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During the ten years since NEARA’s 1992 Across Before
Columbus (ABC) conference, the evidence concerning pre-
Columbian transoceanic contacts has advanced mightily,
including through the appearance of the second edition of
John Sorenson and Martin Raish’s (1996) massive bibliog-
raphy on transoceanic contacts. I propose today to review
these developments.
CULTURAL COMPARISONS
The tradition in transoceanic contacts studies has been
to make cultural comparisons; that is, to describe cultural
similarities shared by pairs of cultures in the two hemispheres
on the opposite sides of the ocean. This ts well with the
aim
of determining the true culture histories of these various
areas.
On the other hand, such comparisons have not been
overly successful in convincing non-diffusionists of the
desirability of considering contact as an explanation for
commonalties
. Isolationists can and do continue to assert
that if humans could invent something in one area, they could
do the same in another, and so contact need not be invoked to
account for what is more likely a consequence of independent
invention. No amount of purely cultural evidence seems to
be convincing to such individuals, because they approach the
data from a diametrically opposed theoretical position.
Therefore, the present paper stresses non-cultural—that
is, biological—evidence. Still, we may take a few moments to
consider the cultural approach since it tends to be convincing
to those of us who can be called diffusionists.
Over the years, several kinds of cultural phenomena
have been forwarded. Highly arbitrary ones provide the best
evidence. Of these, language is the most arbitrary, and I will
deal with it a bit later. But also arbitrary—that is, not called
for by the nature of the materials used, the functions to which
the item is put, simple logic, and so forth—are things such as
games (e.g., the classic patolli-pachisi comparison); myths
and folktales, which in a number of instances are shared in
detail between the hemispheres; art styles and iconography,
which have received the greatest attention in comparisons;
calendar systems, to the study of which the two David Kel-
leys have made the greatest contributions, including in the
pages of the NEARA Journal (Kelley); music, dance, posture,
and gesture; and symbols of rank and status such as thrones,
litters, parasols, and so on.
PRE-COLUMBIAN TRANSOCEANIC CONTACTS:
THE PRESENT STATE OF THE EVIDENCE
STEPHEN C. JETT
But having mentioned all these hoary comparisons, we
must observe that few great strides have been made over
the last decade in amplifying the cases for transfer in these
areas of culture, with the brief exception of Paul Shao’s (1998)
new ndings with respect to Neolithic Chinese and forma-
tive Mesoamerican art and iconography in the premier issue
of Pre-Columbiana: A Journal of Long Distance Contacts
that I edit.
Then there is the study of involved technologies, tech-
nologies so complex that their invention in the rst place is
rather astounding, but for which the notion of their having
been invented more than once would seem to pass all plau-
sibility. In this line, we have, for example, bark-cloth manu-
facture, the blowgun complex, and metallurgy, all studied in
transpacic context in past years, but not much added to in
the last decade. There have, however, been a few advances
in other technological realms. At the ABC conference, I gave
a paper on four dyestuffs shared by the two hemispheres (Jett
1998a), and followed that up with a survey of resist-dyeing
methods in the Old and New Worlds. The latter paper was
rst published in a festschrift volume honoring John Sorenson
(Jett 1998b) and later, with minor amplication, was reprinted
in the NEARA Journal (Jett 1999). In the piece, I showed the
presence, in Nuclear America, of three complex and labor-
intensive southern Asian methods of obtaining pattern on
cloth: by batikking, tie-dyeing, and ikatting.
Another technological area that has received some
additional
attention is that of lacquer and lacquerware.
Celia Heil (1999) has studied lacquer use in East Asia and
West Mexico, and in Pre-Columbiana postulated an Asian
introduction to America followed by West Mexican inu-
ence on Japan. This mention of Japan inevitably reminds us,
too, of Nancy Yaw Davis’s (2000) intriguing recent book The
Zuni Enigma: A Native American People’s Possible Japanese
Connection.
But these studies are about it, as far as I am aware,
concerning recent signicant contributions in the realm of
complex-technology comparisons.
THE EVIDENCE OF HUMAN GENETICS
For over a century, various workers have pointed to
depictions
, in Nuclear American art, of faces that look wholly
or partially Negroid, Caucasoid, and East Asian. Intriguing
and suggestive as these are, today racial assignments on the
basis of visible and measurable phenotypic traits presents
problems, and has largely given way to direct study of geno-
type. Huge advances have taken place here during the last 15
years, especially in the realms of molecular and biochemical
genetics. Although these elds are at an early stage and are
fast-developing, they have already yielded highly relevant
data and have the potential of answering many of our
diffusionist
questions.
The virtue of molecular genetics is that a variety of kinds
of genetic variants are so numerous and independent of one
another and seem not to be adaptive that, assuming correct
interpretation, they offer as close to absolute proof as could
be hoped. The works of Mourant (1956) and of Cavalli-Sforza,
Menozzi, and Piazza (1994) have provided an enormous res-
ervoir of data on this subject. Most useful for our purposes
are genetic markers: uncommon genes that have no adaptive
value or phenotypic function but that exist as “trace elements”
that allow us to conclude historical connections, even for
fairly minor encounters. Jim Guthrie (2000/2001; also, Fahey
2000/2001) has synthesized and analyzed many of the data in
an article in the most recent issue of Pre-Columbiana. I can
mention only a few highlights here.
It was once contended that all American Indians other
than the Blackfoot (who were high in A) were of blood type
O. Asian B was said to be absent. Now, however, we know
that B occurs in over half the samples of American Indians,
particularly among Nancy Yaw Davis’s (2000) possibly Japa-
nese inuenced Zuni, and that all four ABO blood types were
present in pre-Columbian Peru, especially in earlier times.
As early as the 1950s, it was noticed that the Diego blood
factor, an East and Southeast Asian type, also occurred among
American groups but was absent in the North. Other blood
factors are showing comparable patterns. These include the
Rhesus and Kell factors, plus transferrins, GM immunoglo-
bins, and human lymphocyte antigens or HLAs. In addition,
there are the glucose-6-phosphodehydrogenase deciency
and mitochondrial DNA. I cannot cover the details here, but
sufce it to say that a variety of “foreign” genes, especially
from Afro-Asiatic and southern Asian parts of the world, oc-
cur again in the Western Hemisphere, not randomly, but with
denite concentrations, especially in Mesoamerica and in the
Central to Southern Andean region. This seems impossible
to assign to mere happenstance, and Mediterranean/ Middle
Eastern and greater Southeast Asian/ Oceanian inputs appear
to be the only believable explanation.
I may mention, as well, Asian HLA links with Ecuador
and Colombia, links also supported by presence there of an
uncommon type of human Tlymphotropic virus also found
among the Ainu of Japan, and the absence of the normal Asian
and American mtDNA 9-by deletion. All this is congruent
with Betty Meggers’s Jomôn-in-Ecuador proposals (Meggers,
Evans, and Estrada 1965).
INTESTINAL PARASITES
Although Old World worms intestinally parasitic on hu-
mans were once generally thought to have been absent in the
pre-Columbian Americas, during the 1980s and 1990s paleo-
pathologists—especially Brazilians—have not only veried
the presence of such worms among isolated South American
tribes, but have also archaeologically demonstrated the pre-
A.D. 1492 (sometimes, strikingly early) presence of certain
species in burials in the Western Hemisphere (Reinhard 1992;
Verano 1997). These now include hookworms, the whipworm,
the hairworm, and the giant roundworm. As far
as tropical
and subtropical species are concerned, the Bering
Strait region
acts as a cold screen for transmission, and leaves only the
possibility of humans traveling to the New World by boat.
THE EVIDENCE OF CULTIVATED PLANTS
George Carter (1950,1953) was a pioneer in utilizing the
evidence of cultivated plants in tracing transoceanic move-
ments. Carl Johannessen then took the baton and has carried
it even farther forward. He and John Sorenson are currently
putting together a book, which identies scores of cultivated
plants that appear to have been shared between the pre-
Columbian hemispheres
(Sorenson and Johannessen 2003).
The beauty of this kind of evidence is that cultivated
plants are genetic entities and can be domesticated only where
the appropriate wild ancestors occur; that is usually strictly
limited geographically. Further, very few such plants can
cross oceans or establish and maintain themselves without
human help. Thus, along with the indications of human
genetics
described above, cultivated plants comprise the
“smoking guns” of transoceanic evidence.
Only a few prominent examples can be described here.
One is the seedless South American sweet potato, discov-
ered archaeologically in Polynesia shortly before the ABC
Conference (Hather and Kirch 1991), and for which there is good
nonarchaeological indication of presence in pre-Columbian
Asia. Another is the amazing archaeological presence of the
South American peanut in Neolithic China at about 2000 B.C.,
rst reported in the 1960s and veried by Carl Johannessen
(1998:22-25) with Wang in the 1990s.
Readers of the NEARA Journal and Across before Colum-
bus are aware of Johannessen’s work (1998) on the thousands
of carvings of ears of maize on temples in India, especially
of Karnataka in the south. As far as I am concerned, this ends
any controversy as to that plant’s pre-Columbian presence in
Asia. Since that time, Carl has also found temple sculptures
that appear to show other American crop plants, including
sunowers and annonas (Johannessen with Wang 1998). Carl’s iden-
tications have been conrmed and added to by Shakti M.
Gupta (1996) who, being unaware of the transoceanic-contacts
question, concluded that these American plants were, in fact
indigenous to India.
A similar conclusion was once made concerning de-
pictions of annonas and pineapples on Roman murals at
Pompeii. This was in the 1950s and involved identications
by pomologist Domenico Casella (1950,1956,1957). His works,
in Italian, will appear in translation in the forthcoming issue
of Pre-Columbiana.
Another example is the plantain or vegetable banana. In
an article about to appear in Pre-Columbiana, anthropolo-
gist William Smole (2001) makes a persuasive circumstantial
case for Southeast Asian domesticate’s pre-Columbian use
in South and Middle America. This is based on early post-
contact reports; the presence, at that time, of varieties; the
cultural ecology of native plantain use; and linguistics.
Finally, there is the phenomenon of forensic pathologists’
identication, during the 1990s, of residues of nicotine and
cocaine in ancient Egyptian mummies. Tobacco is, of course,
an American and Southwest Pacic genus, and coca is native
to the eastern slope of the Andes, none of these places being
anywhere near Egypt. Conventional scholars, disbelieving
the possibility of transoceanic transfers, have done mental
contortions to try to dismiss this evidence. But, as I think I
demonstrate in yet another article in the next
Pre-Columbiana
,
none of the objections holds up very well (Jett 2001).
LINGUISTIC AND EPIGRAPHIC EVIDENCE
No area of culture is more arbitrary in specic nature
than is language. For most words, the nature of the item
referred to has no inuence on the sets of sounds selected
to verbally convey that concept. When one nds extensive
commonalties in vocabulary, especially in connection with
systematic sound correspondences, or in structure, one may
be condent of a historical connection.
In 1964, David H. Kelley (1964:17), although by no means
averse to the notion of long-distance diffusion, wrote, “No
competent linguist has suggested that any language or lan-
guage family of the New World is genetically related to any of
those of the Old World in the period since the rise of civiliza-
tion, and few have suggested relationships at any time depth
. . . .” Likewise, in 1973 R. C.Padden (1973:997) noted that “no
one has yet established a continuity of linguistic families be-
tween the hemispheres in the pre-Columbian period.” Highly
respected (and conservative) linguist Lyle Campbell (1997:
98-99) could still say in 1997 that “most specialists nd no
connections between New World and Old
World languages,”
and that, “All evidence presented to date reveals no such
[linguistic] impact” of any post-initial-settlement migrations
to the New World.
More recently, however, a few such putative relation-
ships have not only been suggested but are now being
supported by considerable and compelling comparative
data, professionally presented.
Cal-Ugrian, Athapaskan-Eyak, and Yeniseian. Whereas
speakers of Eskimo (Inuit) and Aleut and those of Na-Dene
are thought to be relatively recent arrivals in North America
via Bering Strait, common current thought, though widely
disputed (e.g., Fahey 2000/2001:189-96), is that all other native
tongues of the hemisphere belong to a single family, Amerind,
and are descendants of the single language brought in via the
initial migration of humans across Beringia from Siberia—the
Greenberg hypothesis—and that these languages received
no further extra-hemispheric inputs worth mentioning. Still,
linguist Johanna Nichols (1992) has identied grammatical
elements in West Coast New World languages that suggest
four ancient circumpacic migrations by boat around the
Pacic Rim. Nichols suggested the Hokan and Penutian
phyla as among the linguistic units possibly involved in
circumpacic linkages.
Regarding Penutian (on a less antique time level), Hun-
garian born linguist Otto von Sadovsky (1996) has made a
detailed comparative study of the Uralic languages of Eurasia
and the Penutian tongues of Central California and has con-
cluded that not only do the Penutian languages belong to the
Uralic subdivision of Ugrian, they relate particularly closely
to the Siberian Ob-Ugrian languages. Von Sadovsky did not
postulate a transoceanic voyage but, rather, a stepping stone
journey by boat from the Ob River delta, along the Arctic
Ocean coast of Siberia, through Bering Strait, and down the
North American coast to the San Francisco Bay area, the
migrants bringing Siberian shamanism and other cultural
baggage with them and arriving about 500 B.C.
A strikingly parallel nding has been forwarded by
linguist Merritt Ruhlen (1998), who has outlined a seeming
close relationship between Ket, a language of the Yeniseian
family of central Siberia, and the Athapaskan-Eyak family
(part of the Na-Dene phylum) of northwestern North America.
Ruhlen considered boat travel between central Siberia and
Alaska likely. These distances, though not transoceanic, are
great, involving about 160 degrees of longitude.
Uto-Aztecan and Semitic. Of far greater interest are
preliminary ndings that linguist Brian Stubbs of the Col-
lege of Eastern Utah has cautiously presented regarding
a seeming important proto-Northwest Semitic element of
circa 500 B.C., from the area of ancient Palestine/ Phoeni-
cia, in the Uto-Aztecan stock (including proto-UA), whose
historically known languages extend from Idaho to Central
America. Stubbs claims to have identied around one thou-
sand similarities in lexicon and morphology between the two
language groups. Stubbs presented some of these data in small
circulation monographs in the 1980s and more recently has
published on some ten percent of the comparisons (Stubbs 1998).
Not only are a large number of closely similar or identical
lexical items shared, but systematic sound correspondences
are also demonstrated, along with a number of unusual se-
mantic commonalties, elements of verb morphology, and
other structural elements. As a non-specialist, I must admit
to nding the presentation convincing. Devising a historical
scenario to account for the connection and creolization is
another matter.
Proto-Pelagian. In the premier issue of Pre-Columbiana,
the late Mary LeCron Foster (1998), a Berkeley anthropologist
specializing in linguistics, made a stunning announcement:
that lexical comparisons indicated that three supposedly
unrelated language families—Old World Afroasiatic and
Austronesian and New World Quechuan—in fact were all
members of a single phylum, which Foster saw as having
spread by sea across the Pacic and which she accordingly
labeled “proto-Pelagian.” She provided numerous examples
of common lexical items
In the same issue of Pre-Columbiana as Foster’s piece,
linguist Mary Ritchie Key (1998) used word lists to suggest an
Austronesian contribution to many of the languages of South
America, a phenomenon that ts well with my earlier sugges-
tion of Malaysian migrations to tropical South America (Jett
1968), although Key sees the movement as being transatlantic
while I proposed transpacic input (both may be correct).
Of course, there is epigraphic evidence as well. I will not
review it here, but workers such as the late Bill McGlone,
Phil Leonard (McGlone et al.1993), Huston McCulloch (1993), and
David H. Kelley (1998), have continued to advance studies pio-
neered by Cyrus Gordon and, if in a awed manner, by Barry
Fell. A model for this kind of work has been provided by Dick
Nielsen (1998), whose work on the Kensington runestone has
put that of professional specialists to shame and who has, for
my money, shown the stone to be authentic. Then, there is
the recent work of Mike Xu (1996, 2002), comparing signs on
Olmec objects from Mexico with identical and closely similar
characters on Shang oracle bones in archaic China.
CONCLUSIONS
I believe that the recently forwarded evidence of human
genetics, cultivated plants, and language are overwhelming,
and put transoceanic inuence studies on a new and much
rmer footing. We no longer need rely solely on cultural
comparisons: hard science, though a hard sell to some, is in
the process of demonstrating what simple cultural compari-
sons alone can never do: folks were traveling the oceans in
amazingly early times and left their genes and their languages
in America and took home American cultigens. They were
there, and if they were there they had the opportunity to exert
cultural inuence.
NOTE
This paper was presented at the 2002 NEARA ABC Plus Ten
conference in Waltham, Massachusetts.
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