Sir, did the Australasians travel to S.America across the Pacific ? If so how far back would they have made the journey ?
If you see the thread that’s what I think is currently the most parsimonious explanation. Conservatively if we take the Monte Verde II site to be their presence, it will be ~ 14200 YBP. However, it could be much earlier based less studied sites.
Some south American ancient human genomes. Putting together all the S. & N. American a.genomes it seems so far that the Onge/Papuan-like ancestry is not only there in deep South Americans but also Panama. This ancestry might also related to the to the excess of Denisovan ancestry they see in some populations: Thus, we have a likely signal of the Onge/Papuan like ancestry in Panama, Pacific coast of S.America& Uruguay on the Atlantic. Side. However, it is still missing in North America. Thus, at this point in time still the proposal of this ancestry reaching south America by sea on the Pacific coast & spreading thereafter either after admixture with the classic native Americans or independently of them remains viable. Thus, we can now say with some confidence that the deep pre-Clovis sites in S.America likely originated from these Onge/Papuan-like peoples who had probably mixed with Denisovans in the Indo-Pacific (is)lands. They were largely wiped out & absorbed by the Clovis successors who invaded S.A from the north, much like the megafauna.
Rapa Nui
The much-maligned Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl might have got the specific wrong but his broad ideas of trans-Pacific contact between the First South Americans and Austronesians appears to have been truth. New genomics resoundingly suggests that there was contact between 1250–1430 CE involving the Austronesians of Easter Island and 1st S.Americans. Further the new genomics disfavors Diamond style hypothesis of collapse of Easter Islanders from ecological destruction. However, we still believe that the Austronesians played a direct role in destroying the trees on the island that prevented them from making any further canoes to venture out the American coast or elsewhere.
https://nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07881-4
The ignoring of Heyerdahl, whatever, one might think of him is interesting.
Interestingly, it is also the island where the rapamycin producing Streptomyces was discovered
Statue spree
It is interesting that the moai statue-building spree on the remote Easter Island overlaps with the period when they were in contact with South America. We also suspect that the apparently undeciphered Rongorongo script came into being around the same time.
The other Austronesians have the shrines known as the Marae – while they might have played some role in the conception of the moai statues, there is no strong and direct connection. Hence, we feel it is valid to assume that the South American contacts might have played some role in the emergence of the moai.
There are the Bolivian Tiwanaku statues and the chemamüll wooden men of Mapuche of Chile. These could present South American parallels though there is no evidence currently that the Austronesia contact zone had extended to any of these regions.
More mysterious is the Rongorongo. There is no clear evidence for a true south American writing system unlike meso-America. Hence, direct case of inspiration for Rongorongo cannot be currently made.