Friday, August 19, 2005

A Polynesian Link?

An interesting hypothesis that Polynesian Islanders came into contact with coastal California's Chumash Indians (Santa Barbara area) in the sixth century A.D. (Sacramento Bee link not yet available). Sometimes these things are coincidences indicating nothing except similar responses by different peoples to identical pressures, but maybe there really is a link!:
...[Kathryn Klar] happened upon two terms for a type of canoe - the Chumash tomolo'o and the Hawaiian kumulaa'au. Subsequently she noticed these words shared a linguistic heritage with the Polynesian tumuRaa'au, a word for the wood used in seagoing sewn-plank vessels.

... [Terry Jones] and UC Berkeley anthropology professor Patrick Kirch determined that a type of Polynesian fish hook looked stunningly similar to one used by the Chumash.

No comments:

Post a Comment