Paul Rivet (1876-1958) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist, founder of the Musée de l'Homme, who is well known for his theories about the peopling of America from Australia following a coastal Antarctic route, and Melanesia using a Trans-Pacific route. Both waves complemented the original Asian migration through Beringia.
The idea of an "Oceanian" origin for the American Natives was first suggested by Benjamin Hornor Coates [4] in 1834, he mentioned the Malayan "race", a name used at that time that encompassed the people of the South Seas that we now call Polynesians. Below is a short quote from his work:
"The Malay. Scattered throughout a space of about one hundred and forty degrees of longi- tude, or about two-fifths of the circumference of the globe, from Madagascar to Easter Island, in the vicinity of America... this singular people have justly received the epithet Oceanic. Their colonies have been the most widely disseminated upon the face of the whole earth... We see nothing, therefore, in the features of the Indians which forbids their descent from Malay colonists."
John D. Baldwin (1872) analyzed who could have peopled America, contemplating the Phoenicians, the Lost Tribes of Israel, Atlantis, and of course, the Malayans (Polynesians): "Another hypothesis, much less improbable, though not satisfactory, is that civilization was brought to America in ancient times by the Malays." (online p.167).
Aleš Hrdlička (1869–1943) who championed the Beringian route, strongly criticized any other alternative migratory route. See his analysis and rebuttal of the Melanesian-Australian origin here in his article "Melanesians and Australians and the Peopling of America" (1935).
Others, however, in opposition to a single source for Amerindians, other scholars proposed a multiethnic origin (not only Siberians or Asians, but other "races"). They agreed that linguistic, cultural, and skeletal resemblances showed a link between Polynesians, Melanesians, Australians, and Amerindians.
This position was supported by De Quatrefages (source), who compared the Lagoa Santa skulls of Brazil with those of Melanesians, Ten Kate (source) who found similar coincidences with Southern Californian Pericue natives' skulls. There was also Richard N. Wegener, who believed that some Bolivian natives like the Siriono showed Melanesian traits. We also have Paul Rivet and Mendes Correia who proposed Melanesian and Australian origins for the Amerindians.
Antarctic Route
Portuguese anthropologist Antonio Mendes Correia (1888-1960) embraced the theory put forward by Wegener in 1912, that continents drifted apart after the breakup of an initial supercontinent, Pangea. Continental drift was rejected as no mechanism could be found to cause such colossal movements. It would take nearly 60 years for the plate tectonics theory to appear and explain the drift. Until then it was very difficult to explain (see this article as an example) how the Southern Beeches (Nothofagus) and the Monkey Puzzle species (Araucaria), as well as some marsupials and the Galaxiidae fish lived in Patagonia and in Australia, Papua New Guinea, and Melanesian Islands.
In 1926, Correa wrota about an Antarctic link between Australia and America which humans could have crossed: "There remained the possibility of human passage, which would more easily traverse small straits and channels and take advantage of isthmuses, peninsulas, and islands that marked, as some still do today, the previous continuity of these continental masses. "[1]
That same year (1926), Paul Rivet [2] put forward the same idea, adding that the larger ice cap covering Antarctica during the last Ice Age would have provided additional support for the trip across the South Pacific. Rivet stated that:
"Certainly, the definitive adoption of my hypothesis requires prior objective documentation of human use of this route. However, it is to be hoped that such documentation will be obtained in the future, many of which are perhaps buried beneath the mysterious ice of the Antarctic lands.
...
I do not dispute the conjectural nature of several of my considerations. One would not dare to present as already established the transit route whose hypothesis I have put forward. But I do not hesitate to consider it legitimate and very likely."
Polynesians or Melanesians in America?
We know that the human beings reached the region of Melanesia (New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, and New Caledonia) and Australia and Tasmania some 50,000 years ago. These were the dark-skinned Australian aboriginals and Papuans (Australasians). Much later, c.3,500 years ago, Austronesian farmer groups reached the area. These would later expand eastwards to discover and populate Polynesia. So there is a long period of time for the ancient Melanesians to have moved across the Pacific into America.
There are some (see this blog) who believe that Melanesians may have reached New Zealand and even the Chatham Islands (becoming the Moriori people there) long before the arrival of the Maori people c. 1250-1300 AD. However this theory, acceptable in the early 1900s, is now disputed, and considered pseudoscience and possibly racist as it denies the Maori their "first people" status.
I have posted about Polynesians in America on several ocasions, to which I will add another bibliographic reference: Nordenskjöld, who wrote in 1931 about the "Oceanian" artifacts in South America including a Table with 49 coincidences between Amerindian and Oceanian cultures [3]:
" As is well known, we find in South America quite a number of culture elements of which parallels are found in Oceania. These we may call "Oceaman", although this certainly does not imply any proof that they have been wmported into America from Oceania. These "Oceanian" culture elements may derive their origin from the crew of some weather-driven vessel, because the possibility of such having landed upon the coasts of America is not entirely to be disregarded, as Friederici has fairly convincingly shown. Some of them may also originate directly from actual immigrations of exceedingly remote date into South America from across the ocean.
...
In Table II hereto appended are enumerated a number of such elements as might possibly be “Oceanian”’ because of their occurring both in Oceania and America."
Is the Antarctic Route Feasible?
The Antarctic route seems to be dangerous and almost impossible: glaciers, ice sheets, frigid rough ocean, no food or wood to light fires. Was the Antarctic route viable?
Back in 2012 I post on this subject: Circling Antarctica and getting into America. Today I will revisit it with more information.
Convey and Stevens (2007) suggest that there is evidence to "support the existence of ice-free biological refuges at least from 1.8 million to 10,000 years ago. Evidence preserved from volcanic eruptions below the ice now also allows for the possibility of low-altitude ice-free land at glacial maxima." There has been Grass in the Antarctic for at least 120 ky (or even 300 ky) according to genetic data, and even bugs like springtails and chironomids have survived for millions of years in its icy landscape.
In 1985, the remains of a Yamana woman aged 21, were found on Livingston Island, 62°3'S 60°30'W, 809 km (503 mi.) south of Cape Horn, it forms part of the South Shetland islands on the Antarctic Peninsula. In 1977 two stone spear points in 1977 were also found there, though they were later said to have been planted there and therefore fake. (Source), the remains however were authentic. Her skull was found later (< a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10429337/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Source) and dated to the early 1800s. The authors suggest the woman was part of a sealing expedition and either died at sea, and her body washed ashore, or was buried there by the crew. However, it could be possible she was on a canoe that drifted (or was deliberately taken) there from Tierra del Fuego across the treacherous choppy waters of the Drake Passage.
In my book, while discussing the Warrah Wolf-Fox of the Falkland⁄Malvinas Islands, I pointed out that there is archaeological evidence showing that the islands, located 450 km (280 mi) from the Patagonian mainland, were visited by Paleo-Indians or even Fuegians. "A 2021 study supports that humans visited the island before their discovery by Europeans based on different pieces of evidence, such as Darwin’s comment that “the old canoes which are occasionally now stranded, show that the currents still set from Tierra del Fuego.” There are fossil charcoal remains, some 4,800 years old, suggesting man-made hearths, and a stone arrowhead discovered in 1979 made from local stone using Fuegian native stone knapping techniques."
The Fuegian canoes were sturdier than we imagine, and probably there is more evidence out there in the Antarctic and the islands that surround it (South Georgia, South Orkney, and South Sandwich Islands).
There are some references on the internet about Fuegian myths regarding the Antarctic as you can see in this example: "The Fuegian Amerindians Aush, who, upon migrating from other lands to the southern Fuegian region, found the "land of ice," which could be the archipelagos located north of the Antarctic coast." But when I checked my library (Canclini, Arnoldo, Leyendas de Tierra del Fuego - Mitos de los onas y yaganes, aborigenes fueguinos, and Beauvoir, José María, Aborígenes de la Patagonia. Los Onas: tradiciones, costumbres y lengua), I didn't find any legends or a refrence to this Aush-Antarctic myth.
In Oceania, the Polynesians occupied, and later abandoned the Auckland Islands, some 465 km (289 mi.) south of New Zealand's Southern Island (50.7°S 166.1°E), this was the southernmost point reached by the Maori navigators. However, a 2021 paper gives creedence to Maori stories about the frozen continent: "It may have been about our year 750 that the astonishing Hui-Te-Rangiora, in his canoe Te Iwi-o-Atea, sailed from Rarotonga on a voyage of wonders in that direction (South): he saw the bare white rocks that towered into the sky from out the monstrous seas, the long tresses of the woman that dwelt therein, which waved about under the waters and on their surface, the frozen sea covered with pia or arrowroot, the deceitful animal that dived to great depths – ‘a foggy, misty dark place not shone on by the sun’. Icebergs, the fifty foot long leaves of bullkelp, the walrus or sea-elephant, the snowy ice fields of a clime very different from Hui-Te-Rangiora’s own warm islands – all these he had seen. The Maori of Aotearoa."
Argentine anthropologist, Profesor Augusto Cardich, was quoted in an article published in 2001 (The First Americans: Were they Australians? Mammoth Trumpet vo. 16 No.2 p.4). He pointed out that the southern ice shelf advanced north from the Antarctic and reached a low latitude of 55° S, touching Tierra del Fuego during the LGM. People from Tasmania sailed along the shelf and reached America. He also noted that the South Pacific was much warmer and also calmer than the North Pacific during the Late Pleistocene. Considering that the ancestors of the Australian aboriginals sailed to reach their continent-island, Cardich considers "all this evidence makes me think crazy atl all to think they might have sailed from Australia to South America." Cardich published a book on this subject: Fueron los australianos los primeros americanos?, Augusto R. Cardich, Lima : Universidad Nacional Mayor de san Marcos (2001).
The suggestion that the climate was warmer and that stormtracks had moved closer to the equator some 13,000 to 9,000 years ago is supported by scientific evidence (see Late Pleistocene and Holocene paleoclimate and glacier fluctuations in Patagonia, 2004).
The map below shows the LGM and current summer and winter maximum extension of the sea ice around the Antarctic continent. South America is upper left, the western tip of Australia is lower right; Africa and Madagascar top. New Zealand is out view as is eastern Australia. Adapted from: Reconstruction of past sea ice extent (2013). I added the red dashed line marking the migratory route, and the name of the continents.
I find it hard to believe that a group of people, well adapted to tropical and subtropical environments, would deliberately move on, south, into the freezen polar region, somehow master the new environment, and after hunting penguins and sea wolves, survive a trip of roughly 9,000 km (5,600 mi) through an unknown territory. It seems highly improbable.
Resources
[1] Mendes Correa (1926), Nouvelle hypothese sur le peuplement primitif de l'Amerique du Sud. (↺)
[2] Rivet (1926), Les Malayo-Polynesiens en Amerique. (↺)
[3] Erland Nordenskjöld, (1931).Origin of the Indian Civilizations in South America (↺)
[4] H. B. Coates, (1834). On the origin of the Indian population of America.(↺)
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025by Austin Whittall ©
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