Every day, my distaste for Jared Diamond ages like a fine wine.
It’s tempting to look for potential vocab exchange between Rapa Nui and (Quechua and Aymara). That could help dating the exchange with the Andes, as the lexicon stops following the lender’s sound changes to follow the borrower’s instead.
(Polynesian syllabic structure and small phonemic stock make this extra tricky though. For example, Classical Quechua /s ʂ h/ would probably end all merged into /h/, and you’d see multiple epenthetic vowels popping up.)
Even then I wouldn’t be surprised if they contacted the folks up south, like the Mapuche. Specially as I don’t expect the landing spot from a Rapa Nui → South America to be the best spot to start the opposite travel, due to sea currents.
jack@hexbear.net 2 months ago
This aligns with the idea that Rapa Nui was the stepping stone via which Polynesians and Native Americans made contact, traded crops, and had kids together. I wonder if there was ever a minority NA population on the island alongside Polynesians or if it was just occasional mixed kids raised fully Polynesian.
lvxferre@mander.xyz 2 months ago
That’s an interesting hypothesis and definitively worth checking, but I personally find unlikely that Rapa Nui had any sort of meaningful (in numbers) Native American minority - there’s practically no material pressure to do so.
jack@hexbear.net 2 months ago
It was a similar distance from there to the nearest Polynesian island, and we know they maintained contact and trade that direction. South America would’ve offered entirely unique trade goods, so I don’t think it’s out of the question at all. These were history’s greatest sailors and navigators, after all.
Certainly 10% DNA admixture requires more than just a few small interactions.