Polynesians steering by the stars met Native Americans long before Europeans arrived
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Science@kbin.social – 0 points – science.org
Study of modern DNA shakes up ideas of when and where contact happened.
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The Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947 proved that you could cross this Ocean by the means available to these Polynesians, and that they could very well have traveled to/from South America.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kon-Tiki_expedition
The film Kon-Tiki from 2012 describes the journey: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kon-Tiki_(2012_film)
its amazing how they were able to reach these small remote islands like that. in craft most people today wouldnt take out on a calm lake they travelled between distant specs of lands by stars and birds. if they were able to reach hawaii or easter island it really shouldnt be a stretch they could reach the west coast of the americas.
I read an article, a recent one, about a kind of tree being "discovered" by some European research team. Within the article, it said the people who lived in that particular forest had known about that kind of tree for ages. They had multiple names for it, uses, etc.
Yet without any irony at all ... They attributed the "discovery" to this European researcher.
It's the same reason much of our knowledge of some ancient European and African cultures comes from the romans: they were the first, and in many cases only society to save written accounts of those cultures. By taking a written account of something and publishing that account, it becomes available to the rest of humanity. That said, it is still important to honor the original native names and note that something was previously known by the natives of the area prior to its formal documentation.