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00:01At the edge of the known world, a mystery.
00:07How did an ancient people, so-called savages and cannibals,
00:11cross over 25 million square kilometers of open ocean in primitive canoes
00:17in one of the great expeditions of all time?
00:23It's baffled experts for centuries,
00:26but today scientists and adventurers are uncovering surprising new clues.
00:32Who they were, where they came from,
00:35and they may have reached the Americas hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus.
00:56A race of explorers.
01:09They conquered the Pacific long before the Europeans.
01:12Then, all traces of them and their homeland seemed to disappear.
01:17Until now.
01:25Who were these people?
01:26What happened to them?
01:28And what was their secret?
01:33Easter Island, a tiny speck in the Pacific.
01:36Thousands of kilometers from anywhere.
01:38This famed island, known as Rapa Nui, is home to the mysterious statues.
01:46But the greatest mystery is the people themselves.
01:50How did they get here?
01:54Two young researchers are determined to answer that question.
01:59We're trying to find answers to a large controversy
02:03about where the people on Easter Island originate from.
02:06Who were the first people to live here?
02:08And how did they locate and settle
02:11in one of the most remote places on Earth,
02:13over a thousand years ago?
02:17By using DNA research,
02:19we hope to be able to uncover some of the mysteries
02:22that surround this island.
02:24We're looking for the oldest people on the island,
02:31and the most, what they say here,
02:34purro, somebody who has a genealogy
02:36that is Rapa Nui for many generations back
02:39on both sides, mother and father.
02:42Taking genetic samples from the elders,
02:44they hope to find proof of their origins.
02:46What we do now is to take DNA from a woman whose last name indicates
02:56that she has a very interesting family tree,
02:58so it's important for us to be able to trace this.
03:00But it will take weeks for them to collect and test all the DNA samples.
03:09But right away, they're fascinated by what they hear from the elders.
03:13They say their forefathers came from a lost island continent known as Jiva,
03:22somewhere in the Pacific.
03:24Nuestra historia, dicen de que cuando el continente Jiva
03:30se hundió una explosión, desaparecieron,
03:34y toda la gente emigraron.
03:36Sterla and Eureta are determined to uncover the truth
03:40about those adventurers and their lost continent of Jiva.
03:48Together with a group of scientists,
03:50they intend to follow the trail back to see where it leads.
03:55It's so fascinating to be here on the hunt.
03:58Right on here.
03:59The elders say that this corner of the island is the starting point
04:03where the first inhabitants arrived,
04:05led by a ruler called Hutu Matua.
04:08We are standing on the beach where legend says
04:11that the very first king, Hutu Matua, arrived on the island.
04:14And Hutu Matua, he originated from the lost continent, Jiva.
04:20As the researchers continue their work,
04:22other experts are following the same trail across the Pacific,
04:26starting at a set of islands over 3,000 kilometers to the northwest.
04:31A remote chain known as the Marquesas,
04:34part of the vast territory of Polynesia.
04:43Like Easter Island, much of the Marquesan past remains a mystery.
04:50Start in this corner, bring this down to 50,
04:52and then clean it clear across.
04:54Dr. Barry Rowlett has been working here for the past 20 years,
04:58determined to find evidence of the lost Polynesian homeland.
05:06Who were the ancient people who lived here?
05:08Could they have colonized the vast Pacific?
05:11We're digging through the hop deposit
05:14in order to get down to the richer cultural deposit,
05:17which has all of the artifacts left
05:20by the people who once lived here.
05:22He and his team are excavating a remarkable coastal site,
05:26one of the oldest in East Polynesia,
05:29finding clues that date back over 1,000 years.
05:32Clues that just may shed light on the Easter Islanders
05:37and the Polynesian shrouded past.
05:41Rola believes that the ancient clan that lived here
05:47did colonize the vast Pacific.
05:49This is really nice.
05:51Middle to late 19th century.
05:53And evidence like this bone ornament
05:55is helping him make the case.
05:57This one's going in the museum.
05:59But his theory goes against everything
06:03experts believe for years.
06:05The first reports from European travelers
06:07in the 1700s spoke of lush green islands
06:11with a dark side.
06:13A land of tattooed cannibals.
06:15Primitives who carried the skulls
06:17of their enemies as trophies.
06:19Marquesas was labeled one of the most savage places on Earth.
06:29Its people simple barbarians.
06:31We're going to go down here and across the river.
06:33The most controversial element of ancient Marquesan life
06:36took place deep in the jungle.
06:38Religious ceremonies notorious for human sacrifice.
06:53When a priest called for a human victim,
06:57then the people would go to a neighboring valley
06:59and just grab whoever they could.
07:17These were offerings, brutal and highly ritualized,
07:20known to all the clansmen here.
07:22The building was forced to protect those
07:24of all the farmers and farmers.
07:27He was innocent,
07:28the moral chaos was placed under alles
07:29and the persons where they are actually
07:30were forced to live their lives
07:31from the town.
07:32The students got their pits
07:33back,
07:34you're left there.....
07:35Oh la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la y
07:37The meat of the victim is consumed by the chiefs and the priests, not as food, but
08:06as a kind of ancient communion.
08:13It was not cannibalism to feed the population, it was in a highly ceremonial and religious
08:20context.
08:21It's no wonder early explorers saw the Marchesans as savages.
08:27They had almost no written language, no history, and by that time they were isolated, barely
08:33traveling at all.
08:36But Dr. Rolot is finding clues that the Marchesans' ancestors were more sophisticated, more civilized
08:43than anyone imagined.
08:45We're going to cross the river here.
08:49Centuries of thick jungle growth hide the secrets of that civilization.
08:53Baitahu was one of the most densely inhabited valleys in the past.
09:07There's evidence of an intricate society with a complex social order of priests and chiefs.
09:12So here we have the residence of one of the chiefs.
09:23This is the retaining wall of the chief's platform.
09:26Look at the size of the boulders and the base of the wall.
09:29I'm six foot.
09:30This wall must be a good eight feet tall.
09:33It's one of those cases where size really does matter because the size of the stone and
09:38the size of the walls was a reflection of the status of the person living here.
09:43The most powerful chiefs command the construction of massive stone platforms known as paipai, foundations
09:50for housing and public ceremonies, all part of an elaborate, well-ordered, communal structure.
10:03For a young man growing up here, the first rite of passage comes in the form of an intricate
10:08tattoo.
10:09The evidence shows that tools made of fish and human bone or shark's teeth were used to
10:15force ink into the skin.
10:20Pigment for the tattoo is made from ash of a cooked tree nut.
10:24Until death, the story of his every battle will be tattooed into his flesh.
10:32For this young man, a remarkable journey is beginning.
10:39Deep in the Marquesan jungle, Rowlett makes a surprising discovery.
10:43We're going to find the petroglyphs.
10:45This is it.
10:48This is it.
10:49Ah, here are the petroglyphs.
10:51Here in French Polynesia is a startling echo from Easter Island.
11:04Petroglyphs and large tikis like the great statues there.
11:08This is one of the few petroglyph sites that we know of in the valley.
11:14Tikis and petroglyphs are images that represented deified ancestors.
11:20The head was the most sacred part of the body.
11:24So what you see here is just the representation of the eyes of the tikis.
11:32These petroglyphs are really interesting because they're so similar to the ones that we find
11:36on Easter Island.
11:44Other than Easter Island, the Marquesas are one of the only few places on earth where
11:48you'll find this kind of giant tikis.
11:55It's an intriguing link, the first hint of a Polynesian homeland, but the hunt for proof
12:01is just the beginning.
12:05On an isolated string of islands in the Pacific, Dr. Barry Rowlett and his team are trying to
12:10find evidence to support a controversial theory.
12:13We're going to bring all the squares down to 75.
12:22For centuries, scientists believed that ancient Polynesians were too primitive to navigate
12:27the vast Pacific and colonize other islands.
12:38Earlier scientists and archaeologists believed that it was very difficult to travel across
12:43the ocean, and so that once Polynesians reached islands such as the Marquesas, people were isolated
12:50with no further voyaging.
12:52The Polynesians were seen as accidental settlers blown by chance across the waters, marooned
12:58on their islands.
13:06But Rowlett believes they were much more sophisticated.
13:08We're going to call this layer C because it's starting to get darker there, we can see already.
13:15That they intentionally made long, round-trip journeys for trade and colonization.
13:20We're looking for archaeological evidence of inter-island voyaging and exchange.
13:27It's a fascinating theory, but he needs physical evidence to prove it.
13:32Let's see what you got.
13:33What do you think about this?
13:34This is unusual.
13:35It's a marine animal.
13:36So far, he hasn't found anything definitive.
13:43Only certain artifacts are useful as a window into the past, and Rowlett doesn't have what
13:48he needs.
13:50Until...
13:51Jackpot.
13:52Jackpot?
13:53Yeah.
13:54Jackpot.
13:55Yeah.
13:56Yeah.
13:57Where do you have it?
13:58Fishhook.
13:59Oh, beautiful!
14:00Wow!
14:01Jackpot.
14:02This is a pearl shell fishhook.
14:03Try to clean it off.
14:06It's unusual that we find an unbroken fishhook like this in the excavation.
14:11So I'm just recording the location of that fishhook we found.
14:14The fishhook is made of pearl shell.
14:17And that's their first major clue.
14:20It's quite rare because it grows best in lagoons, and there are no lagoons in the Marquesas.
14:28This fishhook must have come from somewhere else, but the closest island with lagoons
14:33harboring this kind of pearl shell is over 1,000 kilometers away, in the Tuamotu island
14:38chain.
14:43How could shells from that far away have made it here?
14:48We think it's quite possible that the larger pieces of pearl shell that we find here in
14:52the site actually are coming from the Tuamotus and may have been exchanged between archipelagos.
15:01It's a good start, but he can't prove the inter-island trade.
15:05And with the ancient vessels long gone, evidence is hard to come by.
15:11As the wooden canoes that Polynesians used are not preserved in the archeological record,
15:17then we have to look for other evidence if we want to study inter-island exchange and
15:22voyaging.
15:24As the dig continues, another find takes them one step closer, a kind of ancient blade,
15:31a cutting tool known as an adze.
15:34It was the most important tool in ancient Polynesia.
15:40We're especially interested in the stone adzes.
15:43This is an incredible one.
15:45Adzes were the basic woodworking tools for Polynesians.
15:50It's unusual to find one that is so large.
15:53This weighs at least 10 pounds.
15:55Rowlett has been finding something unexpected about these adzes.
15:59We found that in the deepest deposits of this site, more than half of the adzes are made
16:06of stone that was brought to Tahawata.
16:10The stone used to make these tools does not exist on this island.
16:14Like the fish hook, it must have come from somewhere else.
16:17And in this case, they have an idea where.
16:20If they can prove it, it'll be solid evidence of long-distance trade voyages.
16:25Rowlett has enlisted volcanologist Dr. John Synton to join his search.
16:30Our goal was to try to find the actual quarry where the rocks were being produced.
16:36Others before them have attempted to locate the quarry, but failed.
16:40Rowlett and Synton charter a helicopter for the distant island of Eiau.
16:46Remote, uninhabited, Eiau is hundreds of kilometers from Rowlett's dig site.
16:52For they believe the stone found here might be a match for their adzes.
17:00On a bright morning, the helicopter pilot drops them off on the distant island.
17:04We jumped out of the helicopter.
17:07He took off and told us he would be back in five days.
17:11Rowlett and Synton head deep into the wild, tangled forest of Eiau.
17:16They have food and water for just five days.
17:20Eiau is known as an island of ill fortune, inhabited by the spirits of the ancient people.
17:26After four days of hunting, they've got nothing.
17:29And they're exhausted.
17:32Searching, running up and down the ridges, across the plateau.
17:37Searching everywhere for the quarry.
17:39No drinking water, no water to wash with.
17:42We were absolutely dirty and stinking by that time.
17:46For three days, they'd had no luck at all.
17:50The day before we were supposed to be picked up by the helicopter, we were bushwhacking across
17:55a small ravine, and that's where we found the workshops for chipping the adzes.
18:00This may be the breakthrough they've been looking for, the stone source for the ancient tools.
18:05When we started to dig through the piles of flake, we realized there was nothing but stone
18:09debitage from hundreds of years of chipping away to manufacture these adzes.
18:15They look like the right kind of stone fragments, but they have to prove it's a match.
18:22Rowlett and Synton take samples back to the lab to test their theory.
18:27This rock comes from the island of Eiau in the Marquesas.
18:31We recognize this rock as what archaeologists call core.
18:35That is the primary source rock from which adzes could be fabricated.
18:41Dr. Synton compares the source rock brought back from Eiau with Rowlett's adzes.
18:48He needs to heat the rock into a molten form to analyze its chemical composition.
18:54Chemical composition is like the fingerprint of the sample.
18:57When people find artifacts elsewhere in the world, if they have this identical chemical
19:02composition, most likely the sample really did come from Eiau.
19:07The liquefied rock is pressed into glass discs that will allow Synton to analyze their chemistry.
19:13The results of the study are striking.
19:16The raw material at the quarry is identical in chemistry to these artifacts that are found all
19:25over the island.
19:27These two are in fact an exact match.
19:30It's a solid link between two distant islands.
19:34We found the quarry.
19:36They had established a major ads manufacturing complex on Eiau and were exporting the adzes to
19:43Tahiti, the Tuumotus and Mangadeva.
19:48The same Eiau-Adzes turning up from the Marquesas to Tahiti is evidence of a regular trade route
19:55covering hundreds of thousands of kilometers, much further than anyone imagined.
20:03This discovery from Dr. Rowlett and his colleagues is transforming the study of ancient Polynesia.
20:09This was a revelation because it started to show that there were voyaging spheres that
20:15linked to the Marquesas and other islands in central Polynesia, what we refer to now
20:21as this East Polynesian homeland.
20:24The adzes are hard evidence of two-way, intentional, long-distance voyaging.
20:32This is a radically different idea or view of Polynesian societies because instead of looking
20:39at them as being isolated, we now see a lot of interaction and communication.
20:45Dr. Rowlett's dramatic discoveries suggest prehistoric Polynesian societies were more sophisticated
20:53than earlier experts thought.
20:55Now, the crucial question is, did they travel all the way to Easter Island?
21:02And what truth lies behind the story of Hotu Matua and the lost continent of Hiva?
21:17On Easter Island, the elders are positive their forefathers came from an ancient homeland called
21:23Hiva.
21:24To them, the facts are clear.
21:27Hiva is described as a land of green and jagged cliffs, ruled by tattooed warriors and fierce
21:33clans.
21:38Conflicts erupt, and rival clans go to war.
21:46Chief Hotu Matua prepares his men for battle.
21:51They are fighting for control of the island.
21:54Fighting for a homeland.
21:55They are fighting for control of the island, fighting for a homeland.
21:58Chief Hotu Matua and his men lose a decisive battle.
22:00Chief Hotu Matua and his men lose a decisive battle.
22:05defeated, they must flee.
22:22Chief Hotu Matua and his men lose a decisive battle.
22:26defeated, they must flee.
22:29They must flee.
22:30hovahotu Matua, in the direction of the rising sun.
22:34Totally flee for their invisible field to the island.
22:39How do they fight for?
22:40Chief Hotu Matua, out of the island.
22:42Chief Hotu Matua for their first FPS?
22:45Chief Hotu Matua must find a new home for his people.
22:50The High Priest dreams of a faraway island to the east, in the direction of the Rising Sun.
22:58Hotu Matua knows they must leave the island before more of his men are killed.
23:08He commands scouts to search for the island in the Priest's dream.
23:20That's the Easter Islander's story.
23:31But could ancient Polynesians from the Marquesas region have traveled so far, thousands of kilometers across the ocean?
23:41Did they even have the right vessels?
23:45That's the huge question boat restoration expert Bono Louis is wrestling with.
23:52We built this pirogue. We did research. It's a pirogue of war.
24:03Did they survive, don't they?
24:05With few written records of their maritime past, Louis is working from knowledge passed down orally through the centuries to rebuild a traditional wooden canoe.
24:15And the model, according to the history, the shape has been put on the coco.
24:22Because it has a model half-arronded, and it has a flat shape.
24:27The canoe is made from a special kind of tree found here.
24:32Perfect material for long-distance travel.
24:36After the history, the history of the old ones, they take the soil, which is light and resistant to the sea.
24:46The child is a men.
24:55Bono Louis grew up here, over 3000 kilometers from Easter Island.
24:57But remarkably, he has heard the very same stories as those islanders, stories of a defeated tribe that set off on an epic journey.
25:06According to the story, we have some clans who are forced to leave because there is a death
25:26behind.
25:27There is no other possibility to escape with the pyrogue to leave.
25:33They load up in preparation.
25:43The final piece of cargo, a sacred stone from Hiva, on the voyage to their new homeland.
25:50And so, Hotu Matua and his people begin an epic journey, a voyage that could take them
25:59across thousands of kilometers of open ocean.
26:06They will battle stormy weather, rough seas, and blazing hot sun as they venture into the
26:11unknown.
26:19The canoe will be their home for many weeks, but with no land on route, food and fresh
26:24water will be scarce.
26:29All they have are a few coconuts and whatever fish they can catch.
26:48It is a very dangerous fish.
26:57Danger is all around, and the distant hope of a homeland far off on the horizon.
27:05This is the islander's story.
27:11For Bono Lui, one key fact is about to check out.
27:15Setting sail, he and his team soon find out that these ancient style canoes really are seaworthy.
27:22Bono Lui also knows one more crucial piece of information, that the island he's sailing from goes by the ancient
27:31name of Hiva Ua.
27:33In fact, according to an ancient map, a 300 year old document from a Tahitian high priest,
27:40many of the islands in this region originally went by the name of Hiva.
27:45The name from the Easter Islander's stories, it's the present day location of the Marquesas,
27:51a remarkable link to the legend.
27:55After centuries, could they have found the mythical missing continent?
28:05It's clear that the ancient Polynesians sailed the South Seas, but the Pacific Ocean covers
28:11one third of the Earth's surface.
28:14But they really have undertaken long distance journeys, like the amazing voyage to Easter
28:19Island.
28:23Many historians and scientists assumed that Polynesians crossed the ocean largely by accident, being
28:29blown off course.
28:32For a long time, the ancient Polynesians were considered too primitive to intentionally
28:37voyage to distant locations.
28:41But one clue shows that they may well have.
28:46It's a kind of ocean map, known as a stick chart.
28:50Thin pieces of coconut fronds are tied together to represent ocean currents.
28:55Small shells attached to the frame show the location of land.
28:58It's a chart of islands visited.
29:01All part of the evidence that led Barry Rowlett to believe the ancient Polynesians traveled
29:06far across the Pacific with a plan to colonize the islands they found.
29:10Our new theory is that the discovery and settlement of Polynesia was a systematic and intentional
29:20process, and not at all accidental.
29:22Previously, experts believed this long distance voyage across the Pacific would have been impossible
29:29for two main reasons.
29:30Firstly, the wind.
29:31A trip to Easter Island would have taken them towards the rising sun from west to east.
29:38But across the Pacific, the winds in the tropics blow in the opposite direction, from east to
29:43west along the equator.
29:45These are the trade winds, and many thought they'd make a trip east impossible.
29:50But Rowlett has noticed something in these islands.
29:53At certain times of year, these winds actually shift.
29:57Today is an unusual day.
29:59Normally, the wind comes from the mountains.
30:02Today, the wind is blowing from the ocean, from the west.
30:06Some of the earlier researchers just looked at the prevailing winds, and they didn't take
30:12into account the seasonal changes.
30:14These changing winds are called the westerlies.
30:17Any ancient sailor would have known about them.
30:22The westerly winds then will come and go.
30:25Polynesians would wait for them to come in order to sail to some place that would otherwise
30:30be difficult to get to.
30:32This would allow a canoe, like Hotu Matua's, to sail east with the wind at their backs.
30:39But there was still a second major obstacle, navigation.
30:45How did they pinpoint land in an immense ocean without a compass or any other tool?
30:53Ninoa Thompson and the Polynesian Voyaging Society are working to find answers.
30:58I really believe navigation is at the core of who we are as people.
31:04Here it comes.
31:07They intend to prove their ancestors were able to sail on epic two-way journeys across
31:13the Pacific.
31:14Open the main.
31:15It's been easy.
31:16It's been easy.
31:17And that they have the navigation skills to do it.
31:20Let's turn up.
31:21Come on.
31:22Thompson is a master navigator.
31:24And then we're gonna start to uni the canoe that way.
31:27He trained with one of the few people on Earth who knew the secrets of how the ancients once
31:33steered by the stars.
31:35Micronesian navigator Mao Piolu learned this craft through oral traditions, passed down from
31:42generation to generation, over 3,000 years.
31:49Everything you see on this canoe that we do today, fundamentally, it all came from Mao.
31:55How did the ancients find their way across the vast Pacific?
32:00And in a culture with no writing, how were routes and directions passed on?
32:11Thompson believes it's through the same ancient art of celestial navigation the master Mao saved
32:17from extinction before he died in the summer of 2010.
32:21When Mao passed away, all of a sudden he cannot come back on this deck anymore.
32:26Master Mao's death left Nainoa Thompson as one of the last navigators on Earth to pass down this knowledge.
32:33So when we come here and start talking about navigation, it's not some trivial academic intellectual exercise.
32:42We're setting the course.
32:44Now Nainoa Thompson just needs to prove that this ancient knowledge would have allowed their ancestors to cross thousands of kilometers of open water to find their way to Easter Island.
33:01In the middle of the Pacific, the Polynesian Voyaging Society is trying to demonstrate that their ancestors could navigate vast stretches of open ocean long before the compass was even invented.
33:17Well, I'm going to get the sails up.
33:21Thompson's goal is to show that even a crew of young explorers with no modern instruments can find their way using his ancient knowledge.
33:29We're going to hold a course towards Tahiti.
33:31So for the first part of the night, then we'll have to hold a course back to Hawaii.
33:36So it'll be like we're going to Tahiti in the minds of these students and then it'll be like coming home once we turn around.
33:46Their main tools come out at night.
33:48Like his ancestors, Nainoa has memorized a detailed map of the stars.
33:54But can he use this map to find his way across immense stretches of open ocean?
34:02The traditional star compass is very old.
34:04As far as we know, it's probably 3,000 years old.
34:07And it's not magnetic.
34:08It's not in a little box.
34:09It comes from the heavens.
34:11It comes from nature.
34:12And it's defined by rising and setting stars that come out of the ocean and go in the ocean every night.
34:17Nighttime is interesting because it's a time when it's the best time and it's the time when it's the worst.
34:23When there are a night like tonight where there's so many clear stars, we have hundreds of opportunities to keep a very accurate course.
34:33Rising and setting points of the stars provide direction.
34:37So what direction are we heading?
34:38South east.
34:39South west.
34:43The night sky is like a dome that encloses the earth in space.
34:47The dome revolves around the earth on its axis.
34:50The canoe is at the center of the dome, fixed, with the world and the stars shifting in front of them.
34:57A perspective that would inspire the inventors of today's GPS.
35:01We use about 220 stars by name.
35:04So basically 220 stars positioned to rise in the east and 220 in the west.
35:10But several hours into the night, Thomson is concerned.
35:14They've gone off course.
35:16He spots a telltale sign.
35:18If you look at Kamakau Nui O Maui, you look at the head, the three stars in the head, and generally they make a vertical line towards south.
35:27Kamakau Nui O Maui is the Polynesian name for Scorpio.
35:32For thousands of years, ancient navigators have used this constellation as a heading towards south.
35:41When the Scorpion transits and those stars are vertical, then the Scorpion becomes your heading towards Tahiti.
35:48So we've got to go more to the east.
35:54So let's go open the back sail.
35:56Wait, wait.
35:57Wait, wait.
35:58Wait on the back.
35:59We opened the back sail to actually help steer us towards farther into the wind.
36:03So in this particular course, it will take us more into the east.
36:07So we want to head to Tahiti about 25 degrees.
36:10The crew hopes that they've made the right choice.
36:15Once you make a decision, you cannot go back later and change it.
36:18You know, it's done.
36:20And you've got to go to the next decision, the next sunrise, the next sunset.
36:24This trip is just part of a much larger voyage Ninoah Thomson undertook not long ago.
36:31Using these 3,000-year-old techniques, he wanted to see if he could sail the canoe from the Marquesas to Easter Island
36:38with only ancient navigation, no modern tools.
36:46He and his team found their way and completed the entire trip in just over six weeks.
36:57Thompson's journey was the evidence researchers have been looking for.
37:01The proof that Hotu Matua could well have traveled from Hiva to Easter Island.
37:06That his journey may well have been much more than just a legend.
37:14I cannot honestly say that Hotu Matua was with us the whole way.
37:18He was navigating us the whole way.
37:23But I do know that for us, he was constantly on our mind his essence.
37:28What he had accomplished, what he stood for, was certainly something that strengthened us as sailors on this voyage.
37:36And gave us a sense of much more privilege to be there.
37:39My ancestors were exploring this ocean world, crossing much, much more miles and millions of square miles in the ocean than anybody other culture in the world.
37:51We are relearning how intelligent, how strong, how courageous and how capable our ancestors were.
37:57And that sense of pride in who we were give us a sense of pride in who we are today.
38:04The discovery of Easter Island by ancient Polynesians is one of the great feats of exploration in human history.
38:11But some scientists now believe that it may have been just the beginning.
38:17Is it possible these ancient Polynesians came to the Americas hundreds of years before Columbus?
38:24On the hunt to retrace the voyages of the first Polynesians, the pieces are beginning to come together.
38:35These ancient travelers did have the tools and the knowledge to colonize the Pacific.
38:40But is there evidence to show they went all the way to Easter Island and beyond?
38:45The one real proof will be the blood of the Easter Islanders themselves.
38:50Back on Easter Island, the DNA research is just coming in, the final piece of the puzzle.
38:57We managed to get 21 blood samples here on Easter Island from elders.
39:03It will be extremely exciting to see how they turn out.
39:07Their goal is to determine where the people of Easter Island originated from and how far their ancestors might have voyaged.
39:14The work is underway at a lab in Norway.
39:17Contrary to what a lot of historians and scientists have written about the Easter Islanders,
39:21they themselves think that they came from an ancient homeland called Hiva.
39:26And that's what we're trying to find out more about with our DNA work.
39:30When the results come back, Sterla is thrilled.
39:33Our work actually can confirm that the ancient Polynesians came from a central East Polynesian homeland.
39:39This is the proof they've been looking for. The Easter Islanders did come from Polynesia.
39:45Hoto Matua, or one of his countrymen, did make the long voyage across the ocean.
39:51It's what many have suspected. But it's never been proved until now.
39:55The genetic results have one extra surprise.
40:00All the samples that we test them, two were really interesting and surprising to us.
40:05These two have some South American DNA deep inside their genetic history.
40:11And that may point to even further voyages.
40:15The DNA results suggest that Polynesians traveled to South America hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus.
40:25It's an amazing theory that Polynesians beat Columbus to the New World by centuries.
40:31Hey! Hey!
40:33But can science prove it?
40:38Back on the Marquesas, Barry Rollert has stumbled on one surprising bit of evidence.
40:44The humble sweet potato.
40:46The sweet potato gives clues to understanding the extent of Polynesian voyaging.
40:51Today it's found all over Polynesia, but it's not a native plant.
40:56It's native only to South America, and so it had to have been introduced to Polynesia.
41:01So how did it get there?
41:03Unlike the coconut, which can float on the ocean,
41:07and survive many months at sea,
41:10and then start growing if it lands on a deserted island,
41:14the sweet potato would just sink and die if it falls into the ocean.
41:17And so for it to get from South America to Polynesia, someone had to bring it here.
41:22Carbonized sweet potatoes found in Polynesia have been dated back as far as 1000 A.D.
41:29Scientists believed that it may have been the South Americans themselves
41:35who introduced the sweet potato to Polynesia.
41:38But now, Rollert's discoveries and the expeditions of the Polynesian Voyaging Society
41:44reveal that it was the Polynesians who have the knowledge, tools, and skill for long-distance round-trip voyaging.
41:52That has changed everything.
41:57Now, we believe that it was the Polynesians who reached South America and then came back with the sweet potato.
42:07Polynesians traded and made contact with islands all the way from the South Seas to South America.
42:14They were the great explorers of their age.
42:19And the place they set out from was in fact a central homeland, what the Easter Islanders called Heva.
42:26But this homeland is not quite what people had envisaged.
42:30Heva did exist.
42:31It's just that the earlier scientists were looking for it in the wrong form.
42:35We believe that this was the homeland from which people left to settle Easter Island, Hawaii, and New Zealand.
42:43Easter Island, Hawaii, and New Zealand form three points of the Polynesian Triangle.
42:49At over 25 million square kilometers, it's the largest cultural territory in the world.
42:56Europeans and Americans who have grown up on continents tend to think of the land as their home.
43:03But Polynesians see the sea as their home.
43:06Their view of the world is this enormous ocean or territory with islands throughout.
43:15Rowlett believes that Heva was the central homeland from where ancient Polynesians created a water continent.
43:22Metaphorically speaking, Heva may not have been a continent per se, but instead a group of islands that were connected by long distance voyaging.
43:34At over 25 million square kilometers, the Polynesian Triangle will be the third largest continent on the planet.
43:41But it will be doomed to disappear in later years when they stopped long distance voyaging.
43:47The disappearance of the continent, or the sinking of the continent, then was simply the breakdown in the interaction sphere that led to the isolation of these islands.
43:59For Rowlett, all the facts add up.
44:03This is incredible when we consider that Polynesians were crossing oceans, crossing the Pacific Ocean, the largest ocean in the world, centuries before Christopher Columbus.
44:17So, the Easter Islanders' claims do make sense.
44:20Their forefathers were some of the great navigators on the most remarkable human journeys of their age, as they charted a course across an island world to colonize vast stretches of the Pacific.
44:34Polynesia is an ocean world.
44:35Polynesia is an ocean world.
44:36Polynesia is an ocean land.
44:37Polynesia is an ocean land.
44:38Polynesia is an ocean land.
44:39And from that perspective, this ocean is not what divides us on the earth.
44:44It's what connects us.
44:45This ocean is the highway of our ancestors.
44:48Polynesia is an ocean land.
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