A single chicken bone has provided anthropologists with the strongest evidence yet to suggest that Polynesian seafarers sailed to South America before the discovery of the New World by European explorers.
The possibility that Polynesians had direct contact with the indigenous people of South America has long intriguedexperts on ancient human migrations, but hard evidence has been difficult to come by.
However, a study by scientists from New Zealand and Chile has shown that chickens may well have been introduced into South America from Polynesians sailing from the west rather than Europeans coming from the east.
Chicken bones excavated from an archaeological site in central Chile have been analysed by carbon dating and by DNA profiling. One of the bones was dated to more than 100 years before the first Europeans arrived in South America and its DNA shows a strong correlation with the DNA of present-day chickens living on the inhabited islands of the Pacific Ocean.
The Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro reported on his arrival in Peru in 1532 that the local Inca were using chickens as part of their religious ceremonies, suggesting that the domestic bird had been part of the native culture for some time.
Alice Storey, a doctoral student in the department of anthropology at the University Auckland, said that the latest findings on ancient chicken bones analysed by dating and DNA technology undermined the theory that the domestic chicken was introduced into South America by Europeans. Until now the evidence in support of a direct cultural connection between Polynesians, who derive from Southeast Asia, and South American natives has been circumstantial.
Ms Storey and her colleagues suggest that Polynesian seafarers could have used westerlies to carry them and their chickens to the coast of Chile.
