A Long-Standing Debate
A Long-Standing Debate
4
T ER R Y L . J ON ES A N D A L I C E A . S T O R E Y
If, then, voyages to the New World were made . . . the sweet
potato seems to make this a certainty. Originating in America,
it could only have reached Polynesia with human aid. Since
we have no evidence that at any time the Indians of the Pacific
coast of South America where the sweet potato was grown had
either craft or skill for making long sea journeys, we are forced to
conclude that the transference was made by Polynesians.
—ROLAND DIXON (1934:173–174)
W
hile it may come as a surprise to many scholars of the 21st
century, arguments for Polynesian contact with the Americas
were advanced regularly during the 19th and early 20th centuries. This began with the posthumous publication of Captain Cook’s journals (1784), which spawned a great deal of interest in the remote islands of
the Pacific, particularly in the extent of Polynesian voyages and the point
of their origin. Much of this writing was hopelessly ill-informed and some
of it was decidedly racist—one of the reasons why it was never carried forward or embraced by later scientists. By far, most attention was focused on
the question of Polynesian origins with three basic alternatives considered:
an Asiatic origin, an American origin, or an autochthonous origin. These
theories had at their basis the same rudiments of diffusionary thinking that
would continue with later writing in the 20th century; scholars weighed
the relative similarity of different cultural elements across these three regions and made cases for connections between one region or another. The
37
This is a one page preview of a chapter from:
Terry L. Jones, Alice A. Storey, Elizabeth A. Matisoo-Smith, and José Miguel RamírezAliaga. (2011). Polynesians in America: PreColumbian Contacts with the New World.
Altamira Press.
4
T ER R Y L . J ON ES A N D A L I C E A . S T O R E Y
If, then, voyages to the New World were made . . . the sweet
potato seems to make this a certainty. Originating in America,
it could only have reached Polynesia with human aid. Since
we have no evidence that at any time the Indians of the Pacific
coast of South America where the sweet potato was grown had
either craft or skill for making long sea journeys, we are forced to
conclude that the transference was made by Polynesians.
—ROLAND DIXON (1934:173–174)
W
hile it may come as a surprise to many scholars of the 21st
century, arguments for Polynesian contact with the Americas
were advanced regularly during the 19th and early 20th centuries. This began with the posthumous publication of Captain Cook’s journals (1784), which spawned a great deal of interest in the remote islands of
the Pacific, particularly in the extent of Polynesian voyages and the point
of their origin. Much of this writing was hopelessly ill-informed and some
of it was decidedly racist—one of the reasons why it was never carried forward or embraced by later scientists. By far, most attention was focused on
the question of Polynesian origins with three basic alternatives considered:
an Asiatic origin, an American origin, or an autochthonous origin. These
theories had at their basis the same rudiments of diffusionary thinking that
would continue with later writing in the 20th century; scholars weighed
the relative similarity of different cultural elements across these three regions and made cases for connections between one region or another. The
37
This is a one page preview of a chapter from:
Terry L. Jones, Alice A. Storey, Elizabeth A. Matisoo-Smith, and José Miguel RamírezAliaga. (2011). Polynesians in America: PreColumbian Contacts with the New World.
Altamira Press.