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Once again the bad old anthropologists are looking much more right on the money than the groovy new anthropologists. Argentine anthropologist José Imbelloni (1885 - 1967) posited Melanesian ancestry in the deep past of the Americas based on skeletal morphology (he proposed several waves of settlement). I've read less about his Rapa Nui research but I know he was also really interested in the populating of the island in ways that subsequent anthropologists pooh-poohed. My hunch is this probably confirms his ideas but I don't know enough to say for sure.

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oh yeah. i read this research years ago when they discovered Maori Burial sites in Mocha island, south of Chile. Very interesting

https://patrimonioceanico.cl/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Human-Skeletal-Evidence-of-Polynesian-Presence-in-South-America-Metric-Analyses-of-Six-Crania-from-Mocha-Island.pdf

people regarded them Maori right away as there are words like Toqui / Toki / that have the same meaning between maori and mapuzungun for it to be a concidence

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The Kon Tiki expedition is a fascinating example of a wrong-headed theory nonetheless generating fascinating proof of the possibility of transoceanic voyaging by non-European cultures. It looks like Heyerdahl started from the prior of proving that the advanced city-building civilisations of western South America were spreaders of culture through the Pacific, so he set out to prove it by sailing a balsa log raft from east to west. But this overlooked the fact that the seemingly less advanced Pacific island cultures living on small, scattered islands were actually the voyaging experts. My money’s on the guys who developed the technology to navigate oceans from Madagascar to Hawaii.

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I wish you would do a deep dive on the youtube documentary "Skeletons in the Closet" and read all related material. I have purchased a few different books mentioned in the documentary, and sought out relevant information. I do not think the documentary is getting things down accurately, and some elements of the story (giants and pygmies) are capitalized on for popularity.

I still think you should cover it. Perhaps you will discover new information. Perhaps you will find new threads. If not, you can put to rest (with logical reasoning and evidence) some of the claims of "redheads in the Pacific".

Love your work. Please consider this deep-dive/debunking.

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I'll have a look now, thanks Aodhan

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> If not, you can put to rest (with logical reasoning and evidence) some of the claims of "redheads in the Pacific".

Well there are people with red hair in New Guinea. It appears to be a different mutation from the one responsible for red hair in Europe.

What specific claims have you herd?

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Watch the documentary "Skeletons in the Cupboard" on YouTube

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When I find three hours to watch a random documentary, I might.

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Thank you for this. I have been wondering about possible Andean-Polynesian links, precisely because of the speculations on Nephi Code, whose map you used. My bet is that as these ancient movements and connections become clearer, and we will find there was a lot more movement and mixture before 1492, than in anybody's theory, similar to how complicated the story of Early Sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans, &c. has become.

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Very interesting. I like to stretch my brain now and then. Thank you.

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I went to a lesser known pyramid in Peru and they had paintings clearly showing red headed men with dogs not native to America on it. The site was pre inca but not by much, either Moche or Wari if I recall. Don't know if Polynesians have red hair, but clearly pre columbian Americans had contact with a variety of peoples not recorded in history books.

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The more I learn about history more questions I have. I had heard before that Polynesians made it to South America and that there are genetic links between Polynesians and some tribal south americans particularly in Peru. But Brazil that's completely new to me and even the closest Brazil is the Pacific is hundreds of miles inland. Why did the Polynesians go so deep inland? What could have motivated them to do this? These are all questions that we will unfortunately probably never definitively.

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> 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.

This despite the turmeric root and the sweet potato providing proof of early contacts.

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Fascinating!

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Thor Heyerdahl did not quite provide evidence of the feasibility of transoceanic sailing from South America to Polynesia by native groups, as he was towed out some 50 miles from the coast of Peru by a tug to avoid disadvantageous currents and winds.

This study is intriguing and apparently well made, but I wonder what the outcome of Occam’s razor would be here. Are there any methodological flaws or sample contamination?

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