Ancient voyage carried Native Americans’ DNA to remote Pacific islands

Ancient voyage carried Native Americans’ DNA to remote Pacific islands

Polynesians and South Americans made contact around AD 1200

Traces of Native American ancestry have been found in the genomes of modern inhabitants of some Polynesian islands, suggesting that ancient islanders met and mixed with people from South America hundreds of years ago. Researchers analysed the genomes of more than 800 people from 17 Pacific islands and 15 Native American groups on the Pacific coast. The team looked at the length of shared DNA segments — which shorten in successive generations — to determine that people from Polynesia and South America mingled around 800 years ago (before Europeans began colonizing either region). Whether Polynesians voyaged to the coast of the Americas, or people from South America made the trip to the islands, is still up for debate.

Nature | 4 min readReference: Nature paper