---
title: "Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories"
chunk: 3/11
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_transoceanic_contact_theories"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:37:53.813777+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Researchers including Kathryn Klar and Terry Jones have proposed a theory of contact between Hawaiians and the Chumash people of Southern California between 400 and 800 CE. The sewn-plank canoes crafted by the Chumash and neighboring Tongva are unique among the indigenous peoples of North America, but similar in design to larger canoes used by Polynesians and Melanesians for deep-sea voyages. Tomolo'o, the Chumash word for such a craft, may derive from tumulaʻau/kumulaʻau, the Hawaiian term for the logs from which shipwrights carve planks to be sewn into canoes. The analogous Tongva term, tii'at, is unrelated. If it occurred, this contact left no genetic legacy in California or Hawaii. This theory has attracted limited media attention within California, but most archaeologists of the Tongva and Chumash cultures reject it on the grounds that the independent development of the sewn-plank canoe over several centuries is well-represented in the material record.

==== Clava hand-club and words for axes ====
Archaeological artefacts known as clava hand-clubs found in Araucanía and nearby areas of Argentina have a strong resemblance to the mere okewa found in New Zealand. The clava hand-clubs are also mentioned in the Spanish chronicles dating to the Conquest of Chile. According to Grete Mostny, clava hand-clubs "appear to have arrived to the west coast of South America from the Pacific". Polynesian clubs from Chatham Islands are reportedly the most similar to those of Chile. The clava hand-club is one of various Polynesian-like Mapuche artifacts known.
Possible linguistic evidence for Austronesian-American contact is found in words for axes. On Easter Island, the word for a stone axe is toki; among the New Zealand Maori, the word toki denotes an adze. Similar words are found in the Americas: In the Mapuche language of Chile and Argentina, the word for a stone axe is toki; and further afield in Colombia, the Yurumanguí word for an axe is totoki. 
Stone adzes often had ceremonial value and were worn by Maori chiefs. The Mapuche word toki may also mean "chief" and thus may be related to the Quechua word toqe ("militia chief") and the Aymara word toqueni ("person of great judgement"). In the view of Moulian et al. (2015) the possible South American links complicate matters regarding the meaning of the word toki because they are suggestive of Polynesian contact.

== Population Y ==
A 2015 study found some Indigenous American groups, particularly those in the Amazon, carry a small admixture (around 1-2% of the genome) related to groups in Southeast Asia and Australasia like Andamanese peoples, Indigenous Australians, Papuans and the Mamanwa people of the Philippines. This ancestry component has been dubbed "Population Y". Some authors have suggested that this reflects a trans-Pacific migration, but scholars have suggested that this more likely reflects genetic heterogeneity in the initial founding population of Native Americans present in Beringia, only some of which carried the "Population Y" ancestry. It has also been noted that a 40,000 year old individual from Tianyuan Cave in northern China also carries this ancestry, making it more likely that this ancestry was the result of contact in Eurasia, prior to the arrival of the ancestors of Native Americans in Beringia.

== Claims of East Asian contact ==

=== Claims of contact with Ecuador ===
A 2013 genetic study suggested the possibility of contact between Ecuador and East Asia, that would have happened no earlier than 6,000 years ago (4000 BC) via either a trans-oceanic or a late-stage coastal migration that did not leave genetic imprints in North America. Further research did not support this but was rather "a case of a rare founding lineage that has been lost elsewhere by drift."

=== Claims of Chinese contact ===

Some researchers have argued that the Olmec civilization came into existence with the help of Chinese refugees, particularly at the end of the Shang dynasty. In 1975, Betty Meggers of the Smithsonian Institution argued that the Olmec civilization originated around 1200 BCE due to Shang Chinese influences. In a 1996 book, Mike Xu, with the aid of Chen Hanping, claimed that celts from La Venta bear Chinese characters. These claims are unsupported by mainstream Mesoamerican researchers.