Who were the first people to reach Polynesia?

In this post we will look into the possible migration from Austronesia and Melanesia to America as proposed by Paul Rivet, but looking at an early timeline, since Polynesians reached the islands of the Pacific between 700 and 1200 AD, while America was peopled over 15,000 years ago.

This implies that there must have been an earlier group of people living in this region before the arrival of Polynesians 1300 to 800 years ago.

The First People in Polynesia

The Polynesians consiered that there was an original race of people inhabiting the islands they reached during their expansion across the Pacific Ocean, they called them Manahune. These mythical beings are very human in many ways, and suggest that they were possibly members of some previous wave that peopled Polynesia.

William Halse Rivers (1864-1922) proposed in 1914 (The History of Melanesian Society) that there had been two waves of people that populated Polynesia the first wave became the serfs, or commoners, enslaved by the second wave people, who became their overlords.

"Even with the available evidence, however, there is much which points to the two-fold nature of Polynesian culture. If the distinction between chiefs and commoners in Melanesia has been the result of the fusion of two peoples, the chiefs being the representatives of an immigrant people, it will be difficult to withhold a similar explanation of the two orders of chief and commoner in Polynesia." (p.280)

I have found references on the pre-Polynesian people that are said to have inhabited New Zealand. One of such sources states that "... This is the forbidden pre-Maori history with reports being withheld and access being denied to evidence of its first inhabitants who were annihilated by the arriving Maori. The Ngati Hotu tribe of New Zealand, described as being light-skinned, with light eyes and reddis hair, were the last surviving pre-Maori Urukehu.'They say we do not exist. They say we are an extinct race. My people still carry the red and blond hair, blue-green eyes, and fair skin of our ancestors. We are the Ngati Hotu." No reference is given for this quote, and it sounds as if it wass conspiracist, racist and pure pseudoscience.

The Urukehu, however, were real. The Encyclopedia of New Zealand - Te Ara, managed and updated by Manatu Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage in Wellington, New Zealand. Includes an entry on them, and the following image:

Uurukehu. Source

"This photograph is from "The old-time Maori" (1938), by Mākereti Papakura. She notes that the blonde, fair child and the father, Tonihi (right), are both Urukehu. While some believe that Urukehu (fair-headed, fair-skinned Māori) are the offspring of the fairy people patupaiarehe, Mākereti Papakura believed that this light-skinned strain dates back to the traditional Polynesian homeland of Hawaiki, and that albino Māori are the product of the union between Māori and patupaiarehe. She describes patupaiarehe as ‘supernatural children of the mist ... seen in indistinct form in the passing mist. ... They are fair, and are clothed in flimsy white like the web of the pūngāwerewere [spider]."

Patupaiarehe were fairy-like people, pictured below in a New Zealand stamp (source, they lived in the forests and mountains, had blue eyes, fair hair and white or red skin. They abducted women.

Finally, these Ngāti Hotu peoiple were an actual tribe that lived in the Taupō district when the first Maori poeple (priest Ngātoroirangi and explorer Tia) arrived in New Zealand, "discovering" it, and settling there: "The tribe were referred to as ‘urukehu’ (fairy people) because of their unusual red hair and fair skin" (Source).

A plausible explanation is that these fair haired people are the result of Melanesian genes. According to a paper published in Science, Melanesians "from the Solomon Islands and Equatorial Oceania have the darkest skin pigmentation outside of Africa, they also have the highest prevalence of blond hair (5 to 10%) outside of Europe." It is caused by a mutation in the TYRP1 gene, which is involved in the production of the skin and hair darkening pigment melanin. Other mutations in the TYRP1 gene can provoke albinism. This genetic trait is different to the one that causes fair hair in Europeans.

Judge W. E. Gudgeon in his work Maori migrations to New Zealand, 1892, (p. 217) mentions that "It can hardly be doubted that there were many tribes of Polynesian descent in occupation of this country when the crew of the Arawa entered the river at Maketu, Bay of Plenty... Among other well-known tribes now extinct, but who are regarded by the Maoris as Autocthones, are the following : Ngati-Eahnpungapunga, Nga-Marama, Te Elawerau, Marangaranga, Ngati-Hotu, Maruiwi, Te Baupongaoheohe, Te Tururumauka, Te Aruhetawiri, Te Aoraorn, Waitaha-Torauta, Whatumamoa, and many others ; some of whom are still tribes such as Ngati-Mahanga, NgatiUepohatu, Nga-Potiki, &c." So clearly, Gudgeon believed that the Polynesians reached New Zealand over a long period of time, and among the first arrivals, these "Authoctones" were the Ngati-Hotu.

I doubt we will find any future research on this matter, because the Maori, like the Mapuche of Chile, the U.S. and Canadian First Nations, and the Australian Aboriginals, don't like any theory that suggests that there were other people who reached "their" homeland before they did, and are willing to defend their status as "First People" by denying those theories and literally burying the evidence (Mungo man reburied and Kennewick man reburied).

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

The Transatlantic X2 haplogroup - Revisited

The mtDNA haplogroup X2 has been found among Amerindians at extremely low rates (3%) and together with haplogroups A2, B2, C1 and D1 makes up the founding lineages of American Natives. The other haplogroups are found at higher levels A2 is roughly 51%, B2 at 18%, C1 is 19% and D1 roughly 6%. Clearly X2 is quite rare.

It is unsual for several reasons the main one is that unlike the others, there seems to be no basal population in Siberia or East Asia with X2 mtDNA. It is far more common in western Eurasia. Raising the question of how did it reach America and leave no treaces in Siberia or Beringia.

Back in 2014 I posted about it, at that time I wrote that "I was reluctant to engage in further investigations because I found the Solutrean hypothesis as a source for the X2 mtDNA population was rather weak, and some theories regarding ancient Greek admixture into the Cherokees and other North American natives as too flimsy (I omit the Mormon theories and quack Atlanteans as totally non-scientific). There were no serious papers on these subjects and mostly posts in questionable - racist - supremacist forums made me drop further research, until now.".

X2 mtDNA dispersal map. Copyright © 2025 by Austin Whittall

I suggested an early peopling of America by Neanderthals, overlaid by later Homo sapiens as an Eurasian source, via Beringia, for this X2 haplogroup, and discarded the Solutrean route across the Atlantic.

One year later, a paper published in 2015 by Raff and Bolnick (Does Mitochondrial Haplogroup X Indicate Ancient Trans-Atlantic Migration to the Americas? A Critical Re-Evaluation) looked into the matter and concluded that:

" We remain unconvinced by the arguments advanced thus far in favor of a trans-Atlantic migration prior to 1500 cal yr BP or so. As we have discussed, X2a has not been found anywhere in Eurasia, and phylogeography gives us no compelling reason to think it is more likely to come from Europe than from Siberia.
Furthermore, analysis of the complete genome of Kennewick Man, who belongs to the most basal lineage of X2a yet identified, gives no indication of recent European ancestry and moves the location of the deepest branch of X2a to the West Coast, consistent with X2a belonging to the same ancestral population as the other founder mitochondrial haplogroups. Nor have any high-resolution studies of genome-wide data from Native American populations yielded any evidence of Pleistocene European ancestry or trans-Atlantic gene flow."

The authors analyze the Solutrean (Europe to America via the Atlantic Ocean), and consider it improbable: "It is of course possible that genetic evidence of an ancient trans-Atlantic migration event simply has not been found yet. Should credible evidence of direct gene flow from an ancient Solutrean (or Middle Eastern) population be found within ancient Native American genomes, it would require the field to reassess the “Beringian only” model of prehistoric Native American migration. However, no such evidence has been found, and the Beringian migration model remains the best interpretation of the genetic, archaeological, and paleoclimate data to date."

Raff published another paper in 2017 and suggested a late arrival of X2a into eastern America and the Great Lakes region, where it now prevails, and defends the theory that it reached America through Beringia, once again mentioning Kennewick Man.

"The one exception to the absence of shared maternal lineages between the Maritime Archaic and Beothuk, X2a1/X2a1b, is interesting. Haplogroup X2a is found only in North America, primarily in populations around the Great Lakes, and the specific lineages present in the Maritime Archaic and Beothuk populations appear to be derived from the basal X2a lineage found in the 8,800 YBP individual from Washington State, known as Kennewick Man (or the Ancient One). This pattern may reflect the expansion of a population bearing X2a from the Pacific coast to the Northern Atlantic coast by about 4,000 YBP. Additional genomic analyses comparing Kennewick Man to the Maritime Archaic and Beothuk populations would provide a test of this model; if true, it would be a good step forward in understanding the crucial population movements following the Last Glacial Maximum that established regional patterns of genetic variation ."

I haven't found more recent papers, meaning that over the past 8 years, few scholars have looked into this matter. Only some DNA testing sites and Mormon groups have posted on X2 as you can see in the following examples:

• Native American Haplogroup X2a – Solutrean, Hebrew or Beringian?
• Your Haplogroup story: X2a
• A Mormon webpage (#1)
• Another Mormon webpage (#2)

From the Mormon page #2 is the following image, supporting a Trans-Atlantic route.

While preparing this post, I came across a post in Facebook which criticizes Raff and the Beringian entry route, instead it proposes a later Aleutian route: "The history of haplogroups X2a in North America is very clear. It came late, almost certainly in a single migration along the Aleutians, carried by a small group of founding women. Its initial spread was limited to the area of Washington and Oregon, after which is spread with the Algonquian expansion across the continent, beginning about 7,000 years ago. It was amplified in certain Algonquian groups, most clearly the Ojibwe, because of the early Algonquian practice of matrilocal cross-cousin marriage, which promoted the growth of communities that carried only a single mtDNA haplogroup."

Quite neat in my opinion. Asia is clearly the source of this haplogroup, I may disagree with the dates, but there is no way any "ancient" Europeans could have reached America by crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Beringia is an option too, along with an ancient entry. Was X2a overlaid by the A, B and C halpogrups the same way that D was?

Let's see what is uncovered by further research.

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

Kennewick Man, Ainus and Sunda

Two men were walking along the bank of the Columbia River in Washington, U.S. on July 28, 1996 when they came across a human skull, they quickly notified the autorities who inspected the area and, after a thorough search, managed to recover an almost complete skeleton, belonging to a man. This is how the "Kennewick Man" remains were discovered.

An initial inspection by an archaeologist [3] concluded that the man was not a Native American because the skull had a "caucasoid" appearance. A bone sample was sent to a laboratory and dated. We now know that these remains are between 8,000 and 9,500 years old. Which, by American standards is very ancient.

An act of Congress, The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was passed in 1990 with the goal of redressing the evils of the past, when Native American graves were profanated and their bones stolen and placed in Museums. The good intentions behind this legislation (which sought to return these remains to their original resting places in their tribal communities), has been distorted by the very extreme view held by some Native groups which are against any studies conducted on Paleo-Indian remains.

Actually most "modern" Native communities are relativley recent arrivals to their traditional tribal territories none go back more than one or two thousand years at most. Yet, they will go to court and in most cases succeed to get remains that date back thousands of years returned to "their homeland". In many cases the only link between the Paleoindians and the modern natives is the land where the remains were found.

Kennewick man was no exception, in 1996 some native groups took a hard stand and went to court to stop any further studies on his remains. Native American groups and the Federal Government of the U.S. combined their resources against the scientists who wanted to learn as much as possible from these extremely valuable ancient remains.

The legal battle took 8 years. In 1998 Kennewick man's bones were sent to the Burke Museum (Washington state) to protect them until the lawsuit was settled. They are still safeguarded at the Museum. [1]

The case was heard by a U.S. District Court which found that the remains could not be classified as "Native American". His ruling was appealed and the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision in 2004. So the remains, which were found on Federal land, are now in custody of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and will remain so indefintely unless the Natives can somehwo prove in the future that Kennewick was a Native American. [1]

What have we learnt from the remains?

The remains comprise an almost complete skeleton (only some bones from hands and feet and the sternum are missing) which belonged to a tall man (about 1.73 m - 5.67 ft.) between 40 and 55 years old.

Although his DNA was intact, the tests were done on two samples but were inconclusive! (more on this below).

He had the broken off remains of a flint leaf-shaped serrated projectile stuck in his right ilium (hip bone). The wound was partly healed and the stone spear tip was quite large: 20 x 54 mm (0.78 x 2.12 in), [2] however, "The extensive amount of bone that has grown around the stone point suggests that the point was in place for a considerable amount of time and was not the cause of death." [3]

The surprising part is the skull, the cranial index marks it as dolichocephalic (long and narrow skull) instead of bracycephalic (short and wide skull) as found among the modern Natives. His face was narrow instead of broad and had a pronounced chin. This and other features gave him a "caucasoid" appearance. Yet, surprisingly his teeth were Sundadont like those found among South Asians. [2]

A clay facial reconstruction gives him a very "Caucasian" look indeed, [6] below is another view of this Kennewick man's face: [7]

Facial reconstruction of Kennewick Man. From [7]

Sundadonty is not a Caucasian trait, it is part of the "Mongoloid dental complex" [4], which evolved locally in Sunda Land (insular Indonesia); very similar teeth are found among Aboriginal Australians which "are also generally like those of Jomonese and some Ainus, suggesting that members of the late Pleistocene Sundaland population could have initially colonized Sahulland as well as the continental shelf of East Asia northward to Hokkaido" [4].

Map showing the Asian Range of Sundadonty (blue) and Sinodonty (yellow).. Copyright © 2014 by Austin Whittall

East Asians to the north of Sunda (i.e. Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Mongolians) all have Sinodonty (dental shoveling). In general people belonging to Mongoloid groups (North Eastern Asians and, also American Indians) have the highest frequency of shoveled incisors while the rest of the world has chiseled ones. Shoveling is caused by the Ectodysplasin receptor gene (EDAR), also associated with hair thickness and the size and quantity of sweat and mammary glands. It is frequent in Asian populations and absent in Europeans, Africans, Denisovans and the Mal'ta remains from Siberia who carry the ancestral allele. The mutation or introgression (admixed through direct contact with H. erectus) is believed to have appeared in central China >30 Kya, a late date in my opinion since it was obtained by simulations restrained by a 15 Kya date for peopling America, which is far to recent. [5]

His teeth

The sundadonty of Kennewick man is an interesting find because it links him to Sunda (Insular Southeast Asia) and the archaic population of Japan, the Ainus.

The map above shows a discontinuity in the Sundadont range (blue). It is the intromission of Sinodonty (yellow) which cuts off Sunda in the south from Taiwan, Hokkaido, the Kuril Islands, Sakhalin and the tip of Kamchatka in the north.

This gap is currently occupied by sinodont populations (Chinese, Koreans and Japanese).

A simpe explanation for this discontinual distribution is that the sundadonts were the original people inhabiting the coastal areas of Oriental Asia and were later overlain or displaced to their current insular ranges by sinodonts in the central region (China, Korea, Japan).

Another option is that the Sundadonts moved from Sunda northwards, along the coastal areas in boats, or walked along the now submerged continental shelf alll the way to Hokkaido -the current Ainu territory (yet they seem to have failed occupying the main southern Japanese islands, or were later displaced from there by sinodonts).

Map showing a hypothetical route from Sunda to America for sundadont dental morphology. Copyright © 2014 by Austin Whittall

Did a branch of these migratory sundadonts reach America before the sindonts whose dental pattern now prevails among Amerindians? or, since sinodonty is a Homo erectus trait, did the admixture leading to Amerindian sinodonty take place in America, between an early arrived sundadont H. sapiens population and the ancient H. erectus settlers in America?

Turner [8] proposes a theory where "Sundadonty or more likely proto-Sundadonty, [is] the ancestral pattern for all modern humans". He bases this on the "generalized" appearance of Southeast Asian population: "they possess various external physical features of many geographic races, although usually in relatively low frequency". Interestingly "when South Siberian teeth are compared with those of Sundadonts, they show remarkable similarities. Because South Siberian [...] hybrid condition retrodicts the probable dental pattern of the common ancestors of Europeans and Asians before these derived groups drifted to their distinctive patterns by late Pleistocene times..." [8].

So Sunda would be the source of this dental morphology, coinciding with the place from which Y chromosome Haplogroup C radiated into New Guinea, Australia, India, China and Northeast Asia. see my post on haplogroup C. South Siberians also have hg. C at low frequencies.

The Ainu

Regarding the Ainu people of northern Japan, their similarity to Sunda populations such as the Bataks of Sumatra and the Dayaks of Borneo (shee photos below) was reported back in 1872 [9]. More recently, Genetic studies link the Ainu to Amerindians, and one should reread those studies within the hypothesis mentioned above. Perhaps both groups (Amerindians and Ainu) share a common sundadont ancestor which is the main reason for the similarities detected in these genetic studies.

Ainu people (Notice their curly hair in the top image and the clearly non-Mongolian look of the bearded man in the bottom one)
The impression I get is that they are two different kinds of Ainu.

Batak from Sumatra and Dayak from Borneo

His DNA

The DNA samples taken from the Kennewick man did not give any conclusive results. The tests were botched (since I don't believe in conspiracy theories, I can only guess that they were done in an inadequate manner or that the technology used was rudimentary, perhaps the samples were unwittingly contaminated, etc.). Below is the conclusions by the National Parks Service [3]:

"Thus, two separate amplifications from two different extractions suggested that Kennewick Man does not belong to haplogroup D (because the fragment was at least partially digested at np 5176 by Alu I restriction enzyme) while a single amplification from one of the two extractions suggests he might belong to haplogroup D. Given that at this point it was still unclear whether or not either of the two extractions were clean (i.e., uncontaminated), amplifications from the extracts had given conflicting information and neither extract had been successfully tested for the diagnostic markers for haplogroups B, C or X, it was impossible to determine to which, if any, of the common modern American Indian mtDNA haplogroups the Kennewick remains belong. At very most, our results provided, at this point, no evidence that the Kennewick remains belonged to haplogroups A, B or C [3]

In other words he does not belong to mtDNA haplogroups A, B or C. And the two tests gave differing results for hg. D (one was positive, the other negative). So he may or may not belong to haplogroup D. He may belong to X or M or any of the other haplogroups for which he was not tested.

I have not found any records regarding his Y chromosome analysis.

Closing Comments

Despite the theories put forth by some blogs and forums regarding a European origin for Kennewick man and the links they try to build between him and the Solutreans and Cro-Magnons of Europe, I am inclined towards an Asian origin for the Kennewick man

His sundadont teeth clearly set him apart from any modern Europeans. He is closer to the more ancient modern human migrants that reached Sunda, Sahul and what is now insular Eastern Asia in the Out of Africa initial migration some 70 kya. He probably represents this basic and most archaic line of modern humans who may have reached America not long after their departure from Africa. They do not, in my opinion, represent the more recent "white Europeans" as some propose (many of these forums have some white supremacist viewpoints, which I abhor).

A clear typing of his mtDNA and Y chromosomes will settle the issue of this man and lead us to ask interesting questions regarding why are there no contemporary Caucasoid-looking Native Americans? and maybe clarify what is the exact link between these Sundadont populations, perhaps some other gene similar to the EDAR of the sinodonts?

I will dig deeper into the Ainu, they intrigue me and I want to learn more about them.

Sources

[1] Burke Museum, Kennewick Man - The ancient one
[2] James C. Chatters, (2004). Kennewick Man. Smithsonian Institution.
[3] U.S. National Parks Service Article 1, and Article 2
[4] Turner C. G., et al., (1990). Major features of Sundadonty and Sinodonty, including suggestions about East Asian microevolution, population history, and late Pleistocene relationships with Australian aboriginals. Am J Phys Anthropol. 1990 Jul;82(3):295-317
[5] My post on an Early Peopling of America
[6] Sciencephoto.com, Clay reconstruction of the Kennewick Man
[7] Chelbea Fair, The Desert Town Right Around the Riverbend
[8] G. Richard Scott, Christy G. Turner, (2000). The Anthropology of Modern Human Teeth: Dental Morphology and Its Variation in Recent Human Populations . Cambridge University Press, pp. 303.
[9] Vivien de Saint-Martin, (1872). L'ethnologie du Grand Archipel d'Asie... races humaines. L'Anée Géogr. 9:90-97

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall ©