Cal Poly Update | June 2007 | Chicken Bones Support Jones

Reading the Chicken Bones: Professor Jones' Theory Advances

Professor Terry Jones and TV crew SAN LUIS OBISPO -- New Zealand researchers have provided the first direct evidence that Polynesians sailed across thousands of miles of the Pacific Ocean to reach South America long before the arrival of the Spanish around AD 1500 -- a theory supported by Cal Poly Archaeology Professor Terry Jones, and the focus of much of his research on the Chumash.

New Zealand researchers studying ancient chicken bones from Chile found the fowl originated in Polynesia, not Europe. "The Polynesian contact probably didn't change the course of prehistory, but I think maybe it makes us recognize the ethnocentrism in our long-standing views of the prehistory of the New World," Jones told the Los Angeles Times.

Read the Los Angeles Times story on the Polynesian migration study

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