Well, little reason other than being able to clearly see that it wasn’t a little island. Even aside from the subtle clues like the shape of the waves, which Polynesian sailors knew about, you’ve got the Andes right there. From just off the coast of South America, anywhere on the continent, you’re going to see more length of mountain range than would fit on any island.
Doh!
True. So, likelihood is any such exploration did not make it back. Or, they got halfway, saw no sign of land, and returned. How far would explorers go before they give up? And at a certain point, there were no longer enough trees to make ocean-going canoes.
Legend has it one chief decided to leave the Cook Islands and head to Easter Islands to colonize (2 big canoes); the implication is that the land was already known about from Polynesian exploration. I assume it would be prudent to explore or know where you’re going before loading up the whole clan and sailing off.
It’s all speculation at this point.
So are you saying it is more likely the less capable South American mariners were responsible for making a one-way journey with the sweet potatoes than the Polynesians making a round trip?
Which raises an interesting side-point.
The Polynesians knew about low coral atolls ~ a mile across, nearly flat islands that are little more than overgrown sandbars or limestone outcrops a couple / few miles across, and also small but tall volcanic islands like Pitcairn that are also a couple / few miles across. Their entire world was big water and these kinds of small land.
Can you imagine the confusion and wonderment when they first ran into a continent that stretched beyond their field of view in both directions and did so even if they ventured 20 or 50 or 100 miles along the shore in either direction. WTF did we just find? Our planet is much, much stranger than we thought. And the sight of 10,000-plus foot tall mountains and lots of them. Who knew??!?!
There would have been the same issue, albeit on a smaller scale, when Polynesians reached Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Hawaii. Didn’t keep them from settling those places.
I mean, their ancestors (at some point) came from a continent, too, so they might have had some sort of legends or folklore about big lands.
Chances are, they also reached Australia (after all, it’s much easier to find than Easter Island), but like South America they never settled there.
Likely because there were no previous occupants? Whereas, in Australia there were. I suppose the problem is - if a land is already inhabited to its capacity, there’s probably not a lot of opportunity to accomodate newcomers, with the risk of having to defend against a huge horde protecting their territory (That works better if you have fiearms and metal swords). The continental coast across from the island does not look particularly hospitable for raising crops.
One of life’s mysteries. Either explanation works. The question is why they did not take regular advantage of the connection - other than perhaps a distance that exceeds most of the typical Polynesian voyages, and not much to trade. (and eventually they ran out of logs for canoes).
It’s possible that the potatoes survived the voyage while the humans did not.
And it might not have been an intentional trip. They could have set out on what was meant to be an along-the-coast trade journey, and gotten caught by an unexpected storm that Gilliganed them (and it was only by luck that they reached any island at all). Unlikely, maybe, but there are a lot of cases of living things spreading to some place through a single unlikely journey.
It’s also possible it wasn’t a trip at all and that seeds were naturally dispersed, such as by being carried out to sea along with natural rafts of accumulated vegetation that then drifted to an island.
There is linguistic evidence that sweet potatoes migrated by human trade. Apparently only one person saw fit to click the linked article I posted in post #5.
Just wondering. How can you tell this?
There is evidence of this. From the Wikipedia page about this, is a 2018 article which used genetic analysis as evidence that South American and Polynesian sweet potatoes diverged over 100,000 years ago, long before humans had arrived in either area.
This other paper (also just mined from Wikipedia) suggests genetic evidence of a single contact event between Native American and Polynesian people about 1200 AD.
They find that there are Native American genetic markers in the Polynesians that are associated with European markers, and represent Europeans and Native Americans mixing with the Polynesians at the same time. They also find some Native American markers which are unrelated to any European markers, and predate Polynesian settlement of Rapa Nui.
It is extremely clear that Polynesians are not Native Americans who traveled west, but this paper shows good evidence of a single contact event (which produced children) between Polynesian and Native Americans. The genetics can’t distinguish between some Native Americans traveling to a Pacific island, possibly before the Polynesians arrived at that island, and Polynesians traveling to South American and then returning with some new guests or children.
It is entirely possible for sweet potatoes to have made their own journey across the Pacific 100,000 years ago, and for a small group of Native Americans to have made a similar journey 800 years ago (on their own, or with Polynesians).
At least on my laptop browser, when someone includes a link in their post, and at least one person clicks directly on the link, a little gray circle, with a number in it, shows up next to the link, which indicates how many times the link has been clicked. (Right now, that circle in Elmer’s post has a “3” in it.)
Parts of the shores of Australia are pretty inhospitable.
Right. Note the Norse had metal swords, but still decided to skip North America.
Greenland and Newfoundland are part of North America.
Yes, Newfoundland is, but the Norse only stayed for a reactively brief time. In a geologic sense, Greenland is considered to be, yes.
The Norse settlement of L’Anse aux Meadows was- at most 100 years and likely less.
Anthropologist John Steinberg has suggested the site may have been “occupied at least sporadically for perhaps 20 years” by the Norse.[22] Eleanor Barraclough[23] suggests the site was not a permanent settlement but a temporary boat repair facility.[24] She notes there are no findings of burials, tools, agriculture or animal pens—suggesting the inhabitants abandoned the site in an orderly fashion.[25] According to a 2019 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America study, there may have been Norse activity in L’Anse aux Meadows for as long as a century.[26]
In other areas the Norse were driven out.
Not necessarily. There was a likely Norse trading post on Baffin island called Tanfield Valley. Unfortunately, archeological exploration stopped there in 2012 before it was complete, so we don’t know what years it was in use or how it ended. Or even if it was a full time settlement or just seasonally occupied.
Bear in mind that the Inuit, who discovered America around the same time as the Vikings, did stick around - but only in places that the Native Americans/First Nations considered inhospitable.