Did ancient Polynesians visit California?

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Did ancient Polynesians visit California? Maybe so. Scholars revive

idea using linguistic ties, Indian headdress

 

Scientists are taking a new look at an old and controversial idea:

that ancient Polynesians sailed to Southern California a millennium

before Christopher Columbus landed on the East Coast.

 

Key new evidence comes from two directions. The first involves

revised carbon-dating of an ancient ceremonial headdress used by

Southern California's Chumash Indians. The second involves research

by two California scientists who suggest that a Chumash word

for "sewn-plank canoe" is derived from a Polynesian word for the wood

used to construct the same boat.

 

The scientists, linguist Kathryn A. Klar of UC Berkeley and

archaeologist Terry L. Jones of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, had trouble

getting their thesis of ancient contact between the Polynesians and

Chumash published in scientific journals. The Chumash and their

neighbors, the Gabrielino, were the only North American Indians to

build sewn-plank boats, a technique used throughout the Polynesian

islands.

 

But after grappling for two years with criticisms by peer reviewers,

Klar and Jones' article will appear in the archaeological journal

American Antiquity in July.

 

If they are right, their finding is a major blow to North American

anthropologists' traditional hostility to the theory that non-

Europeans visited this continent long before Columbus.

 

Until now, few scientists have dared to speculate that the ancient

Polynesians visited Southern California between 500 and 700 A.D.,

that is to say, in the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire.

This is known as the "transpacific diffusion" hypothesis.

 

"The dominant paradigm in American archaeology for the past 60 or

more years has been anti-diffusionist, and our findings are already

stimulating a rethinking of that paradigm," Klar told The Chronicle.

 

Falling out of favor

 

The idea that ancient North America might have received visitors from

the Pacific islands and Asia has had few friends in modern times. The

idea was popular among researchers in the 19th century, but fell out

of scholarly favor in the 20th.

 

Through the last century, scientists' opposition didn't seem

unreasonable: Not only is the Pacific the world's widest ocean,

sailors from the west would have faced contrary currents and winds

that would tend to push them in the wrong direction.

 

Recently, though, scientific opposition to at least some diffusionist

ideas has begun to waver. A huge blow to the skeptics came more than

a decade ago, with the discovery of archaeological evidence that

ancient Polynesians ate sweet potatoes, which are native to South

America. Presumably, Polynesian sailors ventured to South America,

obtained sweet potatoes and brought them back to their home islands.

 

That discovery seemed to undermine a major plank of the critics' old

argument: that Polynesian travel to the Americas was physically

impossible. Still, direct evidence for Polynesian contact with North

America has been scarce.

 

Until now, that is. Now, the tide is turning in this old debate, in a

way that might transform our understanding of the early peoples of

the Golden State.

 

Chumash canoes yield clues

 

The first bit of new evidence is Klar and Jones' analysis of the

Chumash word for "sewn-plank canoe" -- which they claim is extremely

similar to the Polynesian term for the redwoods used to build the

same mode of transport. (The Polynesians made their boats from

redwood logs that had floated across the Pacific with the prevailing

ocean currents.)

 

The Chumash word for "sewn-plank canoe" is tomolo'o, while the

Hawaiian word for "useful tree" is kumulaa'au. The Polynesians

colonized Hawaii during the first millennium A.D., and in the process

their language evolved into the Hawaiian language. The Polynesian

word tumu means tree or tree-trunk, and ra'akau means wood or branch;

Klar's complex linguistic analysis shows how the combination of those

two words evolved into the Hawaiian kumulaa'au. Many Hawaiian words

that start with "k" originally began with "t." Replace the "k" in

kumulaa'au with a "t" and the similarity between the words becomes

obvious. The similarity is so great, Klar says, that it is highly

unlikely to be a coincidence.

 

The sewn-plank canoe was the Chumash Indians' version of an ocean-

worthy yacht, a vehicle sturdy enough to allow them to fish in deep

offshore waters. Traditionally, Native American canoes were

relatively simple objects, often dug out of logs or assembled from

bundled reeds. By contrast, the sewn-plank canoe was a highly

engineered vehicle, one in which planks were cut, heated in hot water

and bent into streamlined shapes. Holes were drilled in the wood,

allowing the planks to be sewn together with strong plant fibers from

yucca leaves. Tar was affixed to the gaps between the planks, making

them watertight.

 

The resulting vessel was sleek, lightweight, fast and durable, or the

perfect vehicle for long-distance travel through choppy waters,

including deep- sea fishing areas.

 

Sharing knowledge

 

Klar and Jones reason that ancient Polynesians sailed to Southern

California and shared their boating knowledge with the Chumash. This

was an ancient form of what would today be called "technology

transfer," as in the post-World War II transfer of nuclear power

technology from the United States to other nations.

 

Before now, scholars argued that the Chumash invented sewn-plank

canoes on their own.

 

One key piece of evidence for this view was the carbon-dating of

abalone shells from a Chumash ceremonial headdress fashioned from the

skull of a swordfish, a deep-sea fish. Based on earlier carbon-dating

methods, the shells, now stored at the Santa Barbara Museum of

Natural History, were thought to be about 2,000 years old. That date

implied the Chumash were fishing in deep-sea waters about 400 years

earlier than the Polynesian-Chumash contact hypothesized by Klar and

Jones.

 

As it turns out, though, the original carbon-14 date, which was

determined before scientists realized they had to take into account

varying levels of atmospheric carbon-14, was wrong.

 

A cautious investigator

 

Inspired by Klar and Jones' hypothesis, John Johnson, curator of

anthropology at the Santa Barbara Museum, decided to recalibrate the

abalone shells. He discovered they dated from approximately 600 A.D.,

several hundred years younger than previously thought. He announced

his finding in April at an archaeology conference in Salt Lake City.

 

Six hundred A.D. is smack in the middle of the period during which

the ancient Polynesians sailed to Southern California, according to

Klar and Jones' theory.

 

In an interview, Johnson cautioned that despite the recalibrated

date, he thinks it's premature for Klar and Jones to declare victory.

This is partly because some of their archaeological evidence hasn't

been recalibrated, either, he said. Also, he's worried that they have

fashioned their linguistic argument from a reanalysis of just a few

words in the Chumash and Polynesian languages, too few to clinch

their argument.

 

"They may be right -- I'm just more cautious," Johnson added.

 

Jones replied that the archaeological artifacts cited in his and

Klar's paper "have been calibrated with the most up-to-date

calibration program." On the linguistic side, Klar replies that the

word similarities are too close to be the result of coincidence.

Rather, the Chumash must have learned the Polynesian word for sewn-

plank canoe during face-to-face contact.

 

Studying the study

 

An unusual aspect of the Klar-Jones thesis is that it gives the

public a chance to glimpse the behind-the-scenes processes by which

scientists promote a controversial scientific idea. At The

Chronicle's request, Klar and Jones agreed to share copies of the

letters written by outside experts -- peer reviewers -- who evaluated

their manuscript for possible publication in the journals Current

Anthropology and American Antiquity.

 

The editor of Current Anthropology, Professor Benjamin S. Orlove of

UC Davis, sent copies of it to nine peer reviewers, an unusually

large number.

 

The reviews, all written before the redating of the abalone shells,

are polite and thoughtful, although sometimes sharply critical on

technical points; several express enthusiasm for the Klar-Jones

hypothesis. The shortest review is one sentence, from an anonymous

expert: "Interesting, scholarly, and bound to cause trouble!"

 

One positive reviewer says Klar and Jones' linguistic argument "seems

to be systematically and exhaustively argued," but urges them

to "have linguists skilled in Polynesian languages take a hard look

at this."

 

Overall, five of the reviews were positive about the Klar-Jones paper

and two were negative, but most suggested various improvements. One

reviewer advised Orlove to reject the paper but to ask the authors to

resubmit it after they made improvements. One reviewer was neutral.

 

Even though a majority of the reviews were positive, Orlove decided

to reject the article. Why?

 

Reasons for rejection

 

Orlove stressed that he rejected an earlier version of their paper

rather than the one slated for publication in July. He also said that

his job as editor is not simply to add up pro and con votes of peer

reviewers.

 

"We're certainly more than just a vote-tallying machine," he said.

Rather, as editor, he must ponder the reviewers' remarks and make the

best judgment he can: to publish or not to publish?

 

Orlove acknowledged that nine reviewers is "certainly unusually

high." That number was necessary partly because of the

interdisciplinary nature of the paper, which required feedback from

experts in various subjects.

 

"By and large, our reviewers are fair and generous, and, by and

large, we trust them," Orlove said. "I'm certainly a strong believer

in the peer-review process."

 

Ultimately, the article was accepted by American Antiquity. That

journal's peer reviewers also gave the article a "mixed" reception,

editor Michael Jochim told Klar and Jones, but Jochim elected to

publish it anyway.

 

One anonymous reviewer for American Antiquity was "not fully

convinced" by their thesis but welcomed publication anyway:

 

"Jones and Klar do us a service by resuscitating the debate (over

Pacific diffusion) from the 'unthinkable' shelf it has for too long

languished on."

 

E-mail Keay Davidson at kdavidson.

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