Easter Island natives set sail hundreds of years ago and settled in Hawaii, according to a new study from Stanford University.
Researchers said genetic evidence links the two islands in Polynesia to each other, with the Easter Island natives likely embarking on their voyage during Europe’s Middle Ages.
“What we uncover in this paper is where the native people of Hawaii had come from,” said Alexander Ioannidis, assistant professor of genetics and of biomedical data science, and co-senior author of the study. “Hawaii is the only Polynesian island in the Northern Hemisphere, so it’s a long way from everything.”
People were interested in these podcasts
Stanford said it looked at the genomes of more than 1,000 individuals throughout Polynesia to make the connection between Easter Island and Hawaii.
Researchers excluded more recent genetic additions from European and Asian ancestors and instead analyzed the identity-by-descent chromosomal segments shared by people on the various islands, the university said.
The study found that after Easter Island natives, Hawaiians shared the most common ancestry with Mangareva, which is almost 1,900 miles west of Easter Island — reinforcing the idea of Polynesians being a seafaring people.
But because native Hawaiians are one of the newer genetic variations of the Pacific Islanders, they suffer from what researchers called “founder effects.” It’s when a small portion of a population splits off to form a new population, making rare genetic conditions more likely to crop up given the smaller gene pool.
Researchers said these “genetic bottlenecks” can put Eastern Polynesians, such as native Hawaiians, at greater risk for conditions that can cause progressive vision loss, kidney failure and dislocated lens in the eyes.
“We thought Easter Island was the end when we were first doing that study, but now it looks like it was part of this path to Hawaii, which is really incredible,” Mr. Ioannidis said. “By the time you’ve gotten all the way to Hawaii, you’re at the end of a series of founder effects, so it’s really intense.”
Please read our comment policy before commenting.