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.
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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