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Comment by aritmo | Hacker News Reader

It is also possible that a fisherman from South America got stuck in ocean currents and went to Easter island instead. This is simpler than making it to South America and then back to Easter island. There are ocean currents in the SE Pacific that can take a boat from the shore into deep in the Pacific.

If there was an Easter Island seafarer that went from Easter island to South America and back, then they would have a very good standing in the community. His guests would leave a bigger genetic mark in the community.

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The paper resolves the controversy with the Easter Island (Rapa Nui) population. After colonization, the population from Chile mixed with the population from Rapa Nui. This paper conclusively shows that a 1200 AD (i.e. pre-colonization) event occurred on one of the eastern Polynesian islands before Polynesians settled Easter Island. The "hub" island radiation starts in the natural east-to-west currents. The Rapa Nui admixture is from Chile but the pre-colonization admixture is from Columbia and it is found throughout eastern Polynesia along with the South American sweet potato.

It is not known whether Polynesians sailed to Columbia/Ecuador and back or if South American natives sailed to Polynesia. A fisherman blown off course doesn't fit with the spread of the sweet potato and gourds, but who knows. The there-and-back-again narrative fits the Polynesian practice of exploring upwind/up-current and allowing the wind/current to help you get back. I use the same safety technique when canoeing and diving.

This last is worth expanding on. Mauricio Obregon in "Beyond the Edge of the Sea" says that the usual way of exploration on the high sea, seeking an island that may or may not be there, is to wait for a wind contrary to the prevailing wind. Then, if you don't find one, the wind will soon turn and carry you home.

This is similar to the Kon-Tiki theory that Thor Heyerdahl popularized, but has since been heavily criticized. Largely it implies that these people weren’t capable or skilled enough to make these voyages, that it happened by accident, and certainly has some racist undertones dismissing native Polynesian people’s knowledge and skills.

I spent some time as a teenager on a cultural exchange with a group of native Hawaiians and vividly remember being brought on some of their double hulled canoes and got to hear their master navigators explain a lot of their navigation techniques. It’s pretty mind blowing. I also remember a Hawaiian anthropologist talking about how a colleague in Central America had found some very old cave paintings depicting what seemed to be Haleakala.

It seems not at all surprising to me that ancient Polynesians were able to travel to the Americas.

I've heard this described as why would they have stopped exploring and colonizing. So it makes a lot of sense that they would have continued looking for any habitable island or land.

On the other side of the pacific, Hawaiian oral stories have some indication that they reached Central America from the islands. Referring to the place they found as a land of frogs.

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