Post #166953 by cynfulcynner on Mon, Jun 20, 2005 10:50 AM

Interesting article in today's SF Chronicle:

Did ancient Polynesians visit California? Maybe so.
Scholars revive idea using linguistic ties, Indian headdress

• Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer
  Monday, June 20, 2005

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.

Full story:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/06/20/CHUMASH.TMP&nl=top