The Honolulu Advertiser is reporting a study that suggests a Polynesians origin of New World chickens. When Spaniards arrived in South America, the Incas had chickens; the question has been, where did they come from? They weren’t indigenous. Did they come over from Asia? (Our domestic chicken is descended, I believe, from wildfowl of Southeast Asia, but I’m not sure — I have seen chicken-like birds in the forests of Laos, though.) Or, did they come on Polynesian seafaring canoes?

The new research, by Alice Storey at the Univ. of Auckland, indicates that chicken bones found at a 14th century archeological site in southern Chile are of Polynesian origin. This means that Polynesian (from Hawaii? or Easter Island? does Easter have chickens?) sailors reached the west coast of South America on one of their incredible voyages. There have been suggestive hints of this in the past — the sweet potato is American and cultivated in Polynesia, for example — but this is the first evidence for Polynesians in the Americas.

Now, to find those pre-Cook Spanish galleons in Hawaii…

[4 Sept 08 update:  these findings have been disputed.]