Exploring an Oceanic Influence on the Peopling of South America

Abstract

The focus of this research is to explore the possibility that Australasians contributed to modern indigenous South American populations during and after the time when the major peopling events of the Americas are thought to have occurred. This paper proposes a deep evolutionary connection between Oceanic and South American peoples, and challenges the idea that the Bering Land Bridge or passage along the coast of the Bering Strait was the only way that humans reached the Americas in the Late Pleistocene. Additionally, evidence from Australasia is presented to prove that long-distance sea migrations were feasible at the time of the peopling of the Americas, as they had been successfully completed nearly 40,000 years earlier in the peopling of Sahul, or modern day Australia and Papua New Guinea. After a thorough review of published work in the fields of archaeology, craniometrics, genetics, linguistics, and ecology, it is evident that there is not sufficient evidence to support the Beringia model as the sole source of the peopling of the Americas and of the development of the many and divers indigenous cultures found therein.