Originally published July 5 2005
Ancient Polynesians explored Southern California a millennium before Christopher Columbus
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Scientists are studying new evidence, using carbon-dating of ancient headdresses and linguistic analysis of Polynesian languages, that suggests Columbus was not the first to discover what is now America.
Scientists are taking a new look at an old and controversial idea: that ancient Polynesians sailed to Southern California a millennium before Christopher Columbus landed on the East Coast.
The second involves research by two California scientists who suggest that a Chumash word for "sewn-plank canoe" is derived from a Polynesian word for the wood used to construct the same boat.
The Chumash and their neighbors, the Gabrielino, were the only North American Indians to build sewn-plank boats, a technique used throughout the Polynesian islands.
But after grappling for two years with criticisms by peer reviewers, Klar and Jones' article will appear in the archaeological journal American Antiquity in July.
"The dominant paradigm in American archaeology for the past 60 or more years has been anti-diffusionist, and our findings are already stimulating a rethinking of that paradigm," Klar told The Chronicle.
A huge blow to the skeptics came more than a decade ago, with the discovery of archaeological evidence that ancient Polynesians ate sweet potatoes, which are native to South America.
The Polynesians colonized Hawaii during the first millennium A.D., and in the process their language evolved into the Hawaiian language.
One key piece of evidence for this view was the carbon-dating of abalone shells from a Chumash ceremonial headdress fashioned from the skull of a swordfish, a deep-sea fish.
One positive reviewer says Klar and Jones' linguistic argument "seems to be systematically and exhaustively argued," but urges them to "have linguists skilled in Polynesian languages take a hard look at this."
Overall, five of the reviews were positive about the Klar-Jones paper and two were negative, but most suggested various improvements.
One reviewer advised Orlove to reject the paper but to ask the authors to resubmit it after they made improvements.
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