Ancient Contact Between Easter Island and South America?

New genetics from Rapa Nui/Easter Island confirm the presence of Native American ancestry

The colonisation of the Pacific and Indian Oceans by one extended group of people is amongst the greatest stories in all of human history, in my opinion. From Madagascar to New Zealand, Taiwan to Hawai’i, the Austronesian peoples were able to master the seas through the development of the outrigger canoe and a package of domesticated crops and animals. Starting around 3,000 BC, waves of island hopping out of the South China Sea brought the Austronesians to the Philippines, then Indonesia and New Guinea. Their continuing momentum carried them onwards to the Solomon Islands (1,300 BC), New Caledonia (1,200 BC) and the trio of Tonga, Samoa and Fiji around 800-900 BC. A curious gap of nearly a millennium then passes by before the islanders took to the seas again and finally reached New Zealand (1200 AD), Hawai’i (900 AD) and Easter Island/ Rapa Nui (1100 AD).

The three Austronesian Pacific regions of Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia

Contact between South America and the Polynesians has long been a topic of speculation. The spread of the turmeric root and the sweet potato from South America into Polynesia long before European contact, and the discovery of Pacific breed chicken remains in Chile still await good explanations. Most famously of course, the anthropologist and explorer Thor Heyerdahl sailed a primitive raft from Peru to the Tuamotus (the Kon-Tiki expedition) in 1947. Thus proving that oceanic contact was feasible, even for a group far less experienced than 13th century Polynesian sailors.

Genetic studies examining ancient and contemporary Polynesian peoples have been mixed up to now, with some claiming there was no evidence of contact between the older inhabitants of Rapa Nui, and others claiming that there was. The debate has not only focused on whether there was contact, but if there was, where did it take place and who initiated it?

Polynesians may have reached the shores of South America, then colonized other Pacific islands, taking sweet potatoes and Indigenous companions with them. Or their descendants may have returned to Polynesia carrying Indigenous South American genetic heritage. According to Lipo, most archaeological evidence supports one of these scenarios rather than Native Americans reaching Polynesia first.

“Polynesians are long-distance voyagers,” Lipo says. “They moved across incredibly vast areas consistently and found all kinds of margins. We often think of these traditional seafaring groups as moving step-like to close islands and then further and further islands over time, but in fact, what we actually see archaeologically is that people move the farthest distance first. They explored their space and actually ended up in some of the most remote islands early on, and then filled in, colonizing the areas in between

DNA reveals Native American presence in Polynesia centuries before Europeans arrived - National Geographic 2020

The story of Rapa Nui, outside of discussions about voyages to the Americas, has long been treated as a kind of ecological allegory. The people who ‘cut down all their trees’ and precipitated a form of ‘ecocide’ which led to their civilisational demise. Many have seen in the story about deforestation to make rollers for transporting the giant stone heads (Moai) a parable about using up the world’s resources. Others have criticised this story on the grounds that it is, a story, and no substantive evidence exists for a period of social collapse and warfare. Unfortunately the islanders were devastated by Peruvian slave raiders in the 1860’s, with around half the population kidnapped and taken away on boats.

This new genetic study has been able to address both narratives of Rapa Nui in one publication. Using 15 ancient Rapanui individuals, radiocarbon dated to between AD 1670–1950, a mixed team of researchers from across Europe have been able to fully sequence their entire genomes. The results were:

• No evidence of a severe population bottleneck around AD 1600

• Around 10% of the ancient and modern Rapa Nui genome is of Native American origins

• Statistical modelling puts the time of contact to between AD 1250–1430

Compared to other Polynesians and Fijians, the genomes from Rapa Nui show a consistent low level signal of Native American admixture. The strongest sources for this mixture came from ancient and modern Andean highland peoples, suggesting contacts with the Inca or related groups. How this contact occurred and what their relationship was like will now be open for archaeologists and historians to explore.

Just 15 genomes have managed to simultaneously confirm and help deny two major stories of humans in the Pacific and the Americas - the collapse of Rapa Nui and oceanic contact between Polynesia and South America. Almost no other kind of material evidence has that much interpretative firepower.

Rapa Nui can now be added to the list, along with the Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows ( AD 1000) in Newfoundland, as proof of ancient meetings with the Americas. Back in 2014, two skulls were found in Brazil and genetically tested. The data returned a signal consistent with Polynesia, and was dated to before the 19th century, suggesting these human beings had travelled across the Pacific and ended up in Brazil, in the care of the indigenous Botocudo people. At the time the researchers dismissed the implications as "too unlikely to be seriously entertained” - now is the time we get to reconsider those assumptions.