October 29, 2014

The native inhabitants of Easter Island, one of the most remote and isolated places on Earth, mixed with Native Americans more than 600 years ago, according to surprising genetic evidence from a new study. Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas and her team from the Denmark Natural History Museum Centre for Geogenetics in Copenhagen analyzed the genomes of 27 people from Easter Island. A genome is the entire set of chemical instructions that control heredity in a human being. The scientists found specific genetic patterns that indicated admixture (interbreeding) between the native inhabitant of Easter Island and Native American populations several hundred years before the first Europeans reached the island in 1722.

Huge stone statues called moai stand on Easter Island. Genetic studies have revealed that Native Americans mixed with Easter Islands before the arrival of Europeans in the early 1700′s. ((c) George Holton, Photo Researchers)

The scientists also examined the family histories of eight unrelated individuals on Easter Island. This helped them to determine that European genes entered the islanders’ genomes after about 1850. This was not surprising, as immigrants, mainly from Chile, have mixed with the island’s population since the 1800′s. However, the scientists calculated that the Native American genes entered the population sometime around A.D. 1280 to 1495–hundreds of years before the first European contact.

Easter island lies in the Pacific Ocean about 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) west of Chile. Called Rapanui by the native people, the island was first settled between about A.D. 900 and 1200. The settlers were Polynesians who had sailed from islands to the west on large, double-hulled seagoing canoes. Easter Island is famous as the site of enigmatic giant stone statues called moai that were carved hundreds of years ago. More than 600 moai are scattered across the island. Jacob Roggeveen, a Dutch explorer, first sighted the island on Easter Sunday in 1722 and gave the island its name.

Easter island lies in the Pacific Ocean about 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) west of Chile. (World Book map)

The scientists believe that the seafaring Polynesians from Easter Island likely made several short trips to and from South America, perhaps bringing a few Native Americans back with them. They point out that a voyage originating from South America to Easter Island would be much more difficult and unlikely. Without modern navigation technology, any boat sailing from the Americas would likely miss the remote island completely.

Norwegian author and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl won fame in 1947 by sailing a balsa-wood raft named Kon-Tiki from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands in French Polynesia. He and his crew made the trip to test his theory that the islands of Polynesia could have been settled by Indians from South America. Most archaeologists and scholars have dismissed Heyerdahl’s ideas as fantastic speculation. However, the new study suggests that Heyerdahl may have been at least partially correct in arguing that Native Americans had visited the islands.

Additional World Book articles:

• Pacific Islands
• Ocean (1947) (a Back in Time article)