a definite climax in this area among coast and island Gabrielino and Chumash, whose culture was semimaritime, with seagoing plank canoes. Although this climax culture was likely to have been further developed locally once it had taken root on the Santa Barbara Islands, its spontaneous origin on the mainland coast and growth to the point where it could reach the islands are hard to understand on the basis of either a Californian or a Sonora-Yuman culture basis. There is therefore a possibility that its impetus came in part either from the Northwest Coast or from across the Pacific, to both of which regions there are sporadic but fairly specific parallels: harpoon, canoe, round shell fishhooks, psychological cosmogony."

Some, however, consider that the know-how was a local development and not imported from Polynesia (see Meroz), furthermore, the date suggested by Fagan is roughly 8,000 years older than the first Polynesian migrations into the Pacific Islands. They predate the appearance of the Polynesians. Arnold also says they are not Polynesian, and preceed them, but places their creation date around 600 AD.

In my opinion there is another alternative: The tomol planks were sewn together using pairs of holes lashed individually. The Polynesians used a continuous sewing, so they differ. However, the Western Polynesians (Samoa) and Melanesians used discontinuous sewing. This suggests the technology used by the Chumash was Melanesian! (Source). This leaves the door open for an early Melanesian trans-Pacific voyage, even 8,500 years ago.

Let's take a look at the Polynesian and Melanesian sewn-plank canoes.

The Polynesian sewn-plank canoes

In 1846, the British government sent a warship, the HMS Grampus, commanded by Captain Henry Byam Martin to investigate the French annexation of the Society Islands. Martin, during his stay in Papeete, Tahiti, in February 1847, Martin wrote about a double canoe made of sewn planks he had seen in Taonoa, two miles from Papeete, which had sailed from what now are the Tuamotu Islands (Pomotoo):

"I walked to Taonoa to see a remarkable double canoe from the Pomatoo islands. It is in fact 2 canoes joined together. Each is about 50 feet long by 5 broad. There is not a nail in them. The logs of which they are constructed are sewn together with bark —and the jOinings are close & neat. The upper works or gunwales are of matting. She is schooner rigged with her masts stepped on the thwarts or connecting boards and I am told these craft stand a great deal of bad weather. Thirty eight persons crossed in her from Pomotoo—about 250 miles."

Below is an image showing it (Source):

Plank Canoe in Tahiti, 1847. Capt. Martin

Abraham Fornander reported in 1880 (see p. 8) that Rev. J. Williams, saw in Tahiti, in 1819, a "large canoe planked up and sewed together whose hold was twelve feet deep" (3.6 m) it had sailed 700 mi. (1,125 km).

Clearly, the Polynesians had mastered the art of building sewn-plank boats. But, what about the Melanesians?

Melanesian Sewn-Plank Canoes

S. Percy Smith, in his work Hawaiki the Whence of the Maori... (see p. 157), published in 1897, described the Alia canoe of the Melanesians:

"The alia is a double canoe and was thus described to me by Mr Kennison a boat builder in Savāi'i. "The biggest canoe of the two is sometimes as much as one hundred and fifty feet in length each end tapers out to nothing; the second canoe is not nearly so long as the first. They sail fast and like the Malay proas, do not go about in beating, but the sheet of the sail is shifted from bow to stern instead. There is a platform built between the two canoes, and both ends are decked over for some distance - the platform a house is usually erected. These double canoes will turn to wind ward very well. The canoes are built up of many slabs joined together with great neatness, and each plank is sewn to the next one with sinnet, which passes through holes bored in a raised edge on the inside of each plank." It was in this kind of canoe that the voyages of the Samoans and Tongans were made... Other accounts I obtained say that the alia was a Tongan design originally, and that the Samoans copied it from them. Again, it is said that the Tongans derived their model of the canoe from Fiji, which brings us back to this: That it probably originated with the ancestors of Maori and Rarotongan... who formed as I believe a distinct migration into the Pacific."

In their excellent book Canoes of Oceania (1938), A.C. Haddon and James Hornell mention (p. 39) that the Melanesians of Solomon Island built four varieties of sewn plank canoes: the mon, lisi, ora, and binabina, none of which had outriggers. The plank-built canoe of these islands did not use sails, they were propelled with oars or paddles, showing that they were primitive.

Haddon, in Vol II - The canoes of Melanesia, Queensland, and New Guinea, goes into many details about the watercraft of this region. It is worth noting that he mentions the Melanesians at Nukumanu atoll (p.69) using driftwood planks (like the Chumash!) sewn together, that could carry up to 20 men. At San Cristoval, they were 30 to 40 ft. long (9 - 12 m), with three strakes (a continuous, longitudinal course of planks along the side of a vessel), and inlaid with shells (coincidentially, the Chumash canoes also had shell inlays - Source). Some could carry 90 men. The text includes the following image with two varieties of sewn-plank canoes from San Cristoval

Plank Canoes of San Cristoval, Melanesia. Haddon

Based on the theories of the late 1930s, Haddon and Hornell suggest that the "kava-people" (here they follow Paul Rivet's theory that mentions them as late arrivals in Melanesia) introduced canoes into Melanesia, they originally used dugouts (canoes made by hollowing out a tree trunk), then improved them and made them more seaworthy by adding strakes and that "this improvement may have led to the evolution of a plank-built boat, in which the original dugout underbody has been reduced to a mere keel." Adding that the "true plank-built boat with inserted rib-frames fastened to cleats on the strakes was employed only sporadically in western Oceania; it had its origin in Indonesia and so can not be regarded as a local development. We consider that it belonged to one of the later spreads from the west into Polynesia."

It is evident that the authors don't consider the Melanesians as capable of developing the sewn-plank knowhow on their own and required a more "civilized" input from Indonesia. I disagree.

The Patagonian Chonos

Not much is known about these people because they became extinct by the mid 1700s. European disease killed them all. The Chono lived south of Chiloe island, in Chile, along the Patagonian coast of the Guaitecas Islands, Taitao Peninsula and the Guayanecos Islands, up to the Gulf of Penas.

They lived in their canoes, the Dalcas. They fished, hunted sea lions and collected shellfish. Their boats were their livelihood.

Dalca: the sewn-plak canoe

The first to mention them was Francisco de Ulloa, who in 1553, sailed south along the Chilean Patagonian coast. In the Chonos Archipelago (45°S) they saw a canoe, on land, "made made of three planks, very well sewn together, 24 to 25 feet (7 meters) long, and the seams had been treated with a bitumen that they make... they were like shuttles with very high tips. (Source).

The Dalca canoe of the Chonos was built with three to five wooden planks which were sewn together with vegetable fibers. They used the wood of the larch (alerce) tree (Fitzroya cupressoides) which was light and did not rot. The split the trunks lengthwise with wedges into planks. They soaked and fired the planks to bend them into shape, and then perforated the holes used to sew them.

Dalca planks. Source

One, conserved at the Stockholm Folkens Museum Etnografiska in Sweden measures 4.26 x 1.00 x 0.51 m (13.9 x 3.3 x 1.6 ft.). There are Spanish accounts of canoes carrying 15 oarsmen and measuring 10 meters (33 ft.) long. They had a rudder, ribs, benches and sometimes masts. They were large like the Chumash Tomols or the Samoan canoes.

A "Dalca", made from sewn planks by the Chonos of Chile

The spaces between the planks were caulked with the leaves of a local plant. There was no tar in the area and no pine pitch to fill the gaps.

José Toribio Medina in his "Aboríjenes de Chile" (1882) quotes Father Diego de Rosales (p. 193) who in the mid 1600s described them as follows:

"They made them from just three boards sewn together, and cut the planks to the length they wanted for the canoe, and with fire between some lockers they bent them as needed to make a boat with a stern and bow, and the one that serves as the floor raises the point at the front and back more than the others so that it serves as the bow and stern, and the rest as the keel. The other two boards, arched with fire, serve as sides, with which they form a long and narrow boat, joining some planks with others and sewing them with the bark of some wild reeds called culeu, crushed from which they make some twisted ropes that do not rot in the water. And to sew the planks they open holes in correspondence with fire and after they are sewn they caulk them with the leaves of a tree called fiaca or teroa which are very viscous and they put maqui bark on top and in this way they make canoes capable of carrying two hundred quintals of cargo [1 quintal = 100 pounds ~46 kg]. They have one in the stern who steers it with a paddle or oar and eight or ten oarsmen and one who is always pumping or bailing with a tray because they are always taking on water."

I have not found any information on the sewing technique, was it continuous or one-on-one? The original dalcas were made to last, and since making a long cord is complicated, it is probable that they used short cords to tie the plank-holes together in a discontinuous way. Later, during historic Spanish conquest times (1700s), inspired by the Europeans, and using iron axes, they made larger ones, and also dalcas that could be taken apart to portage them. They probably acquired European ropes for longer continuous sewing because fewer knots would quicken the process of taking the canoes apart and sewing them together again after the portage. If so, Melanesian, Chumash and Chono canoes were sewn in a manner different to the Polynesian plank canoes.

Discussion

The Chonos lived close to Mocha Island, mentioned in a previous post as a possible beachhead for trans-Pacific voyagers. Another interesting point is that the Chumash and the Chonos despite being 9,900 km apart - 6,150 mi. (in a straight line) or 9,901.62 km (6,152.58 mi) or 12,200 km (7,600 mi) if you take a coast-hugging route, shared the same mtDNA, the D4H3a variety (See my 2014 post mtDNA D4H3a haplogroup): " the D4h3a tends to have a coastal distribution along the Pacific Ocean from Canada to Tierra del Fuego: Canada, California, Ecuador, Southern Chile and Argentina. The Yaghan, Alakaluf, Chono, Cayapa, Chumash, and the man from On Your Knees Cave, all had this haplogroup. They all built sea-going craft: rafts, dugout canoes, bark canoes and "sewn plank" canoes."

However, the D4h3a mtDNA haplogroup is not present in Melanesia. It is found in East Asia. We could suppose that the navigators were a group of men, who traveled without women. Or, if they did, the imprint they left in the local genetic pool was small, and got diluted over the following millennia. The same can be said about their Y-chromosome influence on the local Amerindians.

Regarding plank-canoes, Robert Heizer (1942) is categorical and denies any Polynesian influences in the American sewn-plank canoes: "We may conclude with the summary statement that the Chilotan dalca and the Santa Barbara tomolo, in the light of present information, are each ascribable to local and independent origin."

Could people in different parts of the world develop the same technology independently? Yes, it is very likely. Human minds think in a similar way and find similar solutions to problems (hunting, fishing, farming, etc.)

Could Melanesians cross the Pacific before the Polynesians, some 8,000 years ago, pushed by favorable winds during an El Niño event and reach America? Yes, it is possible.

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

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

The year is coming to a close. It brought many adventures, emotions, experiences, and stuff that make life worth living!

Let's hope that next year will bring us more laughter, togetherness, health, and love. I wish you all a bright New Year, full of joy, peace, good fortune (luck is so important!!), work, prosperity, good health (most important!!) and well spent time with our loved ones and families!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and a very Happy New Year

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

Polynesian skulls found in Mocha Island, Patagonia, Chile

Mocha Island is located 35 km (20 mi) west of the Chilean Patagonian coast roughly 38.5° Lat. South. It is part of the coastal region of the Pacific Ocean in the Arauco area. The island is roughy 13 km long (8 mi) and 5.5 km wide (3.4 mi) and has a surface area of 53 km² (20.4 sq. mi.).

Van Speilberger in Mocha, 1616.. Notice the raft with a llama (lower right) Source

The first traces of permanent population by the Huilliche people of Chile date back to around the year 400 AD, with sporadic presence starting 3,500 years ago. They were known as "Lafkenche", or "people of the sea". The island's name "am ucha" means "soul-resurrect". They navigated back and forth across the channel between the mainland and the island trading with those who lived on the coast. The Spaniards evicted the natives in 1685 to keep them from trading with the Dutch and English ships that sailed through the region. In 1850 people resettled the island.

In 1902 Dr. Luis Vergara Flores was the first to note the similarity between skulls from Mocha Island and Polynesian crania. That year he informed that "I just reported on three skulls from Mocha Island collected by Mr. Carlos Reiche of the National Museum of Santiago. In that study, he concluded that from the western coasts of America westward, the races are Polynesian." The following year, 1903, he published an article about them (1903) in a book about Mocha Island (see Vergara, L. 1903. Tres cráneos de la Isla de La Mocha. In: Isla de la Mocha. Reiche, Carlos (ed.) Santiago: Anales del Museo Nacional de Chile , p.18).

Rocker Jaw, Amerindians and Polynesians

Many years later, Ramírez in 1992 noticed a "rocker jaw" in a skull found on Mocha, pointing out that this is a typically Polynesian feature not found in pre-Columbian Native American crania.

Rocker jaw is indeed a Polynesian feature, a study published in 2021 (Scott GR, Stull KE, Sbei AN, McKinney M, Boling SR, Irish JD. Rocker jaw: Global context for a Polynesian characteristic. Anat Rec. 2021; 304: 1776–1791. https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.24566) points out that "While the rocker jaw is a Polynesian characteristic, the trait is found throughout the world. Within major geographic regions, there are interesting contrasts... Skeletons in South America that exhibit the rocker jaw have been interpreted as Polynesian voyagers who ventured to the west coast of South America. The rarity of rocker jaw in South American natives supports this view." Below is Fig. 2 in this paper, showing a "rocker Jaw" (b) and a non-rocker (a).

Rocker jaws lack the antigonal notch and rock back and forth when placed on a flat surface.

Interestingly one of the jaws found at tje Upper Cave in Zhoukoudian, China "has a rocker jaw comparable to forms found in Polynesia" (roughly 30 ky old), it has not been observed in African hominins (A. afarensis or H. naledi, ergaster, but "it is evident in at least some mandibles, including Atapuerca, La Chapelle aux Saints, and Homo floresiensis... the Old Man from Cro-Magnon, the Mauer jaw, and Old Man 101 from Zhoukoudian."

Rocker jaws appear at a 59% frequency in Polynesia, and is lower in other parts of Oceania: Melanesia, 21%; Micronesia, 5.9%; Australia, 21.7%, and New Guinea, 13.6%. Regarding Africa and the Americas, the values are also very low. America has a north-to-south decreasing cline: Northwest coast, 18.8%; California, 8.7%, Southwestern US, 2.3%; Mesoamerica, 5.7 and South America, 3.1%. North Africa, 17%; Sub-Saharan Africa, 10.2 - 4.8%. Eurasian values are higher East Asia, 26.8%; Jomon, 18.6%; Siberia, 17.1%, Europe, 15.5%.

The paper points out an incongruity with the current notion about how Polynesia was populated: "Given that Southeast Asia was the springboard for the peopling of Polynesia, it is surprising that rocker jaw frequencies from this area provide no harbinger of things to come in remote Oceania. Mainland Southeast Asia has a higher frequency of rocker jaw (0.172) than island Southeast Asia (0.110)... Unexpectedly, Australia and Melanesia have higher frequencies of the trait than Southeast Asia and Micronesia, regions with presumably closer biological ties to Polynesia." Once again a hint at the Melanesian influence on Polynesian genetics and traits.

The authors attribute this high frequency among Polynesians toa comgination of "founder effect and genetic drift... in sum, is the outcome produced by an unusual combination of chance and functional factors." Yet, it does not explain the lack of this trait in South America, among the lowest in the world.

The Mocha skulls revisited

A paper published in 2010 (Matisoo-Smith, E. and Ramírez, J. M. (2009) “Human Skeletal Evidence of Polynesian Presence in South America? Metric Analyses of Six Crania from Mocha Island, Chile”, Journal of Pacific Archaeology, 1(1), pp. 76–88. doi: 10.70460/jpa.v1i1.11.)

analyzed crania from remains found on Mocha. They noticed that some of them were not similar to Patagonian skulls, and instead looked Polynesian:

"Three of the six crania, however, provided results that were geographically inconsistent with their Mocha Island location in at least one or more of the analyses... rhe possibility of admixture of the Mocha Island samples is particularly interesting and we suggest that admixture between indigenous Mapuche populations and Polynesian voyagers is worthy of consideration... Interestingly, the cranium that shows the strongest affiliations with Pacific populations is the one from box 10, which corresponds to El Vergel period (1000–1500 AD)".

In 2011, at Tunquén, Chile, close to the port city of Valparaiso, a press release from the University of Playa Ancha reported: "A dozen skeletons dating back a thousand years were found in very good condition. They exhibited the same morphological features as the archaeological remains discovered in 1990 and subsequent years on Mocha Island, south of Concepción. Some of the bodies presented all or some of the three morphological features that characterize the Polynesian phenotype: a rocker jaw, a pentagonal skull, and the oval shape of the femoral head socket that connects the ligaments to the hip." José Miguel Ramírez (yes, the same researcher mentioned further up) was commissioned to investigate them. Although he did not publish any paper on this remarkable finding, he did say thta: "What's interesting is that we were able to conduct mitochondrial DNA analysis, which would reaffirm the idea of interbreeding, and that the contact wasn't occasional, but rather that there were descendants. The only explanation is that there was a relationship between peoples who spoke different languages, which would also explain the dozen or so Polynesian words in Mapudungun.”."

Transpacific Routes

Some scholars have studied the potential routes across the Pacific, and have used computer simulations to do so, starting with Irwin G, Bickler S, Quirke P. (1990), Voyaging by canoe and computer: experiments in the settlement of the Pacific Ocean. Antiquity, 64(242):34-50. doi:10.1017/S0003598X00077280. 🔒, Finney, Ben, (1994), Putting Voyaging Back into Polynesian Prehistory, Voyage of Rediscovery: A Cultural Odyssey through Polynesia (Oakland, CA, 1994; online edn, California Scholarship Online, 24 May 2012), https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520080027.003.0008 🔒 and Wyatt, S., (2004), Ancient transpacific voyaging to the new world via Pleistocene South Pacific Islands. Geoarchaeology, 19: 511-529. https://doi.org/10.1002/gea.20008 🔒.

The map below, from José Miguel Ramírez Aliaga and Elisabeth Matisoo-Smith (2008) is captioned: " Figure 1. Routes between Polynesia and South America (according to Finney 1994 and Green 1998, 2000). A: Direct route between the Marquesas Islands and Peru (Buck 1938); B: Recommended route for sailing from the Marquesas Islands to Valparaíso; C: Route from Rapa Nui eastward, taking advantage of westerly winds; D: Westerly winds in winter, from Rapa Nui northward; and E: Area of possible return from South America, according to Irwin (1992)."

Possible routes between Polynesia and America. Source

Apparently travel from Polynesia to America was possible and during the ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation)events it would be much faster because it weakens easterlies and increases westerlies, pushing sailing boats towards America. Canoes sailing from Rapa Nui (Easter Island) would end up in the Arauco region of Chile.

There have been El Niño events during the Late Pleistocene and the Holocene, some weak, others strong: "The period of greatest activity was during the Early Holocene when at least six such events took place during a period of ca. 3600 years, beginning near the end of the Younger Dryas ca. 12 000 years ago... No severe events took place during the Middle Holocene between ca. 8400 and 5300 years ago, when a wide variety of other paleoclimate proxy records indicate that the El Niño–Southern Oscillation regime was particularly weak. Since ca. 5300 years ago, four of these severe events have taken place. The Late Pleistocene sequence is constrained by only two dates, which indicate that at least ten severe events took place between ca. 38 200 and 12 900 years ago." (Source)

For a brief but clear explanation of the El Niño event and its causes, and consequences, visit this external site: What is the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in a nutshell? (the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).

Menghin, Osvaldo F (1967) in Relaciones transpacíficas de América Precolombina. Runa X: 83-97. Buenos Aires (Trans-Pacific relations in the Pre-Columbian America), argues that we should not limit ourselves to Polynesians only; there were Mesolithic cultures in Melanesia that could have crossed the ocean as early as 5,000 years ago. He pointed out that:

"First, it was doubted that the peoples of pre-Columbian times, especially the Neolithic ones, already possessed boats and the necessary nautical knowledge to be able to cross the ocean. However, this objection has no basis whatsoever. Ocean currents and winds considerably favor navigation in the Pacific. The equatorial current, which flows eastward, reaches the American coast precisely at the point where biogeographical conditions were very favorable for the acclimatization and diffusion of cultures that came from the tropical zone of Asia (Sauer). We are referring to the present-day republics of Panama and Colombia. One can also consider the route used by the Spanish in their voyages between the Philippine Islands and America, from the 16th century onwards. Taking advantage of the predominantly westerly winds north of Hawaii, they sailed towards California and then along the coast south; On their return journeys, they took a more southerly route, favored by the trade winds. Furthermore, we must not underestimate the navigational skills of primitive peoples, even Neolithic ones, and certainly not those who came later. It is well known that the Polynesians built larger and better ships than those Columbus had at his disposal. The Polynesians' nautical knowledge was also highly developed. It's true that around 2000 BC, the Polynesians didn't yet exist as an ethnic group, and the eastern Pacific was generally unpopulated at that time. But the island world of western Oceania is home to very ancient cultures, some even pre-Neolithic. It must be accepted that the inhabitants of this area were excellent mariners as early as the third millennium BC. Otherwise, they could not have made the voyages to Polynesia, whose settlement—despite Heyerdahl's mistaken ideas—did not occur from America, but from the west. They also knew how to return from America. The pre-Columbian spread of the sweet potato from America to Oceania is perhaps an indication in favor of this supposition."

Cultural similarities and differences

Menghini also noted that some opponents of this idea have said that contact from mainland Asia would have introduced rice or eurasian cereals, and of course the wheel and carts, plus domestic animals. However Menghin does not see this as relevant arguing that the wheel and carts, known in Mesopotamia since c.4,000 BC only reache Egypt around 1,600 BC. Carrying domestic animals across the Pacific into America would have been an improbable feat, yet Amerindians knew the art of domestication, doing so with the llama in Peru, Bolivia, and Chile (where it was known as chilihueque). Dogs could have arrived in their boats. Finally, regarding cereals chia, amaranth, maize, beans, potatoes, tomatoes, peanuts, peppers, offered a better alternative for cultivation in American soil.

I agree, the wheel or the cart is useless in the dense Papuan jungle and the rocky and sandy Polynesian islands, the Melanesians didn't use them, and they did not cultivate rice. They thrived on the produce of their own ecosystem, farming sweet potatoes, bananas, sago, yams, taro). The Melanesians could have carried their agricultural skills with them across the Pacific. Interestingly, this would avoid the need of having to reinvent agriculture in America, starting with a band of hunter-gatherers that trekked across Beringia who then discovered agriculture in America and domesticated corn, and other plants there, after coming from a 100% pre-agricultural society.

In a previous post, we have mentioned the similarity between the Polynesian ceremonial adzes and the "toki" of Mapuches, the article by Ramírez Aliaga and Matisoo-Smith (2008) noted this similarity and others. The authors suggest they were caused by cultural contact, and that they are not convergent discoveries (same cultural traits in different parts of the world, that arise by chance).

And also, the Polynesian chicken bones found very close to Mocha Island, in the Arauco peninsula in Patagonia. These bones have been dated to 1364 ± 43 AD, 140 to 180 years before the arrival of the Spaniards.

Other cultural similarities (and they are many!) are the communal work ("minga" in Mapuche language, and "umanga" in Rapa Nui), the pit ovens (a hole dug in the ground, that uses hot stones to cook food. It is called "curanto" by the Mapuche, who still use them, and one has been dated at 6,000 years of age, in Puente Quilo. Polynesians also use them ("Umu" in Tonga and Samoa, Imu in Hawaii, and Hangi in New Zealand). Interestingly, the Polynesians didn't exist six thousand years ago! Finally they mention the "dalca", a canoe made from three planks sewn together, and caulked, used by the Chono people in Western insular Patagonia, and the Veliche of Chiloé Island, is found among the Polynesians and the Chumash natives of California. We will explore the sewn-plank canoes in a future post.

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

New Paper: An early peopling of Australia

Update for my Oct. 5, 2025 post, Lake Mungo man revisited: maybe the Aboriginal people were not the first to reach Australia. A study published on Nov. 28, 2025 has uncovered interesting information on the date that humans reached Australia, and their interactions with archaic humans in Southeast Asia.

The paper is Francesca Gandini et al., (2025) Genomic evidence supports the “long chronology” for the peopling of Sahul. Sci. Adv. 11, eady9493 (2025).DOI:10.1126/sciadv.ady9493

The paper explores when modern numans settled in Sahul, a landmass that spanned Australia, Tasmania, Papua New Guinea, and smaller islands on the now submerged continental shelf (under the sea since ice melted at the end of the last Ice Age). It aimed at validating the "long chronology" with an arrival around 60 to 65,000 years ago, against the "short chronology" which proposed an arrival 47 to 51,000 years ago.

The authors analyzed DNA and used a genetic clock to time the arrival, which they place around 60,000 years ago. They also found that people arrived using two entry routes.

I have expressed my doubts about the accuracy of genetic clocks in several posts (See the useless genetic clocks), but let's look into this paper and its findings.

Near Oceania was peopled early

The authors found that " We also draw Oceania together with Sahul, finding that Near Oceania was first settled at around the same time as Sahul, followed by intense ongoing exchange." This is interesting as we find that people who used watercraft were already living in Near Oceania (New Guinea, Bismarck Archipelago, and the main Solomon Islands), 60,000 years ago. And would have had plenty of time to cross the Pacific Ocean and reach America!

The molecular clock

The time is set by the exit from Africa which this paper sets by defining the age of mtDNA haplogroup L3 "the African ancestor of all non-African mitogenomes" at 73 to 89,000 years old. This date "robustly precludes any contribution to the modern non-African mitochondrial pool from earlier dispersals before 90 ka, as proposed by some researchers." Which is a limitation. The ages could actually be older, humans left Africa in different waves over the past 200 ky.

The date for Y-chromosome haplogroups is similar; the paper states that "non-African lineages diverg[ed] from ~71 (63 to 81) ka."

The paper used ADMIXTURE tools to analyze genome-wide data (see my comment on this type of tool).

The authors admit the bias and the need to "define" initial parameters by hand: "The Bayesian approach has some problems that have received little attention. In practice, it gives extremely variable outputs, such that any given rate is hard to replicate. The outcome depends on precisely which samples are included in the calibration; even with similar sets of samples, the estimated rate can be very different, and biases appear toward the ages of the predominant samples used in the calibration. Moreover, in the cases of ages in the range 40 to 80 ka, there are few calibration points... In addition to age bias, there is also a profound geographical and phylogenetic bias: Only 2 out of 12 samples used were non-European, and only Tianyuan belongs to haplogroup N. Moreover, one sample (the Iceman) was inadvertently uncalibrated, reducing its age by >12%. Although subsequent calibration attempts have been made with more samples, these have exacerbated the biases."

In the "Materials and Methods" section the phylogenetic analyses and molecular clock dating assumptions and adjustments are explained, like: "We converted mutational distances (both ML and ρ) into years using the substitution rate of about one mutation every 3624 years for the entire mitogenome and correcting for purifying selection using the calculator provided by Soares et al."

The paper suggests a "Northern Route": from Borneo to Sulawesi (Celebes), Banda Archipelago and into Western Papua, and reaching Australia via the Cape York Peninsula in Queensland. The "Southern Route" went from Java, to Sumatra, Sunda, Flores, and Timor, reaching Australia through Arnhem Land and northern Western Australia.

It also mentions archaic admixtures: "The connection of Sahul populations to Aboriginal Philippine groups is reinforced by the presence of distinctively high levels of Denisovan-related archaic-related introgression in both, possibly relating to interbreeding with Homo luzonensis, in the Philippines, and Homo floresiensis, in Wallacea, or even within Sahul itself."

I always like to focus on the oddities, the things that authors point out as "remarkable"or, in this case, "notably", it is the following:

"We also included in this analysis our Iron Age sample from Sulawesi, which carries the Papuan mitochondrial Q1l lineage, alongside 17 further genomes from ancient Wallacea, including a pre-Neolithic sample from Sulawesi (41, 42) (fig. S8). Notably, despite its clear Papuan mtDNA ancestry, the Iron Age sample was the only archaeological sample from Wallacea to carry no discernible Oceanian autosomal ancestry. This result is confirmed by PCA (fig. S9). This indicates both that ancestry from New Guinea, while ancient (41), was not ubiquitous in prehistoric Wallacea, but possibly (at least, since the spread of the Neolithic) restricted to coastal regions, and that sufficient time had elapsed for the ancestry represented by the maternal lineage to have been “washed out” of the autosomal genome in this individual."

This means that the original, Papuan mtDNA was found in an Iron Age (1700 BP) person in Sulawesi, yet it lacked the autosomal (all the other chromosomes) that would mark it as an Oceanian, it carried the input of other non-Oceanian people that diluted its ancestral autosomal DNA. This seems quite obvious since the ancestors of modern Polynesians made their way across this region in recent times, on their way to the Pacific Islands.

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

Aboriginal New Zealand Natives (before the Maori)

The article published in 1910 that was shared in a recent post mentioned moa bones in middens that were discovered in New Zealand in the mid to late 1800s. These were attributed to a pre-Maori people. Nowadays such notions are frowned upon, having been effectively silenced by the Maori people. Let's look into this and other information about an "original" ancient population living in New Zealand. People who arrived there long before the 1600s, when the Polynesian Maori people reached these islands.

Julius von Haast in his Geology of the Provinces of Canterbury and Westland, New Zealand A Report Comprising the Results of Official Explorations, published in 1879, mentions these original people which he calls "Moa Hunters". Below is a quote starting on page 424 of his book, I highlighted some parts of the text by underlining them.

"Considering the Moa hunters from an anthropological point of view it is of the utmost difficulty at least for the present to state with any degree of exactness if they belonged to a race different to the Polynesians who according to the traditions of the natives now inhabiting these islands immigrated to New Zealand some six hundred years ago in a number of canoes from Hawaiki or if the mixed character exhibited in the Maoris has been imported with them this having been caused by intermixture with Melanesians and Negritos on their advance towards New Zealand.
It would be beyond the scope of this chapter to bring all the evidence forward which has been adduced from both sides to prove the one or the other some of the principal traditions are however here given The late Rev Richard Taylor states in the second edition of Te Ika a Maui from what he considers reliable traditions that the Hawaiki immigrants not only found when they landed on the coast of New Zealand a black Melanesian population but they also discovered kitchen middens with Moa bones and flint implements.
If these traditions can be relied upon it shows at any rate that the black race before the arrival of their successors had been hunting and probably extirpating the Moa. So, when relating the tradition of Manaia Taylor quotes from Sir George Grey: "-When he arrived at Rotuhu at the mouth of the River Waitara, he stopped there and behold there were people even the ancient inhabitants of the islands but Manaia and his followers slew them. They were killed and Manaia possessed their abode, he, his sons, and his people of those men that Manaia and his followers slew, that the place might be theirs."
According to Taylor the same is recorded of Turi who "went on shore and dwelt at Patea and slew the inhabitants thereof" (page 14). This aboriginal race was remembered as the Maero and Mohoao or wild men of the woods (page 15). Enumerating on page 290 the arrival of the original canoes in New Zealand he adds a footnote to No 12: Te Rangi ua mutu which came to Rangatapu: "On the arrival at that place they saw stones like English flints and Moa bones. It is there that I also discovered a large quantity of the bones of the Dinornis. The stones were the stone flakes used as knives which are still there found by the side of the ancient ovens a proof of their having belonged to a more ancient race than the Polynesian"
The Rev W Colenso FLS in his excellent essay 'On the Maori races of New Zealand' Vol I, Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, on page 394 answers the question, Were there autochthones? -as follows. "Possibly or rather very likely- (a) From the fact that no large island like New Zealand however distant from the nearest land is uninhabited. (b) From the fact that nearly all the numerous islands in the Pacific though vastly smaller in size teem with population. (c) From the fact of a remnant at present existing in the Chatham Islands the nearest land to New Zealand of a race which is allowed by the present New Zealander to be truly aboriginal and before them in occupation. (d) From their traditions and fear of wild men in the interior. (e) From the allusions and even direct statements in their traditionary myths of their having found inhabitants on their arrival in the country both at Waitara on the west coast of the North Island and at Rotorua in the interior. But if there were which appears very probable they have been destroyed or become amalgamated with the present race".
So far for the Northern Island. The traditions of the South Island according to the valuable researches of the Rev James W Stack, published in Vol X of the "Transactions of the New Zealand Institute" are not so distinct. but it is nevertheless evident that before the Waitaha went to dwell in this Island other tribes of people had been in existence. Mr Stack calls the traditions concerning the first fabulous and the second uncertain. He states that the Kahui Tipua or ogre band, a mythical race, are said to have been the first occupants of this land, they are described as giants and sorcerers They were succeeded by Te Rapuwai or Nga ai tanga a te Puhirire, who have left traces of their occupation in the shell heaps, found both along the coast and far inland. Then follows Waitaha one of the original immigrants from Hawaiki, the founder of the tribe who came in the canoe Arawa; he or his immediate descendants peopled the South Island. they are consequently the first inhabitants claiming to have been immigrants from Hawaiki...
To sum up the evidence as to the presence and mode of life of quaternary man in this part of New Zealand the following points may fairly be considered to have been so far proved:-
1. There existed in quaternary times an autochthone race in New Zealand having like the present inhabitants more or less strong affinities with the Melanesian type.
2. This race hunted and exterminated the Moa including in this native word all the different species of the Dinornithiae.
3. Banks Peninsula was at that time either an island or if already a Peninsula the driftsands now fringing the sea shores north of the Peninsula were in some localities several miles narrower than they are at present.
4. The quaternary population did not possess a domesticated dog.
5. A species of feral dog was contemporaneous with the Moa hunters and was killed and eaten by them. No gnawed bones of any kind were ever found in the kitchen middens.
6. The total absence of any bones of Ocydromus Australis Weka in the kitchen middens is very striking.
7. The Moa hunters used both polished and chipped stone implements.
8. They cooked their food in the same manner as the Maoris of the present day do.
9. They were not cannibals.
10. They did not possess implements of greenstone Nephrite.
11. There are some native traditions although of a mythical character that one or several races inhabited this island before the arrival of the first immigrants from Hawaiki if such an immigration is admitted
12. A considerable period of time elapsed as evidenced by an examination of the deposits in the Moa bone Point Cave and in some other localities before the shellfish eating population appeared on the scene.
13. The kitchen middens of the Shellfish eaters following a line nearly parallel to the present coast line are also ascribed to have been formed by a somewhat mythical people."

Portrait of a Maori man, before 1880. Source

Genetics and the Maori People. Y-Chromosome, the male lineages

A paper published in 2006 (Manfred Kayser, et al., Melanesian and Asian Origins of Polynesians: mtDNA and Y Chromosome Gradients Across the Pacific, Molecular Biology and Evolution, Volume 23, Issue 11, November 2006, Pages 2234–2244, https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msl093) suggests an early Melanesian presence in Polynesia:

"The fact that there is extensive sharing of Asian haplotypes, but not Melanesian haplotypes, between Polynesians and Melanesians today, therefore, could indicate that Melanesian haplotypes were present earlier in Polynesia (perhaps in Fiji), leading to greater divergence between Polynesians and Melanesians for haplogroups of Melanesian origin than for haplogroups of Asian origin".

The typical Y-chromosome haplogroup found in Melanesians and also in Polyesians at high frequencies is C2a-M208, formerly known as C2b (Source).

An article published in 2022 (Tätte K, et al., Genetic characterization of populations in the Marquesas Archipelago in the context of the Austronesian expansion. Sci Rep. 2022 Mar 29;12(1):5312. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-08910-w. PMID: 35351918; PMCID: PMC8964752.) confirms this genetic marker found in Polynesian men, as Melanesian:

"The most abundant Y chromosomal haplogroup in the Marquesas Islands of Nuku Hiva, Hiva Oa and Tahuata is C2a-M208 (37.9%) of Melanesian origin ... considering that C2a-M208 is the most abundant Y-chromosome haplogroup in West and East Polynesian, we performed a Median Network analysis ... In addition age estimations were generated. The Median Network exhibits a star-like topology made up of one central and two secondary major nodes from which individuals from different populations radiate-out in multiple lineages to generate the network ... No intra- or inter-population substructure is seen with the exception of the Maoris in which most of its individuals segregate distinctly into one specific sequential lineage ... The age estimations of the C2a-M208 lineage for the populations in the Network analysis provide equivalent values except for the Maoris of New Zealand, which exhibit values approximately twice or more than the other groups (Supplementary Table 22). The age of C2a-M208 based on Y-STR variability data for the Maori is incompatible with the radiocarbon dating of archaeological sites, which indicate that Polynesians settled New Zealand by about 740 ya. Data indicating rapid spread of populations over 12,000 km of coastline and high diversity in the mtDNA of first generation settlers suggest that New Zealand was the target of a planned mass migration out of East Polynesia during the first decades of the fourteenth century. It is likely that such colonization by large number of individuals may have carry high levels of genetic variability within the Y-chromosomes reflected in the high diversity levels of C2a-M208 chromosomes in the Maori population relative to the other Polynesian and Polynesian outlier groups examined."

The final paragraph tries to explain the highly diverse and old age of the Melanesian haplogroup found in Maoris by suggesting a massive migration with many people (to overcome a founder-effect and bottleneck in the population). A simple explanation is that they met an ancient, diverse population of Melanesian original people. The older age of the New Zealand C2a-M208 confirms the presence of an original population there.

There is additional support for an early Melanesian presence, suggested by a paper published in 2006 (Kayser, M., Stoneking, M., et al. (2006). Melanesian and asian origins of Polynesians: mtDNA and Y chromosome gradients across the Pacific. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 23(11), 2234-2244. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msl093). Below is the relevant information:

"However, no haplotype sharing between geographic regions was observed for haplogroups C-M208 and M-M4, which are of Melanesian origin, and only one haplotype (2%) was shared between one Fijian and one Melanesian for K-M9, suggesting a more ancient spread of those NRY haplogroups from Melanesia to Polynesia."

mtDNA, the maternal lineages

A similar discrepancy was reported by a paper published in Nature this year, but instead of studying male markers, it focused on the matrilineal mtDNA markers (Almeida, M., Gandini, F., Rito, T. et al. Leveraging known Pacific colonisation times to test models for the ancestry of Southeast Asians. Sci Rep 15, 37044 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-20856-3), the authors noticed two sets of data where the appearance of the "Polynesian Motif" is older than expected, for New Zealand the age was calculated at 2,060 years BP, while archaeological sites are not older than 675-700 years (See Table 2 in the paper).

"The two sets of exceptions are in Near Oceania, prior to the Lapita expansion, where the emergence of the motif predates the emergence of Lapita, and Niue, Tuvalu and Aotearoa/New Zealand...
In the case of Aotearoa (New Zealand), the situation is different, as these islands have one of the best-defined chronologies for settlement in Oceania. We suggest two possible explanations for the discrepancy in this case. One is that we lack data from what may have been important stepping-stones between the available genetic source populations and Aotearoa, such as the Kermadec Islands, which could have been a direct source, although archaeological or oral historical information suggests settlement from Central East Polynesia (Cook Islands, Society Islands). There are no genetic data available within a radius of up to 2,000 km around New Zealand. Some diversity might have emerged in an intermediate source, some source diversity might have been lost due to partial resettlement, and specific haplotypes might have increased in frequency due to founder effects when moving south into Aotearoa. Another strong possibility is that the data might contain some sequencing or transcription artefacts (i.e., artificially induced “mutations” introduced by error) that have raised the founder estimate. For example, the rare non-synonymous mutation 6261 A appears twice independently in two different subclades of the Aotearoa dataset of only 22 samples."

When facts are explained away suggesting they are artifacts due to error, or insufficient data, then there is something weird in the theory. The other discrepancy, Niue (2,400 km - 1,500 mi. north of NZ) also has older dates than expected.

Kayser, M., Stoneking, M., et al. (2006) mentioned further up (Melanesian and asian origins of Polynesians: mtDNA and Y chromosome gradients across the Pacific) also noticed an ancient mtDNA of Melanesian origin among Polynesians:

"With respect to mtDNA haplogroups, there is again sharing of haplotypes between Polynesians and Melanesians for Asian haplogroups B4a and PM, whereas there is no sharing of haplotypes between Polynesians and Melanesians for the Melanesian haplogroup M28, suggesting a more recent spread of mtDNAs from Asia into Polynesia and a more ancient spread of mtDNAs from Melanesia into Polynesia."

Closing Comments

Kayser, M., Stoneking, M., et al. (2006) summarize these differences clearly and explain these apparent "discrepancies":

"If Polynesian ancestors did migrate to coastal/island Melanesia from Asia, mixed with coastal/island Melanesians (thereby obtaining Melanesian Y chromosomes and mtDNA types and leaving behind "Asian" Y chromosomes and mtDNA types), and then left Melanesia and colonized Polynesia, then the degree of haplotype sharing should be the same for haplogroups of Asian versus Melanesian origin because there was a single "separation" of an ancestral group of Polynesians from ancestral Melanesians. The fact that there is extensive sharing of Asian haplotypes, but not Melanesian haplotypes, between Polynesians and Melanesians today, therefore, could indicate that Melanesian haplotypes were present earlier in Polynesia (perhaps in Fiji)"

It seems pretty clear that Melanesians reached the islands of New Zealand long before the ancestors of the Polynesian Maoris. When they arrived will remain a mystery until serious research is conducted on the field, looking for remains older than the 17th century. It is exciting to imagine Melanesians reaching NZ on boats 10,000 years ago. They could have also headed east, spreading into the vacant islands of the Pacific, and who knows, continued on to South America.

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