China News Service, Beijing, July 9th (Reporter Sun Zifa) A new research paper on human evolution published in the internationally renowned academic journal Nature has presented new evidence to prove that the prehistoric era between the Americas and the distant eastern Polynesia is Having maritime contact means that Native Americans had a genetic and cultural impact on the local population more than 500 years before Europeans arrived in Polynesia.

　　The study clarified the history of Polynesia by analyzing the genetic data of modern and ancient individuals, and helped resolve a long-standing debate about how Native Americans influenced Polynesians.

Moai Statue on Rano Raraku Point on Easter Island. (Picture from Javier Blanco) for picture

　　Due to conflicting conclusions drawn from different genomic studies in the past, the possibility of prehistoric contact between Polynesians and Native Americans is quite controversial. In this latest study, the paper's corresponding author, Andrés Moreno-Estrada, the Mexican National Laboratory for Biodiversity Genomics, and Alexander Ioannidis, Stanford University, USA (Alexander Ioannidis) and their colleagues analyzed the genomes of more than 800 Polynesians and Native Americans, and concluded that the two should have had a genetic exchange around 1200 AD. At the time, in eastern Polynesia, Polynesians had a contact with a group of Native Americans who had the closest relationship with the indigenous peoples of today’s Colombian coast. However, Easter Island is not the first point of contact considered by some studies in the past.

Sunrise at Tongariki Point on Easter Island. (Picture from Andres Moreno-Estrada) Picture

　　In this regard, some peer experts believe that past genomic research will focus on the contact on Easter Island, because it is the closest inhabited Polynesia island to South America. However, the latest research supports the point made by the late Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl that the first contact occurred in an archipelago in eastern Polynesia (such as the South Marquesas Islands). At the same time, the latest research findings indicate that the contact incident occurred earlier than previously expected and spread on multiple islands in Polynesia, which means that Native Americans have influenced Polynesians more than 500 years earlier than in Europe. (Finish)