Centuries before Europeans reached the Americas, two groups of people separated by 6,800 kilometres of ocean met, exchanged sweet potatoes — and interbred, a new study confirms.
New genetic research shows that there was mingling between ancient Indigenous peoples from Polynesia and South America, revealing a single episode of interbreeding roughly 800 years ago after an epic transoceanic journey.
The question of such contact — which was long hypothesized, in part based on the enduring presence in Polynesia of a staple food in the form of the sweet potato that originated in South and Central America — had been keenly debated among scientists.
Scientists said on Wednesday an examination of DNA from 807 people — from 14 Polynesian islands and Pacific coastal Indigenous populations from Mexico to Ch