there was a theory out there for a bit that the olmecs of eastern mexico were either of african ancestry or were tradiing with them. these stone heads from veracruz and down the coast would have been from around 1000 bc. and its not hard to imagine an ancient civilization like the phoneicians, who were known as a great trading and maritime empire, sailing back and forth b/t the mediterranian and the americas. the technology was there in ancient times to make the voyage...i think there was a lot more going on that was just lost to history over the last 2,000 years or so. the great civilizations of mexico had histories and manuscripts going back thousands of years and the spanish burned them all. a real tragedy for history...think of all the recorded information that was lost.
While the Norse had great big brass balls for sailing the North Atlantic Sea, the Polynesians ... 2000 years ago ... in ****ing canoes ... "discovered" Hawaii and made contact with South Americans. Back when humans crossed the land bridge from Asia to the Americas, humans at least in some parts of the world were accomplished coastal and island hopping sailors. Humans have been in Australia for 50,0000-70,000 years and they got there on island hopping canoes. Think about it. This is the Stone Age. Would you take stone tools, build an ocean canoe and then sail it 20 miles to the next island just following the birds? More serious great big brass balls. Some have theorized that the humans made their way to the Americas via a land route and via coastal sailing. I for one will not be surprised if archaeological finds supports this in the future.
DNA testing will only get better. More ancient human DNA samples will also be discovered going forward. It is very interesting how much human pre-history we have discovered via DNA over the last two decades or so.
I still have a hard time wrapping my head around how any prehistoric humans in canoes made it to the Hawaiian islands.
Some guy was stranded in the ocean for over a year in a canoe, lived, and made it to land. And that was 2014. I see anything as plausible. And when you see things like pyramids on different continents, you just know information was passed somehow.
Yet they did. We modern human tend to underrate our stone age ancestors. They were a scrappy bunch that got things done
One of my earliest memories of reading about ancient civilizations as a kid, outside of possibly the ancient Egyptians, is learning about Thor Heyerdahl and the Kon-Tiki expedition in 4th or 5th grade. lol. That was pretty amazing. I remember reading this article last year that said latest genetic testing is pointing to people of Polynesia and South America having possibly met sometime after 1200 A.D. which is flipping amazing.
There’s some evidence that Polynesians made it to South America. The sweet potatoes that Polynesians cultivate is genetically very similar to the ones from Peru. Also in various Polynesian languages the word for sweet potato is some variant of “Kumera” which is very similar to the Quechua word for sweet potato “Cumar”.
