El Arenal-1 is an archaeological site on the Arauco Peninsula of south central Chile, where direct evidence of precolumbian contact with Polynesian seafarers has been identified, dated between AD 1300-1420. The site is 3 km inland from the southern side of the Arauco Peninsula.
- See Trans-Pacific Connections for more information about the Precolumbian contact.
Artifacts from El Arenal-1 include pottery and other objects illustrating a connection to El Vergel Cultural Complex of horticulturalists, who lived in Chile between about AD 1000 and 1500. Thermoluminescence dates on ceramics suggest that El Arenal-1 was occupied between about AD 700 and 1390.
Chicken Bones and El Arenal-1
Evidence for precolumbian contact includes the presence of chickens (Gallus domesticus), which were domesticated somewhere in southeast Asia about 8,000 years ago. Fifty chickens bones were recovered at the site, representing at least five individuals. Direct dating of the bones produced a date of 622 +/- 35 BP, calibrated to AD 1321-1407. DNA from one of the samples matches—is identical to—DNA recovered from the Mele Havea prehistoric site on the Pacific Island of Tonga, and Fatu-ma-Futi, on American Samoa.
Additional DNA samples taken from Niue in Tonga, a site in Hawai'i dated between 1040-1280 BP, and a site on Easter Island differ from the Chilean sample by only one base pair. Thus, El Arenal's chickens were descended from Polynesian stock and are direct evidence of pre-columbian landings of Polynesians in the Americas.
El-Arenal was first excavated in 2002.
Sources
Fitzpatrick SM, and Callaghan RT. 2009. Examining dispersal mechanisms for the translocation of chicken (Gallus gallus) from Polynesia to South America. Journal of Archaeological Science 36(2):214-223.
Gongora J et al. 2008. Indo-European and Asian origins for Chilean and Pacific chickens revealed by mtDNA. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105(30):10308-10313.
Storey AA, et al. 2008. Pre-Columbian chickens, dates, isotopes, and mtDNA. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105(48):E99.
Storey AA et al. 2007. Radiocarbon and DNA evidence for a pre-Columbian introduction of Polynesian chickens to Chile. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104(25):10335-10339.
