Pollo y kumara

Chickens crossed to South America from Polynesia, while sweet potatoes went the other way, who knows, maybe in the same canoes. Ok, let’s unpack that a little bit. A DNA study has found links between 14th century (i.e. pre-Columbian) chicken bones buried on the coast of south central Chile and chicken bones from Polynesian archaeological sites, particularly on Tonga and American Samoa. Meanwhile, ocean circulation models suggest that, contrary to previous thinking, a ship setting off from various points along the western coast of South America could indeed have delivered sweet potato seed pods (and bottle gourds?) to Polynesia (in particular the Marquesas) in a relatively short period. These studies have been all over the news lately and are being much discussed in the blogosphere. For example, Gene Expression and John Hawks work through some of the anthropological questions.

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