Researchers: Polynesians got to California

[emad]

Two scientists say they have found proof that Polynesians sailed to Southern California, sharing boat-building techniques with Native Americans.


Katherine Klar of the University of California at Berkeley and Terry Jones of Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo compared words used by the Chumash tribe in southern California and the Hawaiians, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The Chumash and the neighboring Gabrielino were the only North American groups to make boats from hand-sewn planks, a technique used by all Polynesians.

Klar and Jones argue that the Chumash word for hand-sewn canoe, tomolo'o, is essentially the same word as the Hawaiian one for "useful tree" or redwood, kumulaa'au. Polynesians used redwood logs that had drifted across the Pacific from North America to build their boats.

In recent years, anthropologists have believed that the Polynesians could not have visited California because the winds and currents would have been against them.
http://www.physorg.com/news4639.html

[Hugin]

1. This is very interesting...

There's so much not known about the migrations of
prehistoric peoples.

I've been reading through this site recently.

http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=5304

It would seem there are a number of megalithic sites
in the western hemisphere which are totally unresearched
and for the most part unexplained.

[emad]

2. Like those 5,000 year old caves in Europe full of the most amazing

art depicting animals, constellations in the sky, men and women courting etc...

[Hugin]

3. There's also some controversy about the rate at which such...

developments were achieved. Originally it was thought
such things as representational art took many generations
to develop. Current thought is it could take as little as
one generation to develop.

I can buy that line of thinking... The Industrial Revolution
has taken less than 200 years and think what has happened in
only the last 50 years.

The scary thing about this line of thought is we can lose
technology as fast. Take the Easter Islanders for instance.

Deep thoughts.

[KurtNYC]

4. I was intrigued by this

a Chinese junk was found near Sacramento. These guys weave it all together. They use similarities in language, genetics, ancient maps and man-made markers to try and show that the Chinese were mapping the entire globe in 1421 and had relocated the capital to Beijing due to its location on the planet.

http://www.1421.tv/