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

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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."