The sewn canoe: a link between Amerindians and Polynesians

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

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

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

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

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

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

Polynesian influences?

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

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

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

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

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

The Polynesian sewn-plank canoes

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

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

Below is an image showing it (Source):

Plank Canoe in Tahiti, 1847. Capt. Martin

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

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

Melanesian Sewn-Plank Canoes

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

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

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

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

Plank Canoes of San Cristoval, Melanesia. Haddon

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

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

The Patagonian Chonos

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

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

Dalca: the sewn-plak canoe

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

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

Dalca planks. Source

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

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

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

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

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

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

Discussion

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

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

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

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

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

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

Polynesian skulls found in Mocha Island, Patagonia, Chile

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

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

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

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

Rocker Jaw, Amerindians and Polynesians

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Mocha skulls revisited

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

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

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

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

Transpacific Routes

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

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

Possible routes between Polynesia and America. Source

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

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

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

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

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

Cultural similarities and differences

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Paper: An early peopling of Australia

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

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

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

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

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

Near Oceania was peopled early

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

The molecular clock

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Marquesans and their Melanesian heritage

While seeking more information about the possible early peopling of Polynesia by Melanesian people (which could have also continued their journey across the Pacific Ocean and reached America thousands of years ago, and admixed there with the Amerindians), I found some intersting information regarding the Marquesas Islands people and a link with Melanesia.

Roslyn Poignant, in her book Oceanic mythology : the myths of Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, Australia, published in 1967, mentions on page 13 a similarity between Marquesans and Melanesians: "The Marquesans headband ornament of carved turtleshell overlaying pearlshell provides an important clue to the origin of the Marquesans. It bears a close resemblance to an ornament called a kapkap, found in parts of Melanesia." These Marquesan jewels are known as "uhikana". Adding that:

"The Society Islands were reached by about 200 B.C., but so were the most easterly Marquesas. Excavation in the latter islands showed that the first comers must have arrived direct from western Polynesia at a time when the culture of the area was hardly differentiated from that of Melanesia, for amongst the objects found was a carved pearlshell headdress ornament which in Melanesia is called a kapkap. This style of ornament continued to be worn by the Marquesans until last century. It has been found nowhere else in Polynesia, and the nearest place it reappears is Melanesian Santa Cruz, near the New Hebrides."

Santa Cruz is 6,000 km (3.740 mi.) from the Marshalls. This is a long journey.

The kapkaps of the Melanesians are made in the same manner as those of the Marquesas and it is "worn around the neck or on the forehead... a circular white clamshell disc overlaid with carved dark-brown turtle-shell fretwork". (Source; see also this source).

They were one of the most popular forms of jewelry among Melanesian and all of them were made the same way, by overlaying giant clam shell disks with delicate artwork carved in turtle shell. They were very common along the coast of New Guinea all the way to the Santa Cruz Islands. (Source).

Below are two kapkaps from New Ireland.

Two of the kapkaps on display from New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. Pitt Rivers Museum. Source

Below is a uhikana from the Marquesas, notice how similar the Melanesian and "Polynesian" (Marquesan) objects are!

Uhikana, Metropolitan Museum, late 1800s. Source

The headdress pictured above (known as uhikana) were part of the ceremonial clothing used by the tribal chiefs of the Southern Marquesas. In the image we can see a fiber headband with a central disk of pearl shell overlaid with turtle shell, forming a tiki star.

Melanesians

The people of Melanesia used disks on their heads, if inland, they made them from other materials. Below are some images depicting disks and headbands from this region.

Roro Woman in Papua New Guinea, 1914. Source

Samoan Chief, 1907. Source

The image below shows a Solomon Island chief with a large kapkap on his head.

Portrait of Irobaoa of Suafa, north Malaita, Solomon Islands, c.1910. wearing a kap-kap. Source

Marquesan People

The chief from the image below was portrayed during Captain James Cook's Second Voyage (1772-1775) at the island of Tahu Ata (which, when discovered in 1595 by Álvaro de Mendaña was named Santa Cristina) in the Marquesas.

Cook's account records the chief's name as Honoo (now written Honu), and their encounter took place in April 1774.

Chief Honu at Santa Christina or Tahu Ata. Southern Marquesas Islands. Source

CAPTION HERE. Copyright © 2025 by Austin Whittall

The image below, taken in 1895 in the Marquesas Islands is captioned: "Postmarked September 17, 1908. 8.8 x 13.8 cm. The figure with the white beard wearing a uhikana headband appears in other photographs by Homes, circa 1895 (Marquesan Chief of Atuona). He is adorned with a mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell uhikana headband, as well as a titi ouoho covering his shoulders and a toke ouoho skirt also made of human hair. The second figure wears a feathered headdress. The seated figure in profile and the one on the right have tattoos."

Marquesan men, 1895 note the uhikana on the man with the white beard. Source

Below are some "Marquesan Chiefs" in an engraving published in 1871. Note the uhikana on the man on the right captioned "Marquesan Chief (see page 1049)". On that page it adds more context:

"When they wish to be considered as wearing full dress, the better class of men wear a most elaborate cap, made of fibre, feathers, and shells. First, a broad fillet is plaited from cocoa-nut fibre, so as to pass round the forehead, after the manner of a cap without d crown. On the centre of this fillet is fixed a large plate of mother-o'-pearl, decorated with carving. In the middle of this plate is fixed a smaller but similarly shaded plate of tortoise-shell, and in the middle of that a still smaller disc of pearl shell. Some headdresses have three of these ornaments, as is the case with that which is figured in the Marquesan chief on the 1046th page.
In the fillet are also fastened a number of feathers, either from the tail of the cock or from that of the tropic bird, so that when the fillet is bound on the forehead the feathers will stand upright. The feathers of the tropic bird are greatly prized by the natives, who use them for various ornaments, and display great ingenuity in procuring them. Instead of killing the birds, and so stopping the supply of feathers, they steal upon them when they are asleep, and dexterously twitch out the two long tail-feathers. In process of time the feathers grow again, and so the supply is kept up. I mention the custom because it is contrary to the recklessness respecting the future which is usually found among savages."

Marquesan men, 1895 note the uhikana on the man on the right. Source

So there is a unique link between the Marquesans, of all the different Polynesian people, on hundreds of islands spread across the Pacific, that wear a motherpearl inlaid with turtle shell jewel that is almost identical to the one used by Melanesian people in Papua New Guinea, and the Salomons. This suggests that the Melanesians reached the Marquesas Islands before the later wave that replaced them in the islands lying between the Eastern Pacific and Melanesia. Since Melanesians have been around for over 40,000 years. So they had plenty of time to move east, across the Pacific.

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

The peopling of Polynesia, an article from 1910

In our current woke world, where we are all so careful about using certain words to avoid hurting sensibilities, trying to be correct about issues of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, politics, etc., it is refreshing to be able to read something written one hundred and fifteen years ago, which with frankness and the crudeness of that era describes facts and knowledge, without worrying about being politically correct or the censorship of cancel culture.

I am sharing a link to an interesting article written back in 1910, and highlighting its comments about the peopling of Polynesia.

Source: W. D. Alexander, (1910). The Origin of the Polynesian Race. The Journal of Race Development, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Oct., 1910), pp. 221-230. https://doi.org/10.2307/29737859. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29737859

Below is the full quote from Alexander:

"Antiquity of Man in Polynesia.
Many considerations combine to prove the great antiquity of man in Polynesia. Prof. Macmillan Browne has ably presented the evidences of this, as seen on the one hand in ancient traditions and relics, and on the other hand in the New Zealand traditions mention a number of aboriginal tribes. In a similar way the Hawaiian had numerous legends about the "Menehunes," described as a race of industrious and skillful dwarfs, who were said to have built the great fishpond walls and to have dug extensive irrigation ditches.
In the South Island of New Zealand there are vast shell mounds containing bones of the extinct Moa birds, and ancient Maori ovens and stone implements have been found fourteen feet below the present surface of the ground, under an ancient forest. In an article entitled "First Wells of Honolulu," by James Hunnewell, in Hawaiian Club Papers, p. 31, it is stated that the first wells in Honolulu were dug in 1822. "They passed through eight or ten feet of surface soil and volcanic sand, when a coral bed eight feet in thickness was met with and cut through, under which fresh water was reached. In this coral stratum a human skull and sundry human bones were found imbedded." In 1858, in dredging the harbor of Honolulu, near the Esplanade, in about twenty feet of water, it was found that underneath the mud and sand there was a stratum of hard coral rock about two feet in thickness, beneath which there was a thick layer of black volcanic sand. Embedded in this black sand were found the lower part of an ancient spear, about three feet long, and a slingstone of a red, close-grained lava, such as is not found anywhere in that vicinity. In 1859, as Fornander relates, "Mr. R. W. Meyer, of Kalae, Molokai, found in the side of a canyon on his estate, some seventy feet below the surface of the upper level plain, in a stratum of volcanic mud, breccia, clay and ashes, several feet in thickness, a human skull, compactly filled by the volcanic deposit surrounding it, as if it had been cast in a mould. As that stratum spreads over a considerable tract of land, at varying depths below the surface, andas the ravines and canyons which now intersect it were formed by erosion, the great age of that human skull may be reasonably inferred."
There are other indications of antiquity in the extremely primitive stage of Polynesian culture. The race was still in the Stone Age. The total absence of pottery is a significant fact, for, as Prof. Macmillan Browne observes : "All around the Pacific, on both the Asiatic and American coast, pottery has been made from time immemorial, and so it is in all the island world from the Malay peninsula south-east to the New Hebrides and Fiji." "The absence of pottery and of the use of the bow in war makes it certain that the pre-existence of a Melanesian and Papuan substratum of population in that region, assumed by some writers, is a fiction." In the art of making fire, as has already been stated, the Polynesians and Melanesians stand alone. With the exception of the Easter Islanders, the Polynesians did not possess even the most rudimentary forms of writing.
The above considerations would exclude the idea of any intercourse with the East Indian Archipelago within historical times. At the same time there is no sufficient evidence of a pre-existing race in Polynesia proper."

The text mentions "ancient" skulls and remains in Hawaii, and the Menehune. In New Zealand it reports "Maori" tools in shell middens which could belong to the aboriginal tribes encountered by the Maori in New Zealand (More on these aboriginal New Zealand people in our next post). It also points out that the Polynesians, unlike the Melanesians did not make pottery and did not use bow and arrow. So it questions a Melanesian origin. It also says there is not enough evidencer to support an aboriginal pre-Polynesian race in the islands of Polynesia.

But, an original wave of Melanesians into Polynesia would have abandoned the use of bow and arrow because they, like the later Polynesian migrants would have adopted fishing as a food resource using nets, hooks, and spears for that purpose. Furthermore, wood suitable for making bows and arrows would be hard to come across in the islands of Polynesia. Regarding ceramics, clay is the key raw material, abundant on large islands like New Guinea or New Zealand, it isn't found in volcanic atolls, where basalt, lava, and coral are the main components of soil.

The Melanesian presence in Polynesia before its current inhabitants isn't only something from 115 years ago, a paper published in 2006 (Manfred Kayser, et al., Melanesian and Asian Origins of Polynesians: mtDNA and Y Chromosome Gradients Across the Pacific, Molecular Biology and Evolution, Volume 23, Issue 11, November 2006, Pages 2234–2244, https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msl093) says the following (underlined is mine):

"The fact that there is extensive sharing of Asian haplotypes, but not Melanesian haplotypes, between Polynesians and Melanesians today, therefore, could indicate that Melanesian haplotypes were present earlier in Polynesia (perhaps in Fiji), leading to greater divergence between Polynesians and Melanesians for haplogroups of Melanesian origin than for haplogroups of Asian origin. However, there are large gaps in the sampling of coastal/island Melanesians, which would need to be filled in before one could be certain that there is truly a difference in patterns of haplotype sharing between Polynesians and Melanesians for haplogroups of Asian versus Melanesian origin... The striking difference observed here between Asian and Melanesian contributions to the paternal and maternal gene pool of Polynesians suggests an admixture bias toward more Melanesian men, perhaps as result of uxorilocal (matrilocal) residence and matrilineal descent in ancestral Polynesian society."

Why more Melanesian Y-chromosomes than Asian, and the opposite for mtDNA? The explanation given above seems weird. There was admixture in the islands, the Polynesians with Asian genes arrived and met Melanesians who prevailed and took Polynesian women (with Asian mtDNA) as their wives resulting in the current Polynesian admixture.

Our next post will look into the aboriginals of New Zealand, a pre-Polynesian people there, and some odd findings in the field of Maori genetics.

Melanesian men, Mountaineers from inland Viti Levu (Kai Colo people) in Fiji c.1900. Source

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

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 © 

Long strands of Denisovan and Neanderthal DNA in Melanesians

Most of us, non-Africans, carry tiny snippets of Neanderthal DNA inside of us, as part of our genome. This is because our ancestors had sex with Neanderthals as they moved across Eurasia, the children born from this admixture carried both Homo sapiens and Neanderthal DNA. Selection weeded out the nasty genes and dilution after countless generations of intra-human breeding watered down the Neanderthal DNA in our genomes, but we still carry roughly 1 to 3% of their DNA in us.

Humans also interbred with the mysterious Denisovans (in Asia), and Melanesians carry roughly 3 to 5% Denisovan DNA with them.

A paper by Ping Hsun Hsieh et al. published today, (Adaptive archaic introgression of copy number variants and the discovery of previously unknown human genes Science - 18 Oct 2019 Vol. 366, Issue 6463, eaax2083 DOI: 10.1126/science.aax2083) took a closer look at this admixture in Melanesians.

We usually carry small snippets of archaic DNA, moswt of these are merely single nucleotide changes, which is a switch in a "letter" of our genetic code, where one molecule (nucleotides are molecules that contain a phosphate group, a sugar group and a nitrogen base) changes for another, for instance an adenine nucleotide (A) changes for a thymine nucleotide (T) altering the genetic sequence.

These single nucleotide changes don't have much of an evolutionary impact, they are therefore immune to selection.

This paper looked for more significant changes: deletions and duplications, formally known as "Copy Number Variants" or CNVs.

And they found that Melanesians carry long strands of archaic DNA in their genes.

The images below are from the paper:

Deletions are parts of a DNA molecule that have been lost during replication. In general deletions are more deleterious than duplications.

Duplications are sections of DNA that are duplicated, as if they were copied and pasted. They are four times more common than deletions. They can be pasted adjacent to the original chunk, and this is known as "tandem duplication" -which are quite rare in humans- or somewhere else ("displaced duplication").

A duplicated section of DNA will of course be passed on to the descent of the mutant carrying it, and will be subjected to the forces of natural selection. If the mutation is beneficial, it will be conserved, but if it alters the metabolism of the person carrying it, selection will weed it out (the person may die or not have viable offspring).

This paper reported 37 CNVs in Melanesians, of which 19 came from Neanderthals and Denisovans. For instance two large chunks of archaich DNA: in chromosome 8, which came from Neanderthals, and in chromosome 16, inherited from Denisovans.

• Chr. 8: Neanderthal with a duplication (38,000 base pairs -bp- long, carried by 44% of Melanesians), and a deletion (6,000 bp long.
• Chr. 16: Denisovan, with two duplications. The first is 380,000 bp long and is found in 79% of the Melanesians that were sampled.

As a point of interest, the first Denisovan duplication lies next to DNA sequences linked to autism (Chromosome 16p11.2 critical region, are associated to roughly 1% of human autism cases).

Also, related to autism, is the region in chromosome 8 (8p21.3) affected by the Neanderthal CNVs. (see more).

The fact that these CNVs have survived tens of thousands of years means that they have contributed some positive trait, that helped those carrying it survive beter than those lacking it. Selective pressure therefore retained these changes as they provided an advantage to the "mutants".

As the paper is behind a paywall I have not been able to read the particulars, but I wonder why do Melanesians carry such large snippets of archaic DNA? Do we all carry long snippets of Neanderthal DNA and it hasn't yet been detected in Eurasians because nobody has looked for it or, on the other hand we don't carry any?

Did Melanesia have specific conditions that favored keeping these duplications while the rest of the world didn't? (certain diseases for instance which can be averted thanks to these CNVs).

The medical significance of these mutations will have to be investigated.

One of the images from the paper suggest that these particular mutations are very rare among non-Melanesians:

The CNVs had first been studied in a paper Global diversity, population stratification, and selection of human copy-number variation, by Peter H. Sudmant et al., (2015) published in Science 11 Sep 2015: Vol. 349, Issue 6253, aab3761 DOI: 10.1126/science.aab3761. It too noticed the high level of Denisovan CNVs, in Melanesians, but not in Australian Aboriginals. They calculated its origin 440 kya among the Denisovans. They mention a chr 16 duplicaton:

"a duplication polymorphism restricted to modern Oceanic populations yet also present in the genome of the archaic Denisova hominin. This 225–kilo–base pair (kbp) duplication includes two microRNA genes and is almost fixed among human Papuan-Bougainville genomes".

This paper (Sudmat el al.,) also studied CNVs among modern humans and were surprised to find that when comparing the difference between Africans and non-Africans regarding deletions and duplications using a parameter they named "Deletion load", "... Africans exhibited an apparent higher deletion load than non-African populations ... Duplications showed no such effect."

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2019 by Austin Whittall ©