April 2026 study on the diversity of Amerindian genes & Austronesian admixing

Several studies have reported an Austronesian component in Native Americans, and I have mentioned this in various posts. A recent paper published on April 22, 2026 in Nature (Castro e Silva, M.A., Nunes, K., Ribeiro, M.R. et al. The evolutionary history and unique genetic diversity of Indigenous Americans. Nature 653, 134–145 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10406-w) explores these matters as well as the diversity, ages, distribution, and population waves ov the people that peopled America.

In the abstract, the authors point out that Native Americans "harbour extensive and previously uncharacterized genetic diversity" and attribute it to "at least three dispersals into South America". They also suggest that natural selection has acted on Neanderthal, Denisovan, and ancient Australasian alleles because they conferred adaptative advantages.

An imporant finding is the Australasian signal: "Notably, several genomic regions exhibit a remarkable allele sharing with Australasian populations, probably originating from an ancient admixture event and partly maintained by selection for more than 10,000 years."

Diversity

The paper says that scholars in general believe that America is "less genetically diverse than other continental human groups" (due to the Beringian bottleneck, founding effects and the European and African slave trade admixtures, however in this study they found new single-nucleotide variants (SNVs), roughly 11,000 new variants per individual, which, although lower than the African level of 27.800 per person is very similar to that of the Oceanians.

The paper states that "despite lower overall diversity, Indigenous Americans carry many previously unreported variants. This reflects both substantial genetic variation and long-standing underrepresentation in genomic resources." One measure of lack of diversity caused by isolation and small founder populations which lead to inbreeding. This is seen in the genome by a higher number of runs of homozygosity (ROHs). However, the expected higher ROH due to "serial bottlenecks following entry into the Americas" was not observed, because ROH does not show any "significant correlation with geographic distance from Alaska, longitude or latitude." Instead there were hotspots with high ROH in specific regions of the Americas, such as areas around the Amazonia in Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru.

Ancient Splits

The split from other Old World people is ancient, definitively pre-Clovis, and in my opinion, the older boundary is really ancient, suggesting an early peopling of America: "Cross-coalescence rate estimates (Methods) show that Indigenous American populations, grouped by genetic cluster, diverged from other continental groups between about 70,000 and 15,000 years ago." I mean the 70 ky limit. Very old indeed!

A Replacement 9,000 years ago

The paper mentions that some 9 kya a new genetic lineage sperad across Central America and the Caribbean, reaching South America and affected groups that still exist, like the Quechua of the Peruvian and Bolivian highlands, and the Tehuelche of Pataonia. These people partially replaced ancient lineages older than 9 kya. Then came a third wave around 1,300 years ago.

North American natives are very different "Indigenous North American populations are the most genetically distinct from South American groups."

Mapuches and the Amazon

Interestingly the paper finds that although the Tehuelche people of Patagonia have managed to retain their original genomic makeup, they "derive most ancestry from a Chaco sister branch (third dispersal)", and a similar effect is noticed among the Quechua. I have posted about a possible Southern Amazonian or Chacoan origin for the Mapuche people (see here and here), who live between Quechua and Tehuelches, and who have admixed with modern Tehuelches. The recent arrival of a Guarani component into the Mapuche could account for their similar myths and legendary beasts. This paper with its 3rd-wave seems to support this notion.

Affinity with Australasians

The similarity between genes of some Native Americans and contemporary Australasians has been explained as follows: the ancestors of Amerindians admixed in the distant past with some ancient archaic Asian people, known as Ypykuéra (a Tupi word meaning "Ancestors") or "Y" population, which is "partially related to a sister clade of present-day Australasians." (see my post and this one too).

The study found that the highest affinity with Australasians was centered in the Chaco Region, eastern and western South American as well as the Southwestern Amazon region (Paraguay, Bolivia, Northern Argentina, and South-southeastern Brazil. It is found among the Giarani, Surui, Awaj&uactue;, Ayoreo, Karitiana, Sirionó amd Tsimané people. It dates back to an ancient sample found in Sumidouro, Brazil, 10,400 years old. It increased from there on, "especially in the Andes, Pacific Coast and western South America." But the Pacific area, despite suggesting a transoceanic contact is disregarded by the authors, who instead prefer to support the idea that "this ancestry was present during the initial peopling of America and that it may have contributed more strongly to Late Holocene and present-day genetic diversity".

They tested if the Australasian link was due to introgression of archaics, like Neanderthals and Denisovans. This makes sense, Oceanian people have a high contribution of Denisovan ancestry. But, "No correlation was detected between Australasian and Neanderthal or Denisovan affinity. By contrast, Neanderthal and Denisovan affinities were strongly correlated, consistent with homogeneous archaic ancestry in the founding populations" In other words, the Neanderthal and Denisovan component of Amerindians is not linked to Australasians. So my suggestions in this post and this one, are not valid.

They also rejected the idea that the similarity with Australasians is due to isolation, where different groups retained the "Y" component. Isolation, marked by higher ROHs is not linked to Australasian affinity or inbreeding. Furthermore, those natives with higher ROH, and higher inbreeding have low Australasian affinity.

They also tested the link between the ancient Southeast Asian people, the Hòabìnhian people, and compared them with two samples of this population, La368 and La364. They found "significant correlations for La368 and La364. These results support a shared ancestry component between Indigenous Americans and Australasians that extends deep into the past." A short, laconic, explains-nothing phrase. How does the signal reach America? See my post on the H&oagrave;abìnhian and Austronesians here.

Finally the low prevalence 1-3% of Y genes in Amerindians suggests that at least some of these alleles were positively selected for and maintained over the past 10,000 years: "these findings indicate that several genomic regions sharing alleles with present-day Australasians were probably targets of positive selection. The candidate genes in these loci participate in critical biological processes that may have shaped the health and adaptive history of Indigenous American populations. However, positive selection seems to have acted on only a subset of Ypykuéra ancestry loci, whereas the remaining regions show no evidence of selection and are probably shaped by neutral evolutionary processes."

Conclusion

There is an Austronesian imprint in Amerindians, but we don't know why. The Native American people are diverse, and ROHs are not a sign of lack of diversity due to bottlenecks. Mapuche people have a recent 1,300 year-old ancestry from Guarani people. Deeper research and more samples will show a clearer picture.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Patagonian mtDNA is quite unique!

A paper published in 2017 (Diferenciación regional de poblaciones nativas de América a partir del análisis de los linajes maternos, Intersecciones en Antropología 18: 271-282. 2017. ISSN 1666-2105. Josefina María Brenda Motti, Marisol Elisabeth Schwab, Julieta Beltramo, Laura Smeldy Jurado-Medina, Marina Muzzio, Virgina Ramallo, Graciela Bailliet, Claudio Marcelo Bravi), looks into the maternal genetic component of the Native American people of South America, analyzing their mtDNA.

Their data show that Patagonian natives have a unique set of haplotypes not found in the rest of South America. Table 1 in the paper is shown below, with the haplotypes found in Chilean and Argentine Patagonia (it has no data from the Province of Neuquén).

Haplogroup frequencies (%). Table 1 in Motti et al. (2017)

The authors point out the high frequency of certain variants in Argentina's Patagonia, namely, B2i2, D1g, D4h3a5 y C1b13. It suggests that the "notable unity" in Patagonia, both in Chile and Argentina with the preponderance of these haplotypes suggests that south of Latitude 40°S, as the Andes are lower in elevation, there could have been west-to-east mobility of migrating groups.

The authors also note that "these lineages are practically exclusive to Patagonia, as they are found at low frequencies in central Argentina, Uruguay, and northern Chile, and are absent from the rest of the continent. The homogeneity on both sides of the Andes Mountains is indicative of common ancestry."

They suggest that D4h3a5 reached the region along the Pacific, while the presence of B2i1 in the Amazon people like the Kayapó, a sister clade to Patagonia's B2i2 suggests the arrival of people along the Atlantic coast of South America.

mtDNA D1g is Ancient

Since D1g is around 18,000 year old, its age could hint that it was among the first to reach the area, followed by younger haplogroups B2i2 y C1b13, aged 10,800 BP and 12,000 BP, respectively. B2i2 is absent in the Island of Tierra del Fuego suggesting that it differentiated later.

Michelle de Saint Pierre (2017) suggested that D1g as well as D4h3a are ancient, and must have been present in the first wave of people to reach America, later overlaid by more recent arrivals. (de Saint Pierre, Antiquity of mtDNA lineage D1g from the southern cone of South America supports pre-Clovis migration. Quaternary International, Vol 444, Part B, 2017, p.19-25, ISSN 1040-6182, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2017.05.054.). de Saint Pierre wrote:

"The age calculated for D1g, between 25,000 and 19,000 cal yr BP is extremely old for a South American mitochondrial subhaplogroup. The anomalous age of this haplogroup does not fit the currently accepted framework for the other mtDNA haplogroups in the Americas...
Of the exclusively Amerindian haplogroups, D4h3a has an age of 17.6 kyr. This is a good candidate to date the early peopling, since considerable evidence has shown it to be an ancestral haplogroup. D4h3a has been recovered from the late Pleistocene (12,707e12,556 cal yr BP) Anzick child (Rasmussen et al., 2014) and from a skeleton of an early Holocene individual from Alaska (Kemp et al., 2007), which is empirical evidence of the presence of this lineage in Paleoamericans. Also, D4h3a has a wide geographic distribution, being found low frequencies in populations across the continent, including the most southern native populations, the Patagonians"

See my post on D1g here, and the post on D4h3a here.

The Amazonian origin of the Mapuches

Back in 2012 (de Saint Pierre M, Gandini F, Perego UA, Bodner M, Gómez-Carballa A, Corach D, et al. (2012) Arrival of Paleo-Indians to the Southern Cone of South America: New Clues from Mitogenomes. PLoS ONE 7(12): e51311. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0051311) had found that the sub-haplogroups B2i2 and C1b13 were exclusive to the southern tip of South America and noticed that B2i2 was found at high frequencies among the Mapuche people and related groups like the Pehuenche and Huilliche (26 to 39% frequencies) while admixture led to lower levels among the Tehuelches (14%). It was absent in northern Chile and also among the canoe people of Tierra del Fuego and Southern Chile (who rarely admixed with the Mapuches). Saint Pierre not only found th B2i group among the Amazonian Kayapó, they "identified only two additional mtDNAs, one from Brazil and one from northern Uruguay (both bearing the B2 control-region haplotype plus the B2i diagnostic transitions at np 430 and 485), thus preliminarily suggesting a geographic distribution of B2i1 limited to the northern and eastern part of South America/i>." This is interesting, and it is in line with the notion that the Mapuche originated in the Amazonian region and moved on, later into Chile.

I have posted about a common origin for Mapuche and the Amazonian Guaraní people (and again here), and that the Mapuche were late arrivals in the Patagoian region, so I welcome additional evidence that supports this theory.

Variant C1b13, on the other hand, is found beyond Patagonia, among people like the Atacameño of NW Chile's Atacama desert region, and the Alakaluf and Yamana canoe people, and surely spread to these people from the Mapuche homeland in Central Chile, and is of recent origin there, from an older C1 root.

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

The Kofkeche

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

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

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

Kofkeche, the bread people

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

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

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

Kofkeche funerary urns. Source

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Poyas

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

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

The Genetics of Southern Patagonia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mapuche: Late Arrival

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

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

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

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

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

CAPTION HERE. Copyright © 2025 by Austin Whittall

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

Polynesian - Amerindian admixture

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

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

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

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

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

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

Refrences

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

Additional information

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

Click here to see a large sized view of this map

Contact. From Nature (2020). Source

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

Polynesian - Mapuche contact: The chickens

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

From my Book's 2nd Edition

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

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

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

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

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

Araucanian chickens and their blue eggs.

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

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

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

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

Easter Islanders met Amerindians before 1492

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

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

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

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

Polynesian ship. Source

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

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

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

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

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

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

Americas: the language diversity problem

Ten years ago, I posted on the high diversity of languages in America, and a recent paper has added some interesting information on the subject.

The paper was published last month (June 28, 2025). It confirms the diversity and its uniqueness among the languages around the World. Furthermore, the authors can't explain why (see the bold text that I highlighted in the quote below):

"Linguistically, the Americas remain one of the most diverse parts of the world, despite the loss of many languages since European colonization (Campbell 2024). Within the Americas, the diversity of South America exceeds that of North America as measured both by the number of distinct languages as well as by the number of singular linguistic lineages (“language families”). Within South America, in turn, the Amazonian lowlands are generally more diverse than the Andes and the Southern Cone, though the uneven demographic and cultural impact of European conquest may have contributed to accentuating the observed diversity cline. About 60% of South American lineages are isolates (Seifart and Hammarström 2017), that is, consist of only one extant member whose ties with related lineages were severed at a point of time that exceeds the time horizon that can be reached by historical linguistic methods (under ideal conditions ~8000 years). This indicates high rates of linguistic diversification and cladogenesis already in an early phase of human presence. The causes of this remain poorly understood. South American languages are also characterized by extreme heterogeneity concerning their evolved sound systems and grammars—a third parameter of linguistic diversity that contributes to the overall complexity of the linguistic situation in the continent."

The paper, explored genetic and language similarities, and as you'd expect, they found "strong similarities in language and morphology between the Selk'nam and Qawaskar", the boat-people that lived in the seas of Tierra del Fuego and SW Chilean Patagonia. They were the human beings who lived furthest south in the whole World!

The Mapuche have an Amazon-Chaco origin

The paper also found affinities between Chacoan people (called Quom) and the Mapuches of Chile.

In my book, I mentioned many myths and legends of the Mapuches that are similar to myths of the natives that lived in Southern Amazonia, and the Chaco region (the Guaraní people). But the homeland of the Mapuche and the Chaco-Amazon region are nearly 1,500 miles (2,400 km) apart, with the Andes rising 6,000 m (20,000 ft.) high between them.

I also wrote a post on the subject see: Mapuche natives and their possible link to the Guarani.

The Mapuche don't like the idea of being considered as "recent" arrivals in Chile, migrants from the central South American jungles. They prefer to believe they have always lived in Chile. However, the facts are quite the opposite. This paper says:

"The Qom and Mapuche exhibit the strongest genetic similarities among the groups we studied. The Qom are a lowland group from the southern Chaco, while the Mapuche historically inhabited northern Patagonia, later expanding to the Pampas. Recent genetic studies on the Mapuche suggest that their genetic profile reflects an ancient ancestry linked to early migration waves (SNA2), followed by prolonged isolation before recent gene flow from the Central Andes (Arango-Isaza et al. 2023; Capodiferro et al. 2021). In fact, mtDNA affinities between Chaco and Andean populations have led some scholars to suggest a shared evolutionary history (Cabana et al. 2006; Russo et al. 2018). This is consistent with previous genetic studies, which have reported close biological affinities between the Qom and Mapuche (Cabana et al. 2006; Demarchi and García Ministro 2008; Sevini et al. 2013) despite the fact that they are not geographic neighbors."

Read the paper online: Menéndez, L. P., and M. Urban. 2025. “ Tracing Human Diversity in South America's Southern Cone: Linguistic, Morphometric, and Genetic Perspectives.” American Journal of Biological Anthropology 187, no. 3: e70077. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.70077.

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

Llumu the Patagonian River Pig

While writing for my website on Argentina's National Highway No. 40 (Ruta 40), about the things to visit and do close to the town of Las Lajas in the northern part of Patagonia, in the province of Neuquén, I came across a very odd river name, which did not sound like a Spanish word or a local native Mapuche word either, actually it is the same word repeated: "yumu yumu". The map below shows the location (the river coming in from the left).

 

It is the name of a stream, which flows in a West to East direction, down from the Andes, towards the Atlantic, down the slopes of a hill named Butahuao (2,578 m - 8,452 ft.). By the way, Butahuao is the combination of two Mapuche words: "Buta" = Big and "huao" = gully.

The river crosses Neuquén provincial highway No. 21, at Campana Mahuida (place name that combines a Spanish word Campana = bell and Mahuida, Mapuche word = hill), 54 kilometers (33 miles) northwests of Las Lajas (Spanish words: The Shale in plural).

The place name repeats a Mapuche word according to Anthropologist and Historian Rodolfo Casamiquela [1]. He cites one of the few inhabitants of the region, Manuel Quinchao (note his Mapuche surname), from Chenque Cura, near Las Lajas. Mr. Quinchao said that it is the word is actually "llamü", the name of an animal, "a creature similar to a hog" [1].

There is another version which is also mentioned by Casamiquela, and he quotes Harrington-Benigar and Groeber, in which the llamü is not a pig but a crab, a freshwater crab.

I have seen these endemic crabs in the Patagonian lakes (see the photograph below where I am holding one in my hand and a close up shot on a stone):

Patagonian freshwater lake crab (Lake Nahuel Huapi). Copyright © 2014 by Austin Whittall

In case you are not too familiar with Spanish and Argentine Spanish in particular, the double "L" or "LL" is pronounced all over the Spanish speaking world -except Argentina- as the English "Y" in "Yes" (so "llumü" would sound like "You-moo" in English).

However, the Argentine Spanish pronounciation has a different sound for the double "L". It sounds like the "Sh" in "Show", and in fact it sounds identical to the Spanish pronounciation of the letter "Y".

By the way, the double "L" is not ever pronounced in the way that the double "L" in "million" is pronounced in English. So a "Llama" is not a "lama" but a "Shama" (Argentina) or a "Yama" (rest of Spanish speaking countries).

Argentines pronounce "LL" and "Y" with the same sound, the rest of Spanish speakers have two distinct sounds for those phonemes. That is why "llamü" became "yumu", (an Argentine pronounces both words in the same way: "Shoe-moo"). And this is the reason why a word written with a double "L" changed to a "Y".

In case you wonder why Argentines pronounce the language differently (Uruguayans do to), it is due to the enormous influx of Italian migrants to both countries in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Half the Argentine population has Italian blood in their veins. So the Italian accent mixed with the Spanish one, softening it. (you can hear it in this Video spoken in "Argentino" or Argentine Spanish).

But getting back to our pig or is it a crab? Which is the correct interpretation? To name a stream after the crabs that live in it sounds quite reasonble. So does naming a river after pigs. But the point is that pigs were not native animals. They were brought to America by the Spaniards. The Mapuche word for pig, hog is "Sanchu" (san-chew) which is the phonetic rendering of the Spanish word for pig: "Chancho" (chan-chou). This is logical, they adopted the Spanish word for pig.

Yes, there was a wild pig, native to America which is now extinct in Patagonia, but was known to the Mapuche: the Pecari tajacu or Collared Peccary (pictured below), which had different Mapuche names: sohue, sürse, sañhue, sanue, chanue, sane, saino. Distinct from the "Sanchu" name given to Eurasian pigs.

So what was the yumu, a pig or some other creature?

I have my doubts, I have come across the following explanations, all duly backed by bibliography:

• "Llamü are little frogs of different sizes that lived in the rushes" [2]
• Cuchi is another name for pig, and is used in Cuchivilu, or cuchi = pig, vilu = snake, the Snake-hog creature of Patagonian lakes.
• Llamü according to a nineteenth century dictionary means "blind" [3]
• Yumu derives from the Mapuche word "yumid", to shine, bright, glistening, shiny. [4] Which would be appropriate for a brook.

The question will remain open for now.

Sources

[1] Casamiquela, R., (2003). Toponimia indígena de la Provincia del Neuquén pp. 57
[2] Martin Alonqueo, (1985). Mapuche: ayer-hoy, Editorial San Francisco, pp. 135
[3] Andrés Febrés, Antonio Hernández, (1846), Diccionario hispano chileno
[4] Hasler Juan A. Topónimos Mapuches. AUCh, °5 serie N°

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

Mapuche and the quick peopling of America

Today's post brings us back to Patagonia after a long time. The fact is that I came across an interesting paper in my quest for data on the peopling of America. I am a firm believer that Homo sapiens were not the first people to reach the New World and that our more ancient relatives may have done so long ago, surviving until recently and originating the myths that are found across the New World about "ogres", "wild men" and "monsters").

The paper has some strange facts and information which I do not agree with, so please indulge me while I review it.

The paper by Bodner, Perego et al. (2012)

The paper by Martin Bodner, Ugo A. Perego et al., (2012) [1] reports the discovery of two new mtDNA haplotypes D1g and D1j among Native Americans. They are quite rare and are found mainly in the southern tip of South America. They are dated to an average age of 16.9 +⁄- 1.6 ky, which places them right at the (officially recognized) dates for the migratory wave that peopled the New World (in the paper this date is estimated as ~ 15 to 18 kya).

The paper makes a very surprising claim: "the Paleo-Indian spread along the entire longitude of the American double continent might have taken even <2000 yr." [1]. Since we are talking about some 16,000 km (10,000 miles) this is a very quick pace of migration: look how long it took modern humans to reach Australia from Africa or Europe! Why were the Paleoindians in such a hurry?

The answer is simple: to fit the time frame imposed by orthodox science.

Since the Monte Verde site in Northern Patagonia in Chile is dated to approximately 14 kya, we have a definite date of arrival in the Southern tip of America and since the migration began in Beringia some 15 to 18 kya... we do not have too much margin here: 1,000 to 4,000 years. The authors opt for a Salomonic mid-point of 2 ky for the journey from Beringia to Patagonia and their calculation is the following:

The novel mtDNA clades arose in America some 16.9 +⁄- 1.6 ky, and as both of them belong to the mtDNA D1 haplogroup, which coalesces at 13.9 to 18.3 kya, this date imposes an upper limit to the peopling event.

They support their quick march across America stating that "such a rapid movement is consistent with the results of three simulation studies..." [1]. Of course models are only as strong as the assumptions they are based on. A stones and bones approach would be more reliable, but since mainstream scholars ignore the American sites older than 15 ky, then they have to rely on simulations to support their dates.

They favor a specific coastal route along the Pacific Ocean as the most probable path to Patagonia: "only a coastal route ... can explain the speed of the migration from Beringia to Monte Verde [in Chilean Patagoina]" [1]. They discard a two pronged entry into South America (on the East and West of the Andes).

Looking at the ethnic groups and geographical locations in which these haplotypes were found, the dismissal of other population route is odd. But the authors do so based on the dates they have defined: since D1g and D1j both split from a common source in America (in other words less than 18 kya) and had to reach Monte Verde some 14 kya, there is not much time for peopling the continent and evolving separately:

"Another potential interpretation of our results would appear much less plausible: the origin of all D1g and D1j lineages in a common source population that separated in the north with little or no later migration over the mountain barrier. This would involve a split of these founder groups after all subclades present on both Andean sides had developed (≤5 kya), and thus a very recent start of the southward movement. Furthermore, this model would not conform to the presence of humans at the Monte Verde site at ~14 kya. Hence, a common source population that split into an eastern and a western group would be likely only with extended migrations, as described above, starting or continuing after the youngest lineages had differentiated. In addition, this demographic model would find more difficulties to explain the total absence of D1g and D1j in northern South America." [1]

Of course, an earlier start from Beringia would avoid all these complications, and allow for a two pronged entry into South America, but this is not allowed in the mainstream theory.

And the problem of its "total absence... in northern South America" if true, may be due to the lack of adequate sampling and sequencing. Because the paper itself states that D1j was found in the Dominican Republic, in an extant Taino native! To reach Hispaniola Island in the Caribbean, the Tainos surely island-hopped all the way from Venezuela in Northern South America which they surely reached after splitting from the other "coastal" group in Colombia, which means that the two pronged option into America, one coastal the other on the East of the Andes is viable.

But Bodner, Perego et al., believe that "the presence of D1j mtDNAs in the Dominican Republic could represent the genetic echo of a truly South American source population's input into the Caribbean, supporting the hypothesis of a peopling of the Caribbean Islands from the southeast to the northwest." [1], that is, the proto-Tainos first peopled the Amazon, which they reached from the Pacific coast in Peru, Ecuador and Norhtern Chile, from where they then took a nortwestern route to reach the Caribbean by Trinidad-Tobago.

The paper says that the younger D1j was collected from several native groups: Mapuche, Kolla or Coya, Diaguita, Pilagá, Wichi, Mataco (actually Mataco and Wichi are the same people!) (all in Argentina), Bolivian Quechua, and the Taino in the Dominican Republic. The older D1g was found in the Mapuche and other Patagonian natives.

These natives live in completely different ecosystems, speak different languages and exploit their resources differently: the forests of the Chaco lowland natives such as Pilagá the foothills of eastern Salta Mountains below the Yunga jungle (Wichi), the arid and high altitude Andean Plateau (Coya and Quechua), the mountain valleys in the Central Argentine Andes (Diaguita), the Central Chilean Valley, the forests of the Patagonian Andes (Mapuche) to the fjords and icefields in the Fuegian region (Yaghans), adaptation took a long time.

So I do agree that either a coastal route with trans-Andean spread or a split right in the north (Colombia) with two southward routes (Pacific and trans-Amazonian) of dispersal are both feasible.

Mapuches and inconsistencies

But the paper supports another explanation:

"The Mapuche settlement area could have enabled the two scenarios that are visible from our results (albeit to be confirmed with more data): The ancestor population of the Mapuche, possibly living in an area north of Chile, could represent the common source population compatible with the split scenario, where the incubation time before was long enough to develop all of the variation that is observed on both sides. The continuous extensive bidirectional gene flow across the mountain barrier after the initial coastal migration and differentiation postulated in the other scenario could have been mediated by the Mapuche ancestors that inhabited the areas on both sides and thereby served as a long-term genetic trans-Andean link." [1]

I find their support of a "Mapuche" core for dispersal as hard to digest. I am not an expert in genetics, far from it, I am a very amateurish amateur, but when it comes down to Patagonia and its native people, I am a well learned, well read layman. I did plenty of research into the aboriginal Patagonians during the years that I spent writing my book (Monsters of Patagonia) and I took a particular interest in the Mapuche.

The Mapuche people are the most overtly assertive natives in South America. They claim that their territory spanned most of the southern tip of the continent. They use maps like the one below (just google Mapuche Map and see how often it turns up), a map which is reproduced by Bodner, Perego et al. [1] too!! See below:

On the left, the orange shaded territory is the land that Mapuche nationalists claim was once theirs until they were expelled in 1879 by Chilean and Argentine troops. It is a mixture of half-truths and should be taken with a pinch of salt. On the right, shaded green is the map in Fig. 3.c. [1] in Bodner, Perego et al., showing the Mapuche dispersal. Both coincide!

Let's get some background on the Patagonian Natives from a reliable source (A. Whittall and Monsters of Patagonia, 2012) [2] from which the following map is taken, and which shows what scholars agree upon as the homeland of the different native groups of Patagonia:

Map showing the native groups in Patagonia. [2]. Copyright © 2014 by Austin Whittall

As you can see by comparing the maps, the Mapuche groups were firmly entrenched in Southern Chile and in the Argentine province of Neuquen. To the west, in Northern Patagonia and into the Buenos Aires Pampas we have the Puelche people, who were not Mapuche.

Bodner, Perego et al., are right when they say that the Mapuche resisted the Spanish conquest and that they were pushed south of the Bío Bío River where they held their sway until 1880. They forget that the Mapuche were subdued in Central Chile by the Inca empire between 1470 and 1536 and that there were other ethnic groups very different to the Mapuche living in Patagonia. The authors attribute their post-defeat dispersal and deportation as a cause of the spread of their genetic heritage, but this is not quite true. Because in fact, the Argentine Census Bureau (INDEC) shows that out of the current population of 113,680 Mapuch, 78,534 live in Patagonia, mainly in Neuquén, another 20,527 live in Patagonia's northernmost province of la Pampa and neighboring Buenos Aires, only 9.745 live in the Greater Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires city and only 4,874 live in the rest of the country. [3]

Southern South American Natives [2]

"Mapuche
The northwestern area of Patagonia spanning the north and central parts of Argentina's province of Neuquén and Chile's viii^th, ix^th and x^th Regions were peopled by the Mapuche (who in the past were also known as Araucanian, a name that has now fallen out of use.
They are apparently not related to the older populations that inhabited the rest of Patagonia. In fact, their origin is quite a mystery. Originally established in central Chile, they were first dislodged southwards by the Inca who invaded the region in the mid 1400s incorporating it to their Empire. Spanish conquistadors after destroying the Inca Empire entered Chile in 1541. Conquistador is the Spanish word for conqueror; they were the adventurers, soldiers and explorers who took the New World by force, seeking gold, silver and precious stones; and forcing the natives to work in the mines that produced them. Violent and merciless, they found their match in Chile. Mapuche and Spaniards engaged in a war that continued for over three hundred years; the longest standoff between natives and Europeans in America. Spanish conquest gradually forced the Mapuche to move south towards the Island of Chiloé, well beyond their original homeland. They also moved eastwards across the Andes, settling on its eastern foot-hills in what is now Neuquén, where they 'Araucanized' the local natives, who adopted their very convenient language (Mapudungun).
The Mapuche progressively extended their influence eastwards towards the Pampas, and through war, trade and cattle rustling, absorbed and Araucanized the original Puelche inhabitants of Tehuelche blood during the eighteenth-and nineteenth-centuries.
They were sedentary farmers who made pottery and wove wool. This distinguishes them from all the other Patagonian natives who were nomadic hunter-gatherers, lacking pottery and agriculture, living in leather tents, the 'toldos', hunting guanaco and ñandú (Rhea or South American ostrich). A large Mapuche community still inhabits its ancestral homeland in Argentina and Chile.
Tehuelche
They were the descendants of the ancient Patagonian Paleo-Indians. The name was given to them by the Mapuche, and meant 'fierce people'. They can be split into two distinct groups, each with their own cultural and linguistic identities: the Northern Tehuelche (Günnuna Kenna or Gennakenk—which, in their language meant 'people') and the Southern Tehuelche. The region between the Senguer, Chubut and Chico rivers was a flexible border between both groups.
Northern Tehuelche. Gradually, during the seventeenth century these northernmost Tehuelche expanded further north out of Patagonia, across the Negro and Colorado rivers and into the Pampas where they replaced the original natives of Buenos Aires province and became known as the Pampas or Puelche (the latter, in Mapudungun means 'Eastern people').
In the Pampas they encountered vast quantities of free roaming wild cattle and also the horse which the Spaniards had bought to America. The horse was quickly adopted, and through the Puelche it rapidly spread south into the heart of Patagonia.
The original Gennakenk continued living in Patagonia between the Negro and Chubut rivers until their demise in the late 1800s. There was yet another smaller group, on the flanks of the Andes in the Argentine provinces of Chubut and Río Negro. They were usually at war with the Mapuche who frequently invaded their territory. They were known as the 'Chüwach a Künna' (people at the edge of the mountains) yet little is known of them.
Southern Tehuelche. They called themselves 'Chonik', which in their language meant 'us, the people'. Originally they were 'foot Indians' and it was not until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that they adopted the horse. The Southern Tehuelche were divided into two separate sub-groups, very similar except for their language:
• Teushen (Boreal Southern Tehuelche); that lived in the north, between the Santa Cruz and Chubut rivers.
• Aonikenk or Aonek’enk (Austral Southern Tehuelche), which meant 'people of the South'. They lived in the southern area, between the Santa Cruz River and the Strait of Magellan." [2]

There were other native groups (Chono, Selknam, etc.), I will only focus on the Mapuche since these are the ones mentioned in the paper.

Araucanization

The "Araucanization" of the natives living to the East of the Andes was a very peculiar phenomenon. It also happened to the Huarpids living in the South of what is now Mendoza Province, just north of Patagonia. This is what happened:

The Inca first and then the Spaniards pushed the Mapuche south into the forests of the Chilean Lake District (1470 - 1620). The Mapuche fought back until they razed the Spanish settlements south of the Bío Bío River (1620s) and held the border until the 1870s.

During the late 1600s They spilt over the Andes into what is now Argentina and their language was adopted by the non-Mapuche Huarpids, Pehuenche, Picunche and Poya groups that lived in what is now Neuquén province. The Mapuche traded with them, and language goes with trade. Salt from the Patagonia and cattle together with horses were rustled across the desert from the Ranches (Estancias) in Buenos Aires into Chile.

The Mapuche absorbed several Tehuelche myths and incorporated them into their beliefs, the Gualicho is one of them, and is widely dispersed across Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, yet it is not a Mapuche myth, it is Tehuelche. [2]

The northern Tehuelche groups of the province of Buenos Aires became the "Puelche" and gradually replaced the original "Querandí" groups that lived in the Pampa grasslands. In the province of La Pampa, other groups morphed into the Mapuche speaking Ranquel natives. The Puelche adopted the Mapuche language too but were a distinct group. The raids on Spanish settlements increased in virulence during the 1700s.

A border guarded by poorly equipped troops marked the edge of Spanish civilization. The pink line in the map above throug San Carlos, Rio Cuarto, Melincue and Mar del Plata marks one of those borders: it moved back and forth, pushed by both parties during their invasions.

The period of the Independence wars left the border unprotected and the natives advanced and raided the towns beyond it. Rosas in 1833 led an expedition into the heart of the native territories and pacified the region for 20 years. In Argentina civil war and war with Paraguay delayed the solution of its military border in the south until 1879. In the meantime, Chile had advanced its frontier and many Mapuche chiefs crossed the Andes and settled in Argentina, and even in La Pampa. The araucanized natives and the Chileans (they were known as "Chileans" among the local natives) organized combined raids on the Argentine towns until a military campaign put an end to it in 1879-1880.

Many Mapuche chiefs were arrested and deported with their families to Buenos Aires, others died in battle, but it was not a genocide, only a war. It ended swiftly and later the natives were allowed to return to Patagonia (1890s and early 1900s). As the demographic figures attest, they are many Mapuche living in the region nowadays.

For those interested in reading more about the Araucanization, I mention some books below:

Rodolf Casamiquela, (1985). Características de la Araucanización al oriente de los Andes. Vol 2, No 1. Revista Universidad Católica de Temuco. doi: 10.7770/cuhso-V2N1-art141
Rodolfo Casamiquela, (2007). "Racista anti-mapuche": o la verdadera antigüedad de los mapuches en la Argentina. Ed. Casamiquela.
J. Roberto Bárcenas, (1990). Culturas indígenas de la Patagonia. Turner, 1990
Fernando Oper&ecute;, (2008). Indian Captivity in Spanish America: Frontier Narratives. (See: The Araucanization of the Pampas). University of Virginia Press, pp +65
Chris Moss, (2008). Patagonia: A Cultural History (See: Chapter 8). Oxford University Press

By the way, the Mapuche dislike the idea of "araucanization" and insist on a false point of view: that they actually occupied all these territories. But this is not the case, it is akin to saying that an English speaking native Tamil in India is an Englishman. The fact that both use the same language does not make them both Brits.

Rodolfo Casamiquela, who was born in Patagonia and studied the Tehuelche community in depth was the source of the Araucanization theory and he was attacked ruthlessly by the Mapuche activists until his death.

There are many similarities between Mapuche and Amazonian myths, involving jaguars and giant otters (which do not live in Chile, but are found in the Amazon and Chaco regions), Latcham [4] suggested that the Mapuche originated in the Amazon and later moved to Chile, perhaps furhter studies may corroborate this theory which would support a trans-Amazonic peopling route.

Trivia

Just for the fun of it, a Frenchman, Orelie-Antoine de Tounens wanted to be a king, so, in 1860 he chose a part of the world that (he thought) belonged to nobody (actually it was claimed by both Chile and Argentina as theirs, as it was the former Spanish territory in Patagonia), and he went there to claim it as his.

He landed in Chile, presented himself to the natives and offered them protection from Argentina and Chile if they accepted him as king. The natives agreed and he was appointed King of Araucania and Patagonia (in Chile but not Argentina). The Chilean army captured him and deported him back to France. He tried to return several times but died in his home in France in 1878.

Believe it or not, there still is a heir of de Tounens still claiming his throne. www.araucania.org

Closing comments

The Monte Verde site (14,000 y) shows us that people were living in Chile at that time, it does not impede the existence of sites 15, 16, 18 or even 35 ky old. It is just one site that has been found and dated in a way acceptable to orthodoxy.

To build back from that date with the constraints of a Beringian standstill (oh yes, the paper also supports the "incubation period" in Beringia) and define a 2,000 year duration for the epic adventure of peopling America is, in my opinion, a bit far fetched.

The diversity and variations found in America cannot be overly simplified. Fieldwork is required, more sites are needed, remains must be found, dated and sequenced. The pausity of ancient data puts constraints on our knowledge. We must open our minds and let the facts speak for themselves. Models and simulations are fine, but reality tends to impose itself in the long run.

Sources

[1] Martin Bodner, Ugo A. Perego et al., (2012). Rapid coastal spread of First Americans: Novel insights from South America's Southern Cone mitochondrial genomes. Genome Res. May 2012; 22(5): 811–820. doi: 10.1101/gr.131722.111
[2] Austin Whittall, (2012). Monsters of Patagonia. Zagier & Urruty, B. Aires.
[3] Indec Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas y Censos, 2004 (Census Bureau). Native population
[4] Latcham, R., (1924). La organización social y las creencias religiosas de los antiguos araucanos. Santiago: Cervantes.

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

Trauko and Red Headed Neanderthals

 

Red Haired Neanderthal. Trauko?. Photo by Thomas Kohler [2]

The Mapuche natives of northwestern Patagonia, that lived in the central part of the province of Neuquén, near what is now the city of San Martín de los Andes, believed in several gigantic beings.

One of them (which I mention in my book) was known as the Trauko -do not mistake with Chiloé’s Trauco dwarf which is a completely different creature with a similar sounding name.
Trauko dwelled along the banks of Collón Curá River -a name which means "stone mask" in Mapuche language- in Neuquén (40°00’ S, 70°49’ W).

The name probably reflects the presence of fossils in the area (there are plenty of dino bones in Neuquén province, close to the surface).

Native myths describe Trauko as a real hideous monster: a “terrible giant, man eater”. He was described as hairy and having “a very long beard and his hair, that seemed like rush stalks were fire red color”.[1]

Trauko was not invulnerable and the dogs of a young Indian woman killed it.
The interesting part of this story is the "fire red color" of his hair. Trauko was a primitive hominid with red hair!

It rang a bell as I recalled the "red headed" Neanderthals (see my post on Blemyes)... could Trauko be an ancient memory about Neanderthals among the Mapuche?

Sources

[1] Koessler-Ilg, B., (2000). Cuentan los Araucanos: Mitos, leyendas y tradiciones. B. Aires: Del Nuevo Extremo. . pp. 71.
[2] Photo, "Neandertaler", by Thomas Kohler, Some rights reserved Creative Commons License.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2012 by Austin Whittall © 

Gualicho & Kollon myths: based on Neanderthal?

 

Image of Mapuche “Lightning Stones” or “Toki Kurá”. From [8]

The late Rodolfo Casamiquela wrote his En pos del Gualicho (“In search of the Gualicho”) in between 1975 and 1984, and published it (Eudeba, Fondo Editorial Rionegrino) in 1988.

It is in his own words "...a continuous juxtaposition of new topics, that rose from the central theme... the thing gets complicated because both the original core and the addenda were corrected and interpolated more than once... over a period of ten years".

The book is quite complicated to read as it is a blend of interconnected topics, where Casamiquela jumps from one to the next, branches out along a path, and, once he gets back to the fork, then forgets to carry on with the original thread, leaving the reader waiting for more information! It includes many complex etymological comments on the Mapuche and Tehuelche languages, which explain some things but, regrettably obscure others. If you are not into Patagonian natives and their myths, you will surely fall asleep reading it!.

Gualicho

However it is an interesting source for those interested in the Patagonian evil creature "par excellence", the Gualicho. It is a pan-Patagonian myth, a monster, night creature, child kidnapper, a creature that had to be appeased so that it took its evil powers somewhere else.

From Patagonia the myth spread out through Southern Chile and the Pampas, borne on the hordes of Mapuche and Mapuche language speaking Puelches, into Buenos Aires and Uruguay. The myth still exists today and is a common household word (for instance: lovers are often said to be "engualichados" -bewitched) in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay.

The actual word “Gualicho” is Mapuche but its origin can be traced to the Tehuelche language for it is actually a Tehuelche myth. There are several Tehuelche words for this monster. One of its many names is Ajchüm, another is Elëngassën. The Mapuche blended their own “monster myth” of Kollón with Gualicho.

This is a genuine Patagonian myth. But, what is this creature supposed to be?
In my book, I mention the myth, and note that it has two different personifications, one human-like, the other, an animal:

As described by Claraz and Moreno, the Elëngassën at Segunda Angostura, excluding its armadillo-like shell, had several human traits: it had the face of a man, it could vocalize and insult, furthermore, it could throw stones, something no glyptodon or any animal other than a human or a hominid could do. This was no glyptodon.
In addition, Moreno likens it to the Huitranalhue (see chapter V), which was a being described both as a man and as an animal. Mythical Carcancho also shares this dual human-animal nature. It is very probable that Elëngassën and several varieties of Carcancho were some sort of animal while Huitranalhue and the Segunda Angostura cave creature were some kind of wild man. [4]

In today's post I will take some of the information given by Casamiquela in his book and focus on the "creature" behind the myth, the man-like creature (not the animal) and see if it sheds any light on a possible hominid origin for the myth.

Ajchüm

Casamiquela, reports that his native Tehuelche informant, José Qulchamal, told him that the creature was also known as ósüne, meaning "the ugly one". Below is a transcription of Casamiquela's interview:

"He had a hide like a guanaco [guanaco = relative of the llama and vicuña] , stole children and was hunchbacked... He was not people, he may have looked like people, but he was not people... He, who robbed children, yes... He was a male ... /what was his shape? or, had he four or two paws?/ no, no, he did not have paws, he was the same as a person... a very unsociable person / why unsociable?/ Because he had lived in those cliffs over there ... he would throw stones at you... and I have heard that thing cry out. /So the Ajchüm would still be alive/ yes, still.... that man does not have clothes like we have, seems like he was, or carries leather, of guanaco hide /Ah, he has a thick hide?/ "A thick hide I do not know, but the same color as the guanaco. .. he took [the children] and of course, killed them..." [1]

Called Kollón by the Mapuche Carmen Nahueltripay, a mix of Tehuelche and Mapuche, she said that Kollón "was like people, very big... its face very long, it has hair, speaks like people but is not tame".[2]

Another native informant, Liboria Crespo said that "Kollón was the ancestor of the [Tehuelche] race" [2].

What is more, these creatures have lived until relatively recent time, another native, Margarita Manquilef, of Ramos Mexía, Río Negro Province, reported that "until recently there was an "kollón" couple living at Garacán lagoon, towards Somuncurá in the Tambelén, Tapiluque area of Río Negro. They could be seen on a mountain top, on the prairie, of stone, with a child on their shoulders. They lived in a cave. One died and its bones remained..."[2]

Mariano Huala, from Alto Río Senguerr, in Chubut province, said that "his body was the same as that of a Christian [i.e. a human being]. Only his skull and his face was different... bigger... he lived in the Andean Cordillera, in the highest places" [2]

What is it?

Let’s check its main features:

• Man-like (“a person but not a person”)
• A hunch-backed person
• Lived in cliffs, in the highest mountains
• Unsociable, stole children, mated (lived in pairs and carried child on shoulders)
• Different face (longer) and skull
• Hairy, wore a hide or its hair was like the fur of a guanaco (light brown, soft and fluffy).
• Vocalized (nobody mentions “speaking”).
• Threw stones
• Ancestor of the Tehuelche people (a primitive human being?)

The interesting part is the stone axe. Which may be an Acheulean axe!

The axe

In a previous post I mention Felix Oute’s article which reported an Acheulean-style handaxe in Patagonia and hinted that it may be the work of pre-sapiens humans. In his book, Casamiquela mentions [3] a Tehuelche phrase regarding Gualicho: "tauk ka ülüngásüm a újüch". That is, the “Axe of the Gualicho”.

Casamiquela says that this "axe of the Kollón" is also known by its Mapuche name ("toki" = axe). He drops the thread there but mentions on pp. 24 that the creature “owns a certain stone “axe”, he makes no further refrence to stone axes beyond some remarks on the “engraved stones” (placas grabadas) on pp. 73, which are not axes but fragile pieces of slate, engraved with lines and drawings. Their real purpose is unknown.

So, it is quite likely that the Gualicho is a primitive human (either Neanderthal or even H. erectus, making stone tools and living in secluded areas.
What follows deals with the Mapuche stone axes, which in my opinion have nothing to do with the Gualicho myth and Casamiquela’s attempt to blend them is mistaken.

The Mapuche stone axe, Toki-Cura

The “toki” or “toqui” (both kinds of spelling are valid) is part of the Mapuche (the Chilean Mapuche) culture.

According to Diego de Rosales, who wrote one of the first History’s of Chile’s in the late 1600s, there was a Mapuche “official”known as the “General Toqui”, (who got his name from? Or gave it to? The “toqui” ceremonial axes. He wrote that:

General Toquis are justices and just like the Romans used to carry ahead of them some axes and staffs that they called faces et falaces, these [natives] carry as a symbol, some axes , not of iron but of flint, with a handle fixed to them, like the consular faces, symbols of their dignity” [7]

They were military authorities and used these axes in their councils with other General Toquis. The axes were ceremonial, made of black stone, sometimes meteorites were used for this purpose (having fallen from heaven they were supposedly divine and conferred power to its user). They have also been described as [6] “a polished sub-cylindric neolithic axe”.

Trivia
1. By the way, [5] the Mapuche word toki, is taken as a possible link between the Polynesian cultures and the Mapuche, since the same word is used in Eastern Polynesian (Easter Island uses the word toki and the Hawaians ko’i pohaku) for “stone axe”. Coincidence or pre-Hispanic contacts?
2. The stone axe is also known as toquichen and Toqui curá (Curá is their word for “stone”) so it means “stone axe”.

There is also another name for the axe: Pillán Toqui, Pillán’s axe.

This last name is associated to their god Pillán, associated to volcanos and lightning / thunder, and is therefore very similar to the Roman god Jupiter and the Scandinavian Thor, both of which are linked to lightning.

Furthermore, the Mapuche axe is also known as “Lightining stone” and said to fall from the skies during storms (it also points at the “meteorite” stone used to make some of these axes). [6]

I am not implying that the Romans or Vikings transmitted their myths to the ancient Mapuches, I just want to point out how some beliefs appear in a recurrent manner over the years among different people.

Interestingly, an online source [8] says that “the lightning stones were NOT prehistoric axes but a product of nature. Lightning strikes and it penetrates the soil at high temperatures melting minerals on the way and dragging them to a considerable depth. These, when they cool down have the shape of an axe or a cone”. It mentions Darwin’s findings (read about it in his Beagle Voyage book) on a beach (in Uruguay) , of glass rods caused by lightning.

Sources

[1] Rodolfo Casamiquela, (1988). En pos del Gualicho. Eudeba, Fondo Editorial Rionegrino. pp. 84
[2] Op. Cit. pp.12-14
[3] Op.Cit. pp. 13
[4] Whittall, Austin. In print. Patagonian monsters : a guide to its giants, dwarves, lake creatures and mythical beasts Buenos Aires : Zagier & Urruty Publicaciones, 2011.
[5] Adolphe Wurm, Peter Mühlhäusler, Darrell T. Tryon, (1996). Atlas of languages of intercultural communication in the Pacific, Asia and the Americas. Walter de Gruyter, pp 1334.
[6] Oscar Barreto. (1996). Fenomenología de la religiosidad mapuche Editorial Abya Yala. pp 16.
[7] De Rosales Diego, (1674) Historia General del Reyno de Chilepp. 178 (Ed. 1877 Valparaiso)
[8] Tradición Espiritual Aborigen, Introducción de F. Schuon al libro
"La Pipa Sagrada" de Hehaka Sapa

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

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