Transpacific chickens -- From somewhere in Polynesia to South America.

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

All,

Note that I reallly could not figure out what should be the right Board for this story.

Over and above its exotic, culinary quality (for a northerner who loves “pollo”), the following  Nature story has an added value. From a palaeoanthropological perspective, it tells us something about the chronological tail end (closing of the loop, as it were, or sort of a late echo) of one of the last two major cases of Holocene human dispersals. The other one being the occupation of the Canadian archipelago and portions of Greenland by the Palaeo-eskimos.

Nature
Published online: 5 June 2007

DNA reveals how the chicken crossed the sea. Ancient Polynesians may have brought birds to the Americas.

Brendan Borrell

The discovery of chicken bones with Polynesian DNA at an archaeological site in Chile has added hard, physical evidence to the controversial theory that ancient seafarers from the south Pacific visited the New World long before Columbus.

When the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro first visited Peru in 1532, he noted the importance of chickens in the daily lives and religious rituals of the Incas. But how the birds got there was a mystery. Chickens were first domesticated in Asia, and their absence from archaeological sites in the Americas indicates that they were not carried by migrating peoples over a land bridge from Asia to Alaska.

One alternative theory — that Polynesians visited the Americas, bringing livestock with them and perhaps influencing cultural and technological development in the region — has long been disparaged by mainstream archaeologists, as it has largely been supported by supposition rather than evidence.

Click [urhttp://www.nature.com/news/2007/070604/full/447620b.html
l=]HERE[/url] for the full text

For a few of the other informative reports on this story, you can also have a look at the New York Times (HERE), at the Archaeology Magazine (HERE), and at John Hawks blog (HERE).

And if an actual paper comes out in the near future, it will be interesting – if only for the sake of fairness -- to put this story in its larger research/historical context. Something that is barely alluded to at present.

Jacques

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

Here is the paper:

Storey, Alice A., José Miguel Ramirez, Daniel Quiroz, David V. Burley, David J. Addison, Richard Walter, Atholl J. Anderson, Terry L. Hunt, J. Stephen Athens, Leon Huynen, and Elizabeth A. Matisoo-Smith. 2007. Radiocarbon and DNA evidence for a pre-Columbian introduction of Polynesian chickens to Chile. PNAS 104(25): 10335–10339

Abstract:
Two issues long debated among Pacific and American prehistorians are (i) whether there was a pre-Columbian introduction of chicken (Gallus gallus) to the Americas and (ii) whether Polynesian contact with South America might be identified archaeologically, through the recovery of remains of unquestionable Polynesian origin. We present a radiocarbon date and an ancient DNA sequence from a single chicken bone recovered from the archaeological site of El Arenal-1, on the Arauco Peninsula, Chile. These results not only provide firm evidence for the pre-Columbian introduction of chickens to the Americas, but strongly suggest that it was a Polynesian introduction.

Keywords: ancient DNA - Gallus gallus – Polynesia

For full access, click HERE or – to repeat myself – ask around.

As you may have noticed, the story has already been extensively exploited by the media as well as by various lists, fora, and blogs. As for the article, I think it is quite straightforward. The chicken was consumed in Chile and the egg – as it were -- according to the mtDNA part of the study, presumably originated somewhere in Polynesia.

As I alluded to earlier, my only problem with the story (the media, the internet derivatives, and now the paper) is that it is symptomatic of what I would call “archaeological obsolescence”. By this, I mean that it seems to be an increasingly common practice on the part many researchers – and, therefore, media science writers -- to avoid spending too much time writing about or referring to pertinent work carried out by their more or less distant predecessors. I suppose that this is what one has to do in order to reinvent the wheel and become famous. In the present case, I would have expected that, in order to put things in a broader anthropological/historical context or perspective, some mention would have been made of the very lively, late 50s/early 60s, “Transpacific Contacts” debate. But, except for the reference to Heyerdahl, 1963 – “un passage obligé” – and to Meggers 1975 papers, zilch! Not a word about the vast amount of relevant research carried out by the likes Gordon Ekholm, Paul Tolstoy, and many others.

I guess I’m getting old!

Jacques

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

Just a brief addendum for people who are truly interested in “Transpacific Contacts”: reviews by Robert Greengo of three books that should be read by anyone really interested in putting the “chicken” story in a continental and anthropologically significant perspective.

Greengo, Robert E. 1965. Transpacific Contacts by Gordon F. Ekholm. North and South American Cultural Connections and Convergences by Betty J. Meggers. Linguistic Overview by Morris Swadesh. American Antiquity, 30(4): 511-513.

They can be read  HERE.

Jacques