HENRY - The human evolution news relay

#

National Geographic has a fantastic special edition on the Lapita culture and the settlement of Polynesia:

Much of the thrill of venturing to the far side of the world rests on the romance of difference. So one feels a certain sympathy for Captain James Cook on the day in 1778 that he “discovered” Hawaii. Then on his third expedition to the Pacific, the British navigator had explored scores of islands across the breadth of the sea, from lush New Zealand to the lonely wastes of Easter Island. This latest voyage had taken him thousands of miles north from the Society Islands to an archipelago so remote that even the old Polynesians back on Tahiti knew nothing about it.

Imagine Cook’s surprise, then, when the natives of Hawaii came paddling out in their canoes and greeted him in a familiar tongue, one he had heard on virtually every mote of inhabited land he had visited. Marveling at the ubiquity of this Pacific language and culture, he later wondered in his journal: “How shall we account for this Nation spreading it self so far over this Vast ocean?”

Continued at: How ancient voyagers settled the far-flung islands of the Pacific. Don’t miss the videos of Jared Diamond and Pat Kirch either.

( 1 )

#

The always wonderful Fiona has let me know that the Montenegro et al paper simulating the arrival of sweet potato (kumara) in Polynesia has come out. We first mentioned this in may last year.

Abstract:

The sweet potato is a plant native to the Americas, and its pre-historic presence in Polynesia is a long-standing anthropological problem. Here we use computer-driven drift simulations to model the trajectories of vessels and seed pods departing from a segment of coast between Mexico and Chile.

The experiments demonstrate that accidental drift voyages could have been the mechanism responsible for the pre-historic introduction of the sweet potato from the Americas to Polynesia.

While present results do not relate to the feasibility of a transfer by purposeful navigation, they do indicate that this type of voyaging is not required in order to explain the introduction of the crop into Polynesia. The relatively high probability of occurrence and relatively short crossing times of trips from Northern Chile and Peru into the Marquesas, Tuamotu and Society groups are in agreement with the general consensus that this region encompasses the area of original arrival and subsequent dispersal of the sweet potato in Polynesia.

Interesting stuff, but I think the evidence is getting stronger that the Polynesians did make it over to the Americas.

( 1 )