Chicken Bones - Serious Evidence for Polynesian Contact with South America.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Andeans had domesticated the Muscovy Duck, the guinea pig, the lama, and the alpaca along with the dog which came from Asia. So they knew how to work with animals including birds plus they took to chickens very quickly as soon as the Europeans showed them to them.

If this is real (meaning not a bird a European traveler brought with them post-contact) then it is likely it was there wasn't a male to breed with.

presumably the native species were widely enough distributed that someone would domesticate them, and the Spanish brought the chickens to many different groups.

A theoretical polynesian boat might have brought say, a half dozen chickens of both sexes and traded them to one given coastal tribe. That particular tribe (and not ALL Andeans) might have been to conservative to incorporate the chicken, or might have just been unlucky.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Wernazuma III


That would be a very stupid set of people, who were probably quickly overtaken by more open minded people.
At any rate, chicken don't need humans to multiply - think about the wild chicken of Kauai - although the conditions for chicken survival are surely better on Hawaii...


The first is pretty unlikely, the second one is, well, one other possibility among possibilites of a yet to be proven general scenario.

1. stupid, or conservative or whatever. Depending on conditions, that might or might not have hurt them very much. And if they were overtaken, it would have been too late to save the chickens.

2. Wild chickens? Yeah, but Im assuming they ate the chickens, not that they freed them

3. Lack of feed unlikely? Cause chickens will eat anything, is that the idea?

[Barnabas]

wouldnt the chicken be very inbred if they al descend from say 5 chickens? I doubt polynesian boats carried hundreds of chickens

[Dinner]

Very true.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Oerdin
No Europeans did not have an innate ability to conquor. They simply had better technology, larger numbers, and superior organizations. That mainly boiled down to geography and enviroment as stated in Guns, Germs, and Steel. Just like in Civ when you get the best starting position you normally end up the winner and the Eurasians got by far the best starting position.

That wasn't the key factor. In the Caribbean yes, but not the rest of the Americas. The only reason why Mexico and Peru fell so easily was because the Aztecs were on the verge of economic collapse and the Inca had just finished a brutal civil war. Both empires were houses of cards, waiting for another power to topple them. It was two cases, one after the other, of the best timing in history. Smallpox helped, but the tens of thousands of Native allies helped more.

It took decades to drive the Indians from the areas of English settlement. It wasn't until the 19th century that the defeat of the North American Indians was inevitable.