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