5 Jun 2007

Chicken bone found in Chile labelled proof of early Polynesian migration

6:11 pm on 5 June 2007

A chicken bone found in Chile is being held up as proof in the debate of whether Polynesians visited South America thousands of years ago, or vice versa.

A team of researchers, led by a University of Auckland doctoral student, says a mutation in the bone's DNA links it to chickens in Tonga and Samoa.

Alice Storey says radiocarbon dating shows the bone is around 600 years old, meaning it predates the arrival of Spanish conquerors in South America.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, her team says it means adventurer Thor Heyerdahl was right about contact between the two regions, but that he had it going in the wrong direction.

Chickens originally come from southeast Asia, and many researchers had assumed that Spanish conquistadors carried them there in the 16th century.