Add this story to the long list of evidences that there were pre-Columbus trips to the Americas.
Key graf:
“There is increasing evidence of multiple contacts with the Americas,” she said, “based on linguistic evidence and similarities in fish hook styles.” Physical evidence of human DNA from Polynesia has yet to be found in South America, she added.
I still remember a teacher in high school saying all of the native Americans came across the Bering Strait. For many years, this was one of my main objections to the Book of Mormon. And of course the fact that Polynesians were clearly in the Americas but there is apparently no Polynesian DNA is an interesting twist.
A pity that it still doesn’t explain the horses/barley/cement/chariots and other fun anachronisms in the BoM. And I say this as a faithful Mormon–I’ve always found it more dangerous to look for physical evidence of spiritual “history” than to just accept it on faith. God will reveal all things–including inadequacies in translation–in His due time.
And of course there is no heavy tradition of Native Americans being descendants of Polynesians that would require DNA remnants either.
Interesting article.
Be sure to read Charles Mann’s 1491 – a great intro to the recent research in this area and hopefully we can flog to death the idea that *all* Native Americans arrived over the Bering during the Ice Age. Although that idea isn’t borne out by archaeological and biological data, it seems to refuse to die in HS textbooks.
Tona, that is exactly my point. Thanks for expressing it eloquently. Bro Jones, the primary witness of the Book of Mormon is a spiritual witness. But I think keeping track of supporting evidence is a good project for all. I know many, many people who have fallen away due to the lies and misrepresentations of anti-Mormons and others. A few well-timed presentations of facts could have helped them overcome their doubts.
Elder Maxwell quoting Austin Farrer:
You know, I was listening to PRI’s “The World” a couple weeks ago. They were talking about how the Panama Canal is being re-dug to accommodate larger ships.
Apparently the excavations have uncovered a whole bunch of fossils and stuff. Including… drum roll…
Horse remains! And camels!
Now, before you get too excited, I’d add that the age of the fossils is far, far older than any period during the Book of Mormon – like prehistoric.
But the whole thing just underscored to me that the lack of evidence for much of the Book of Mormon is hardly conclusive. There’s an awful lot we haven’t discovered yet.
My dad has a book by this guy:
http://www.robertschoch.net/
Very interesting stuff:
Dr. Robert M. Schoch is a geologist well known for his research on the Great Sphinx, as well as for his studies of the underwater structure off the coast of Yonaguni Island, Japan, and other ancient sites and studies. He is currently a tenured faculty member at Boston University’s College of General Studies where he has taught since 1984. Dr. Schoch completed his graduate work at Yale University, earning a Ph.D. (1983) in geology and geophysics. . .
[He has written, among other books] Voyages of the Pyramid Builders: The True Origins of the Pyramids from Lost Egypt to Ancient America (2003), providing compelling evidence that very ancient cultures have traveled throughout the millennia across great oceans and continents building similar monuments and sharing cultural traits and a common heritage.
Not exactly Mormon themed, but it shows serious academics can believe that it crossing the oceans was not unheard of.
I haven’t read the book yet, but my dad says its very good.
I may be showing my ignorance of recent anti-Mormon literature, but are folks really still contending that the Book of Mormon can’t be true because no one could travel to North America by ocean? Wasn’t that issue laid to rest with the discovery of Viking settlements in Newfoundland years and years ago?
I second the recommendation for Charles Mann’s “1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus”. He’s a journalist and doesn’t pretend to be an expert in and of himself, but he surveys the experts and presents a wide range of views. His basic thesis: the Americas before Columbus were densely populated and there were far more lost and unknown civilizations there than we are currently aware of. He spends a lot of time pointing to the heavy human imprint on the land (i.e., left by past civilizations) and how we only really (think we) understand a tiny portion of them. The guy is not LDS, only one or two references to Mormons are found in the book and if I recall right they’re just off-hand dismissals of LDS beliefs by folks he interviewed. But the book really opened my eyes to just how totally plausible the Book of Mormon story is. Plausible in the sense that the ancient Americas were a big place where it is not unreasonable to believe the Book of Mormon could indeed have occurred, though my guess is that when we finally know exactly where it did occur that it may not match many of our current ideas.
Anyhow, Amazon link here to a great book:
http://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Columbus/dp/1400032059/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-2352339-5517608?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1181269718&sr=8-1
I was not aware that trans-Pacific contact independent of the Bering Straight was still considered a disputed point. It certainly isn’t nearly as much of a hot button issue within the archaeological community as it once was. The sweet potato pretty much makes this a lock.
There are plenty of quibbles about details (such as whether the plank canoe was independently invented on the coast of California or diffused from Polynesia), but my feeling is that there is widespread acceptance of multiple contact points between the Old and New Worlds on the Pacific end of things. Then again, I have had my head buried in the American Southwest for the past several years.
I’d be interested to see the “long list of evidences” mentioned in the initial post. I wonder if the consensuses we reach in the archaeological community are really not all that different from the ones maintained by LDS apologists.
Chris Watkins
PhD Student
School of Human Evolution and Social Change
Arizona State University
Chris, when I think of evidences, I mostly think of the kind of stuff that is in this Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_contact
I think there is still a widespread perception in society that the Indians came across the Bering Straits and that they developed in isolation from the rest of the world. This would explain the popularity of contrarian views, such as recent books that highlight other possible contacts between the Americas and the rest of the world. I can tell you that missionaries still hear: “A book that claims other groups traveled to the Americas? Are you kidding? Everybody knows that’s impossible and that there was no contact except for the Bering Strait.”
So, I am very glad to see the scientific community beginning to accept this new evidence. It seems common-sense to me that groups of people traveled by boat to the Americas and inter-mingled with the people there. From a layman’s point of view, how do you explain people getting to Easter Island (1000-plus miles from the nearest inhabited island) and then claim that somehow they never traveled farther east and hit that other land mass called South America?
I would guess that LDS apologists also don’t concentrate much on this issue anymore because it’s less and less in dispute. From my perspective, I add it to the long list of objections that have been raised about the Book of Mormon that are later rejected by the evidence.