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The genetics of several plant species has also been used to support pre-Columbian contact via the Pacific. For example, there is a genetically distinct sub-population of coconuts on the western coast of South America. This has been suggested to be evidence of introduction by Austronesian seafarers. [19]
Pre-Columbian contact between Alaska and Kamchatka via the subarctic Aleutian Islands would have been conceivable, but the two settlement waves on this archipelago started on the American side and its western continuation, the Commander Islands, remained uninhabited until after Russian explorers encountered the Aleut people in 1741.
Then began a genetic exchange in the northern extremes introduced by the Thule people (proto-Inuit) approximately 800–1,000 years ago. [51] [97] These final Pre-Columbian migrants introduced haplogroups A2a and A2b to the existing Paleo-Eskimo populations of Canada and Greenland, culminating in the modern Inuit. [51] [97]
The pre-contact dogs exhibit a unique genetic signature that is now gone, with DNA from the cell nucleus indicating that their nearest genetic relatives today are the Arctic breed dogs—Alaskan Malamutes, Greenland Dogs, Alaskan huskies, Carolina Dogs, and Siberian Huskies. [1]
In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era, also known as the pre-contact era, or as the pre-Cabraline era specifically in Brazil, spans from the initial peopling of the Americas in the Upper Paleolithic to the onset of European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage in 1492.
In 2007, evidence appeared to have been found that suggested pre-Columbian contact between Polynesians from the western Pacific and the Mapuche people. Chicken bones found at the El Arenal site in the Arauco Peninsula, an area inhabited by Mapuche, support a pre-Columbian introduction of chicken to South America. [15]
Prior to European contact, domestication had influenced at least 83 plant species in pre-Columbian Amazon Basin, including cacao, hot peppers, manioc, pineapple, sweet potato and tobacco and “as well as numerous fruit trees and palms at least another 55 imported neo-tropical species.” [1]
Pre-Columbian population figures are difficult to estimate because of the fragmentary nature of the evidence. Estimates range from 8–112 million. [10] Scholars have varied widely on the estimated size of the Indigenous populations prior to colonization and on the effects of European contact. [11]