Validation for Thor Heyerdahl's Polynesian Theory?

[Drooperdoo]

Thor Heyerdahl's famous Kon Tiki odyssey was an attempt to demonstrate that the earliest people to arrive in South America may have been Polynesians, rather than Mongolians coming down from the Siberia-Alaskan landbridge.
Though proving that a Pacific-crossing was possible with the technology of the Polynesians, and that various South American tribes have legends about a Pacific origin, he was largely dismissed when dna proved that the overwhelming majority of Indians have Mongolian dna.
But what if that was just a later wave?
What if an earlier Polynesian wave came, after all?
This article makes you wonder. . . .

news.yahoo.com/s/space/20051213/sc_space/skullsinsouthamericatellnewmigrationtale

For decades it has been believed that the first peoples to populate North and South America crossed over from Siberia by way of the Bering Strait on a land-ice bridge.

However, a new study examining the largest collection of South American skulls ever assembled suggests that a different population may have crossed the bridge to the New World 3,000 years before those Siberians.

Scientists occasionally discover skulls in South America that look more like those belonging to indigenous Australians and Melanesians than Northern Asians, but researchers tend to regard these skulls as anomalies due to natural variation rather than a norm, mainly because there were too few to study.

Now scientists have compared 81 skulls from the Lagoa Santa region of Brazil to worldwide data on human variation.

While the skulls of Native Americans and Northern Asians--the descendents of the early Siberian settlers--generally feature short, wide crania, a broader face, and high, narrow eye sockets and noses, this collection was remarkably different.


The skulls belonging to the earliest known South Americans--or Paleo-Indians--had long, narrow crania, projecting jaws, and low, broad eye sockets and noses. Drastically different from American Indians, these skulls appear more similar to modern Australians, Melanesians, and Sub-Saharan Africans.


This indicates that these skulls--which date to 7,500 to 11,000 years ago--were not merely anomalies but rather were the majority, supporting the hypothesis that two distinct populations colonized the Americas.


People with skulls resembling Paleo-Indians were present in Asia around 20,000 years ago, and lacking the technology to cross the Pacific Ocean by boat, they probably crossed the land bridge to Alaska several thousand years before the Siberians, said study co-author Mark Hubbe of the Universidade de So Paulo.


"We don't know for sure, but we believe at least 3,000 years earlier," Hubbe told LiveScience. "We have a difference of 3,000 years in South America, and we can assume the difference is the same in North America."


The research will be detailed in the Dec. 20 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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[aroundtheworld]

Thor might have been right on some accounts. There are obvious Polynesian people in Mexico. I posted about a family I met who just moved from Central Mexico. There were 7 adult children. All them were 6' or taller and had long wavy, thick coarse hair like a typical Polynesian or a Hula dancer you would see with the frizzy, poofy wavy hair.

they had the large robust build with huge legs and ankles, large feet. One of the sisters was 6'2.

they sure as hell were NOT Mayans or Spaniards. they kept insisting they were "pure Mexican" as if it was a race.

I believe Polynesians were in Mexico for sure and I've believed it for a long time. They looked absolutely nothing like any Mestizo or Amerindian I'd EVER seen but instead pure Samoan.

[Drooperdoo]

Aroundtheworld,
I, too, noticed a distinctly Polynesian look--especially in Central America. The Olmecs had the look, as opposed to the Aztecs [who came in the later Mongolian wave from Siberia].
Look at this Olmec statue, and a modern Nicaraguan:





* It's amazing how undilated the genes are--in total contradistinction to the myth of "Hispanicization".

P.S.--The Olmecs, obviously, would have stretched from Southern Mexico into modern Central America. But here's the thing about Southern Mexico that may artificially simulate Polynesian features: Mexico's original black population which was absorbed a century ago. Sub-Saharans were typically six-footers and their kinky hair-texture, when mixed with Amerindian-straight hair might yield "coarse, wavy" hair generations later.
But chances are: The Southern Mexicans you met were in fact modern descendants of Olmecs.

[namo]

You have Heyerdahl's theories wrong.

Heyerdahl theorized that Polynesians did indeed have an origin is South East Asia. They originated in the Philipines from whence they then travelled north west with the ocean currents, arriving in the North American northwest (British Columbia). They then travelled again with the ocean currents, reaching Hawaii and Polynesia. From these places they travelled throughout the rest of Polynesia (east to west direction) finally reaching New Zealand. He documented all the cultural and technological similarities from British Columbia to New Zealand. He never mentions (to my knowledge) Polynesian colonies in the New World.

Later, South Americans travelled to Polynesia by way of the Humboldt Current (east to west). They brought cultural elements and technologies with them. Their genetic contribution was insignificant. The whole point of the Kon-Tiki expedition was to prove it was possible for ancient Peruvians to reach Polynesia.