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Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories are speculative theories which propose that visits to the Americas, interactions with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, or both, were made by people from elsewhere prior to Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Caribbean in 1492. [1]
A diffusion by human agents has been put forward to explain the pre-Columbian presence in Oceania of several cultivated plant species native to South America, such as the bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) or sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas). Direct archaeological evidence for such pre-Columbian contacts and transport has not emerged.
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The unassuming sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) has been at the centre of a decades-long debate about when ancient peoples in the Americas and Polynesia first made contact. Now, a study1 finds that the vegetable, which is native to South America, beat people to the South Pacific islands by at least 100,000 years.
Researchers originally set out to clear up the sweet potato’s evolutionary history. By pinpointing its closest living wild relative, the team hoped to help plant breeders increase crop yields and bolster the vegetable's resistance to threats such as pests and disease. But the scientists realized that their data could also establish when sweet potatoes arrived in the South Pacific. The work was published on 12 April in Current Biology.
When Captain James Cook arrived in Polynesia in the eighteenth century on his journey of discovery, the vegetable was already ubiquitous in the region. The prevailing explanation is that Polynesian voyagers had sailed to South America and brought the sweet potato back to the islands on their return. Archaeological and genetic data seemed to support this conclusion, although scientists have questioned some of this evidence over the years. The sweet potato seemed to be a solid piece of evidence in support of pre-Columbian contact between Polynesians and South Americans, until now.
The latest study suggests that it’s possible that sweet-potato seeds crossed the Pacific Ocean without help from humans. Previous research shows that the seeds will sprout even after exposure to seawater2. Birds also routinely cross the Pacific and could have spread the seeds3.
A family tree
“We hadn’t planned to study this anthropological question, but we realized we had the data to do so,” says Pablo Muñoz-Rodríguez, a botanist at the University of Oxford, UK, and an author of the study.
•DNA shows how the sweet potato crossed the sea
•DNA study links indigenous Brazilians to Polynesians
- Alex Fox
- 2018
half the plant transfers consisted of flora of American origin that spread to Eurasia or Oceania, some at surprisingly early dates. The only plausible explanation for these findings is that a considerable number of transoceanic voyages in both directions across both major oceans were completed between the 7th millennium BC and
Yet, there are hints everywhere that both the Atlantic and Pacific were crossed frequently before Columbus set sail. One class of pre-Columbiana consists of linguistic, artistic, literary, and fossil evidence that distinctive New World plants were known in the Orient well before 1492.
A diffusion by human agents has been put forward to explain the pre-Columbian presence in Oceania of several cultivated plant species native to South America, such as the bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) or sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas). Direct archaeological evidence for such pre-Columbian contacts and transport has not emerged.
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James Hornell, 'Was there pre-Columbian contact between the peoples of Oceania and South America?' Journal of the Polynesian Society (hereinafter JPS), 54 (1945), 179-82.
