Polynesian-Native American Transoceanic Contact and the Sweet Potato Transfer
- Date
- c. 1150-1230 CE
- Category
- Exploration & colonisation
- Region
- Eastern Polynesia (Pacific Ocean)
- Era
- Post-Classical / Medieval
- Significance
Around 1200 CE, seafaring Polynesians and Indigenous South Americans made transoceanic contact in eastern Polynesia, a meeting long suspected and finally confirmed by genetics.
A 2020 genome-wide study led by Alexander Ioannidis and colleagues (published in Nature), analysing DNA from 807 individuals across 17 Polynesian islands and 15 Native American groups from Mexico to Chile, identified a single shared admixture event dating to roughly 1150-1230 CE, with the closest South American genetic signal matching the Zenu people of present-day Colombia. Native American ancestry was detected on islands including the Marquesas, Mangareva, the Tuamotus (Palliser), and later Rapa Nui (Easter Island), where a further admixture pulse dates to about 1380 CE. The contact coincided with the spread across Polynesia of the sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas), a crop native to the Americas that was already widespread in the Pacific before European arrival. Linguistic evidence reinforces the link, as the Proto-Polynesian word for the plant, reconstructed as *kumala (Maori kumara, Rapa Nui kumara), closely resembles the Quechua and Aymara terms cumar and cumal. Together the genetic, ethnobotanical, and linguistic strands establish one of the earliest documented instances of sustained contact between the peoples of two separate hemispheres, centuries before Columbus.
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Empires active in c. 1150-1230 CE
- Jurchen Jin Dynasty1115 CE – 1234 CE
- Song Dynasty960 CE – 1279 CE
- Kanem-Bornu Empire700 CE – 1900 CE
- Abbasid Caliphate750 CE – 1258 CE
- Byzantine Empire330 CE – 1453 CE
- Almohad Caliphate1121 CE – 1269 CE
Related exploration & colonisation events
- Rapid Dispersal Pulse Settling East Polynesiac. 1190-1290 CE
- Polynesian settlement of Aotearoa New Zealandc. 1280-1320 CE
- Marco Polo's journey across the Mongol Eurasia1271–1295 CE
- Columbus's first voyage reaches the Americas12 October 1492
- Vasco da Gama opens the sea route to India20 May 1498
- The Ming treasure voyages of Zheng He1405–1433 CE
Further reading
The wider story
A History of the Pacific Islands
Accessible overview of Oceania, including the Tongan maritime empire.
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