Rapa Nui and Hawaii

Undeterred by anklebiters, Alexander Ioannides and others are rolling on with Hawaiki Ultima. This posts the origin of Rapa Nui (which Christians found on Easter Sunday AD 1722 Gregorian) and of our "Hawaiï" chain - here-on, Sandwich - as from Mangareva.

I had to look up Mangareva. I only just heard about this one, like in 2020ish I'd first heard of Marquesas.

Okay: mostly undeterred. There's a DEI statement at the end. They stick "ethics" in there to make it DEEI. #woke isn't dead; it's prepping the battlespace for after-November. At least the buncombe is sequestered.

I had thought that Rapa Nui, at least, was peopled by the Marquesas. I take it that the evidence was too broad at the time to say more than "eastern Polynesia". Mangareva is further south than the Marquesas, so in better-position for South American exploration (Rapa Nui is so near that continent, that Chile now governs it). It is, however, very far from our Sandwich Isles.

Present Sandwich genes come with some admixture, not to say pollution, from the waves of immigration from elsewhere in the Pacific, Europe, and Africa in modern times. That makes difficult to tease possible South American admixture of old, from what happened over the Age of Exploration. Some Sandwich genes in the recent study have "AMR" influx; but some have zero. This is telling me that Easter Island got to South America separately, carrying on their new crops around Polynesia secondarily.

Also possible: in between the dual radiations to Rapa Nui and to Sandwich, Marquesas took on a new wave of visitors from their western Hawaikan cousins. This may have blended their genomes more with Tahiti, leaving Sandwich and Rapa Nui as outliers.