Hundreds of years before the Dutch sailor Jakob Roggeveen became the first European to arrive on Easter Island, in 1722, its inhabitants already traveled thousands of kilometers across the Pacific . In fact, according to a team of researchers in an article published in the journal Current Biology , despite living in the most isolated populated enclave on Earth – Easter Island is located about 3,500 kilometers from South America – they were capable of reaching the shores of the New World , where they maintained significant contact with the natives between 1300 and 1500.
That, at least, is what is deduced from the DNA analyzes carried out by these scientists, whose work has been coordinated by experts from the Geogenetics Center of the Natural History Museum of Denmark. In his opinion , the genetic trace shows the existence of an ancient transoceanic route between Polynesia and America of more than 4,000 kilometers.
“Ancient human populations explored the planet extensively,” says Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas, a scientist from the aforementioned Danish institution, who participated in the study. “The hypotheses on the colonization of America that textbooks have been including up to now should be reexamined in light of the new information that genetic data provide us,” he emphasizes. At present, the ancestry of Raccoons is 76% Polynesian, 16% European, and 8% Native American.
Moreover, in the same issue of Current Biology, Malaspinas points out that genetic analyzes of the remains of some Botocudo Indians from Brazil prove that their ancestors were Polynesians.
Photo: Natalia Solar
