What's the REAL reason Polynesians didn't colonise Australia?

[Gloss]

They aren’t meaningless. I’ve never ever claimed that they are meaningless. But they are projections of European race science that have become normalised labels. They do not acknowledge the shared histories and cultures of “Melanesian” and “Polynesian” cultures as they were often studied in isolation to each other or as a comparative lens to determine the superiority or inferiority of the other based on race.

Then your criticism seems pretty vague and frankly pointless, the 2 groups are as separate as any neighboring groups in history were and the existence of the term themselves carry no inherent meaning or statement about how these 2 groups interacted.
Even in the 19th century people have already begun to discuss the extent of the region and the people in it which went beyond mere perceived racial similarities, for example recognizing that some people spoke Polynesians must have come from the East and recognizing that language and genetic ancestry were not the same thing or trying to understand whether Melanesians language were unrelated languages influenced by Malay and Polynesian or whether they were related AND still influenced by Polynesians. I frankly do not see the point of discussing past historiography by literally flanderizing past scholars and taking the worst ones, the term became "normalized" the second people started discussing it beyond surface level observations of how the people looked and that as far as I can see might have already happened in the mid 19th century.

I'd argue that if we somehow wiped away all our collective knowledge of the region we would still end up re-creating the same labels.

 

[Napoleone the Kiwi]

Then your criticism seems pretty vague and frankly pointless, the 2 groups are as separate as any neighboring groups in history were and the existence of the term themselves carry no inherent meaning or statement about how these 2 groups interacted.

Melanesians literally means black islanders. It has no cultural context to any of the local practices or endonyms and is a taxonomy that covers a broad variety of peoples with unique relationships across the pacific. Blanketing by Melanesian is unhelpful considering the differing relationships closer to the “Polynesian” triangle and range behaviours across the East to the West. It’s meaning is quite apparent through any reading of historical research.

Even in the 19th century people have already begun to discuss the extent of the region and the people in it which went beyond mere perceived racial similarities, for example recognizing that some people spoke Polynesians must have come from the East and recognizing that language and genetic ancestry were not the same thing or trying to understand whether Melanesians language were unrelated languages influenced by Malay and Polynesian or whether they were related AND still influenced by Polynesians. I frankly do not see the point of discussing past historiography by literally flanderizing past scholars and taking the worst ones, the term became "normalized" the second people started discussing it beyond surface level observations of how the people looked and that as far as I can see might have already happened in the mid 19th century.

Except political decision making and scholarship within the Pacific by Europeans was largely driven by the racial nomenclature and preconceived prejudiced notions that continues to be the case today. As I mentioned with my particular use of Ulimaloa’s people and their unique relationships instead of a blanket generalization across a vast archipelago. “Polynesian” vs “Melanesian” competition as your original post implied was a gross simplification of overarching relationships overtime that maintained trade networks as far as China through the sea-cucumber trade and sporadic contact with South America as evidenced by the Pre-Columbian proliferation of Kumara.

I'd argue that if we somehow wiped away all our collective knowledge of the region we would still end up re-creating the same labels.

Yeah that’s a big stretch considering they still know themselves and other Tangata Moana across the Pacific recognise those shared linguistic and cultural connections even across millennia. Coming to the same nomenclature today would be a massive embarrassment in scholarship if you aren’t even willing to see how the groups see themselves.

I digress this is largely getting away from the point of the thread so feel free to dm if you would like to discuss things further.

 

[Gloss]

“Polynesian” vs “Melanesian” competition as your original post implied was a gross simplification of overarching relationships overtime that maintained trade networks as far as China through the sea-cucumber trade and sporadic contact with South America as evidenced by the Pre-Columbian proliferation of Kumara.

No it was not, I only stated the fact that New Caledonians were in fact not Polynesians, which is true as they don't speak Polynesian language. My usage for Fiji can certainly be contested though.

This on the level of contesting someone calling the Prussians Germans because there were Huguenots in Brandenburg. This is not even being pedantic, it's simply looking for things to disagree with.

If you don't think the term is meaningless then don't object to me using it by bringing up people that have fuckall to do with the discussion.

Yeah that’s a big stretch considering they still know themselves and other Tangata Moana across the Pacific recognise those shared linguistic and cultural connections even across millennia. Coming to the same nomenclature today would be a massive embarrassment in scholarship if you aren’t even willing to see how the groups see themselves.

Right, the existence of the term French and German implies the 2 groups had no cultural or historical connection, because that's how term and classifications work, you can never classify anything that has any level of ambiguity of blending into one another.

 

[Citrakayah]

How do you know that Polynesians didn't reach the coast of Australia and, finding a much larger group of humans already living there whose lifestyle worked out just fine, set up a small outpost that eventually assimilated into the surrounding area? Before any of you say genetics, it's not like human genetic evidence of ancestry is always clear-cut. A sufficiently small outpost might not leave much of a sign many centuries later and there's a reason human ancestry testing is considered pretty unreliable.

Sure, in the absence of evidence we can't conclude that they did, but skimming this thread there's a lot of discussion over whether distances made it impossible for anyone to make the trip or if the Great Barrier Reef acted as, well, a barrier. It seems like "people did make the trip, but not many and so we don't know about it" is a perfectly reasonable explanation.

 

[Gloss]

How do you know that Polynesians didn't reach the coast of Australia and, finding a much larger group of humans already living there whose lifestyle worked out just fine, set up a small outpost that eventually assimilated into the surrounding area? Before any of you say genetics, it's not like human genetic evidence of ancestry is always clear-cut. A sufficiently small outpost might not leave much of a sign many centuries later and there's a reason human ancestry testing is considered pretty unreliable.

Sure, in the absence of evidence we can't conclude that they did, but skimming this thread there's a lot of discussion over whether distances made it impossible for anyone to make the trip or if the Great Barrier Reef acted as, well, a barrier. It seems like "people did make the trip, but not many and so we don't know about it" is a perfectly reasonable explanation.

Linguistic and archeology can also provide a signal, whether absence of evidence equals evidence of absence is a discussion in of itself involving the extent of our knowledge or pre colonial Australia, East and north coast Australian languages.

Australia as isolated as it was did absorb some influence from outside but for there to have been none coming from the North East would suggest almost complete lack of contact which is arguably functionally zero contact, tho I guess you could make the argument that if the island was somehow empty then any small number of outsiders could have taken advantage of that ala New Zealand...
There are so many different ways to look for Austronesian influence in Australia, from foreign objects, intrusive crops, intrusive animals, ancestry in humans, loanwords. The sweet potato being taken directly from South America was proven by the word for the potato, Native American ancestry in Polynesians and... the potato itself, lol

 

[Napoleone the Kiwi]

No it was not, I only stated the fact that New Caledonians were in fact not Polynesians, which is true as they don't speak Polynesian language. My usage for Fiji can certainly be contested though.

Uvea’s Polynesian population would contest that. They’re an example of the sprectrum of admixture between “Polynesian” and “Melanesian” groups who identify with the post-colonial Kanak identity. They are from the islands of Ulimaloa (specifically Uvea) and are Polynesian.

This on the level of contesting someone calling the Prussians Germans because there were Huguenots in Brandenburg. This is not even being pedantic, it's simply looking for things to disagree with.

I mean questioning the notion of a unified German identity pre-1800’s is a completely valid exercise especially considering the close relationships of Germanic languages and their distinctiveness enforced purely due to political borders and historical developments.

If you don't think the term is meaningless then don't object to me using it by bringing up people that have fuckall to do with the discussion.

Why? I can object to its use while acknowledging its meaning. As I did and explained my reasoning therein.

Right, the existence of the term French and German implies the 2 groups had no cultural or historical connection, because that's how term and classifications work, you can never classify anything that has any level of ambiguity of blending into one another.

French and German are also self-identified identities that were developed by the French and Germans (or rather française and Deutsch specifically) whereas Melanesian was a colonial term with racist roots projected onto the populations with little regard for internal identities and largely by Europeans for European convenience.

Pointing this out is basic discourse on the subject.

 

[Jürgen]

I mean questioning the notion of a unified German identity pre-1800’s is a completely valid exercise especially considering the close relationships of Germanic languages and their distinctiveness enforced purely due to political borders and historical developments.

Outside Dutch/Flemish and Frisian there’s no dialect continuum between German other Germanic languages. Scandinavian language share a lot of vocabulary and grammar with German, but is too different for any kind of mutual intelligibility, and English have to many non-Germanic loanwords.

 

[Napoleone the Kiwi]

Outside Dutch/Flemish and Frisian there’s no dialect continuum between German other Germanic languages. Scandinavian language share a lot of vocabulary and grammar with German, but is too different for any kind of mutual intelligibility, and English have to many non-Germanic loanwords.

I had assumed it worked the same way Arab dialects did with mutual intelligibility between geographically closer languages (alla Frisian and Flemish) in the same way Algerian and Tunisian had many shared characteristics that would increase over distance (Tunisian and say Syrian for example) and the longer the defined state and power structures existed the more differentiation in language development (hence my comment on Political borders and historical developments.) Happy to be wrong though, I know more about the Pacific and modern historical narratives than the specifics of Germanic languages.

 

[Arkenfolm]

Linguistic and archeology can also provide a signal, whether absence of evidence equals evidence of absence is a discussion in of itself involving the extent of our knowledge or pre colonial Australia, East and north coast Australian languages.

Australia as isolated as it was did absorb some influence from outside but for there to have been none coming from the North East would suggest almost complete lack of contact which is arguably functionally zero contact, tho I guess you could make the argument that if the island was somehow empty then any small number of outsiders could have taken advantage of that ala New Zealand...
There are so many different ways to look for Austronesian influence in Australia, from foreign objects, intrusive crops, intrusive animals, ancestry in humans, loanwords. The sweet potato being taken directly from South America was proven by the word for the potato, Native American ancestry in Polynesians and... the potato itself, lol

Extrapolating historic evidence is a perfectly valid way to proving that Polynesians at least visited Australia. For a similar case, we know that outside of Alaska, there are no known East Asian artifacts nor evidence of genetics nor anything else, but since there are records from the late 18th century of East Asian fishermen showing up in Washington State, and this occurred several times in the 19th century, we can extrapolate this to assume that Asians "visited" (as in "swept out to sea and made landfall) the West Coast of North America centuries before Europeans.

Thus using evidence such as Polynesian seafaring, their trips to South America, and knowledge of how both their culture and Australian Aboriginal culture worked, we can assume a brief visit to Australia likely occurred before they did not venture there any longer for whatever reason.

 

[Gloss]

Extrapolating historic evidence is a perfectly valid way to proving that Polynesians at least visited Australia. For a similar case, we know that outside of Alaska, there are no known East Asian artifacts nor evidence of genetics nor anything else, but since there are records from the late 18th century of East Asian fishermen showing up in Washington State, and this occurred several times in the 19th century, we can extrapolate this to assume that Asians "visited" (as in "swept out to sea and made landfall) the West Coast of North America centuries before Europeans.

How can go be sure these fishermen would have ended up so far before the late 18th century?

From what I've read only 7 vessels have been recorded drifting to the region in 50 years, which lead a historian to make the range of estimates of 14-100 vessels per century.

Now to me it seems obvious that before Tokugawa era growth the number of vessels would have likely been half the one seen historically, if not a quarter based on whatever the population of Japan at the time was and of course the extreme end of the range above is not really empircally backed and the article I read basically acknowledge they actually found no iron tools before 1750 CE, tho this is a decades old article so maybe that changed.

 

[rfmcdonald]

Extrapolating historic evidence is a perfectly valid way to proving that Polynesians at least visited Australia. For a similar case, we know that outside of Alaska, there are no known East Asian artifacts nor evidence of genetics nor anything else, but since there are records from the late 18th century of East Asian fishermen showing up in Washington State, and this occurred several times in the 19th century, we can extrapolate this to assume that Asians "visited" (as in "swept out to sea and made landfall) the West Coast of North America centuries before Europeans.

Thus using evidence such as Polynesian seafaring, their trips to South America, and knowledge of how both their culture and Australian Aboriginal culture worked, we can assume a brief visit to Australia likely occurred before they did not venture there any longer for whatever reason.

There can be all sorts of glancing pre-modern transoceanic contacts that can occur, and that may well have occurred, without leaving much trace; these contacts, however pioneering, were just not compelling enough to merit a colonization effort.

A lot of the current thought around Vinland takes note of the fact that the Norse in Greenland did not abandon Vinland altogether, but rather kept visiting the coastlines of Newfoundland and Labrador for generations or even centuries after L'Anse-aux-Meadows was abandoned, collecting resources like timber needed. The inhabitants of a small colony on the outermost fringes of Europe, dependent on their survival on lucrative narwhal tusk exports and lacking the resources to do anything like settling a continent populated by hostile people, did not bother trying to settle an adjacent landmass with resources they could use.

Maybe some Polynesians did make it to Australia; maybe some of these even returned to their home cultures with news of the landmass. What would have been the relevance of it to their home societies?

 

[rfmcdonald]

How do you know that Polynesians didn't reach the coast of Australia and, finding a much larger group of humans already living there whose lifestyle worked out just fine, set up a small outpost that eventually assimilated into the surrounding area? Before any of you say genetics, it's not like human genetic evidence of ancestry is always clear-cut. A sufficiently small outpost might not leave much of a sign many centuries later and there's a reason human ancestry testing is considered pretty unreliable.

Sure, in the absence of evidence we can't conclude that they did, but skimming this thread there's a lot of discussion over whether distances made it impossible for anyone to make the trip or if the Great Barrier Reef acted as, well, a barrier. It seems like "people did make the trip, but not many and so we don't know about it" is a perfectly reasonable explanation.

I would note that the mass death among Aborigine populations after 1789 might well have effaced any genetic signals that such a relatively small Polynesian (or other) settlement might have left. These Polynesian pioneers might all have failed to leave any detectable descendants.

 

[HyperMuscularDemon]

(Sorry to necro this thread in advance, if this counts as necro’ing) How about Polynesian contact with the Americas? Given that there is some genetic evidence of Polynesian contact with Native Americans in South America, if there was enough perpetual contact with the Americas, then crops could be exchanged on both sides, leading to a semi perpetual Polynesian population boom ( long enough to last over several centuries to complete big effects on the Polynesian world, not long enough to create infinite population growth) which in turn could make the need to settle new islands more evident, which could lead to Polynesians from the New Zealand area discover and settle Australia, intermingling heavily with the Australian Aboriginal population to create Polynesian-Australian Aboriginal creole clan communities.

 

[twovultures]

(Sorry to necro this thread in advance, if this counts as necro’ing) How about Polynesian contact with the Americas? Given that there is some genetic evidence of Polynesian contact with Native Americans in South America, if there was enough perpetual contact with the Americas, then crops could be exchanged on both sides, leading to a semi perpetual Polynesian population boom ( long enough to last over several centuries to complete big effects on the Polynesian world, not long enough to create infinite population growth) which in turn could make the need to settle new islands more evident, which could lead to Polynesians from the New Zealand area discover and settle Australia, intermingling heavily with the Australian Aboriginal population to create Polynesian-Australian Aboriginal creole clan communities.

Oh hey, I've actually done exactly this in one of my timelines!

It's possible-maize and manioc in Polynesia would probably cause a massive population boom over the medieval era in this scenario that could lead to further colonizations. The problem is adoption into existing lifestyles. The sweet potato is 'close enough' to a yam in appearance and cultivation, can be eaten almost straight out of the ground, and actually has an advantage over Asian yams in that it matures faster and gets you to harvest time quicker.

Manioc and maize, by contrast, are more unfamiliar plants (though I guess manioc as a root has some superficial similarities to taro) whose cultivation would be foreign to Polynesians. In addition, both require special preparation-manioc can give you cyanide poisoning if it's not processed correctly, and maize can give you pellagra if you eat too much of it without processing it using alkaline chemicals. Many Native Americans did this using ash from burnt plants, but this would be a challenge to those Polynesian societies who did not have access to wood (In my TL, this causes a series of events that sees Rapa Nui utterly collapse in a cannibal apocalypse).

Your qualifying statement of 'perpetual' contact goes a way to overcoming the objection. If there is long and sustained contact, then the cultural practices that make manioc and maize so useful in the Americas will spread with the plants to Polynesia, making them as useful there. But going back to OP, such sustained contact over the vast distances of the Pacific is VERY difficult to maintain. So, Polynesians were not able to gather tools that would have made colonizing Australia easier and desirable.

 

[HyperMuscularDemon]

Oh hey, I've actually done exactly this in one of my timelines!

It's possible-maize and manioc in Polynesia would probably cause a massive population boom over the medieval era in this scenario that could lead to further colonizations. The problem is adoption into existing lifestyles. The sweet potato is 'close enough' to a yam in appearance and cultivation, can be eaten almost straight out of the ground, and actually has an advantage over Asian yams in that it matures faster and gets you to harvest time quicker.

Manioc and maize, by contrast, are more unfamiliar plants (though I guess manioc as a root has some superficial similarities to taro) whose cultivation would be foreign to Polynesians. In addition, both require special preparation-manioc can give you cyanide poisoning if it's not processed correctly, and maize can give you pellagra if you eat too much of it without processing it using alkaline chemicals. Many Native Americans did this using ash from burnt plants, but this would be a challenge to those Polynesian societies who did not have access to wood (In my TL, this causes a series of events that sees Rapa Nui utterly collapse in a cannibal apocalypse).

Your qualifying statement of 'perpetual' contact goes a way to overcoming the objection. If there is long and sustained contact, then the cultural practices that make manioc and maize so useful in the Americas will spread with the plants to Polynesia, making them as useful there. But going back to OP, such sustained contact over the vast distances of the Pacific is VERY difficult to maintain. So, Polynesians were not able to gather tools that would have made colonizing Australia easier and desirable.

You do have a point. However, you have to remember that Pre Colombian Native Americans of the Pacific South American coasts operated ships in the form of balsa rafts that were so advanced, they had the sail and were extremely impressive to Spanish chroniclers. Plus, balsa rafts had sails, which to Polynesian sailors would appear very advanced. Not only that, but the balsa rafts have been proven to have the capabilities to sail to Polynesia and even Australia and back, most notably Thor Heyerdahl and his Kon-Tiki rafting expedition, with the Kon-Tiki raft itself having literally no metal within its construction, albeit rafts could and were damaged by storms and waves. That still does not diminish the naval capabilities of the basal rafts, and any stranded Native American sailor with a willing hosting Polynesian tribe to shelter them could explain how the balsa rafts works, and how to cook manioc and maize properly. If the Polynesians and costal Native American South Americans were to adapt naval techniques from each other, it could be that the chances of trans Pacific Ocean trade would be way higher, allowing for enough Native American crops to pass into Polynesia, causing the population boom and the technology exchange needed to provide both a motive and opportunity to set settlements up in Australia, though I doubt the Polynesians or the Native Americans-indeed, given how balsa rafts could reach Australia, it is possible for a Native American South American civilization to set up a outpost in Australia- would have the same approach to the Australian Aboriginals as the British, more likely opting to intermingle heavily with the Australian Aboriginals, and create Polynesian-Australian Aboriginal creole communities or Native American-Australian Aboriginal creole communities in Australia.

 

[Domen]

Genetics alone prove that, there is Austroasiatic ancestry in the western half of Indoneisa but not East, the pattern cannot arise without a pre-Austronesian Austro-Asiatic migration.

I know roughly the timeline of how Austroasiatic spread but I'm less sure about Austronesian and when it started expanding.

^^^
Which study is this map from?

 

[Arkenfolm]

You do have a point. However, you have to remember that Pre Colombian Native Americans of the Pacific South American coasts operated ships in the form of balsa rafts that were so advanced, they had the sail and were extremely impressive to Spanish chroniclers. Plus, balsa rafts had sails, which to Polynesian sailors would appear very advanced. Not only that, but the balsa rafts have been proven to have the capabilities to sail to Polynesia and even Australia and back, most notably Thor Heyerdahl and his Kon-Tiki rafting expedition, with the Kon-Tiki raft itself having literally no metal within its construction, albeit rafts could and were damaged by storms and waves.

If these rafts were so impressive, why was trade between western Mexico and western South America so marginal? One would think being able to directly market valuable commodities in Mesoamerica be it gold, unique troptical wood, exotic animals/birds, etc. would be more ideal than going through intermediaries in Central America/Colombia. They also didn't settle offshore islands like Galapagos to that point that IIRC there's no evidence they even visited.

That still does not diminish the naval capabilities of the basal rafts, and any stranded Native American sailor with a willing hosting Polynesian tribe to shelter them could explain how the balsa rafts works, and how to cook manioc and maize properly.

That's not really a plausible way for that sort of cultural diffusion, especially since cooking and processing cassava was a woman's job and stranded sailors would always be men (since women practically never took part in jobs at sea), and often not men who were farmers. Even if they did somehow find it out, so what? Why would anyone listen to that funny foreign guy who grows and eats strange foreign food and traveled on a very weird boat? Realistically you'd need many, many such contacts and intermarriage to actually transfer a technology, particularly one which on its surface doesn't seem to grant any advantage.

There's also the key problem that balsa wood doesn't grow in Polynesia and there's limited room on most islands to establish a balsa plantation.

If the Polynesians and costal Native American South Americans were to adapt naval techniques from each other, it could be that the chances of trans Pacific Ocean trade would be way higher, allowing for enough Native American crops to pass into Polynesia, causing the population boom and the technology exchange needed to provide both a motive and opportunity to set settlements up in Australia, though I doubt the Polynesians or the Native Americans-indeed, given how balsa rafts could reach Australia, it is possible for a Native American South American civilization to set up a outpost in Australia- would have the same approach to the Australian Aboriginals as the British, more likely opting to intermingle heavily with the Australian Aboriginals, and create Polynesian-Australian Aboriginal creole communities or Native American-Australian Aboriginal creole communities in Australia.

I don't see why they'd go to Australia since there's very little they'd find appealing offhand, the climate can be rough, the currents/winds aren't the best, and its already densely populated. If they need empty space, they have New Zealand. That said, if they did go to Australia, it could be pretty rough on some groups of Aboriginals since I'd expect Polynesian culture to evolve in a militaristic direction.

I also disagree there would be a population boom. The crops the Polynesians had were sufficient for pretty much everywhere beside New Zealand and the islands at their height were in many cases more densely populated than they are today.

 

[HyperMuscularDemon]

If these rafts were so impressive, why was trade between western Mexico and western South America so marginal? One would think being able to directly market valuable commodities in Mesoamerica be it gold, unique troptical wood, exotic animals/birds, etc. would be more ideal than going through intermediaries in Central America/Colombia. They also didn't settle offshore islands like Galapagos to that point that IIRC there's no evidence they even visited.

That's not really a plausible way for that sort of cultural diffusion, especially since cooking and processing cassava was a woman's job and stranded sailors would always be men (since women practically never took part in jobs at sea), and often not men who were farmers. Even if they did somehow find it out, so what? Why would anyone listen to that funny foreign guy who grows and eats strange foreign food and traveled on a very weird boat? Realistically you'd need many, many such contacts and intermarriage to actually transfer a technology, particularly one which on its surface doesn't seem to grant any advantage.

There's also the key problem that balsa wood doesn't grow in Polynesia and there's limited room on most islands to establish a balsa plantation.

I don't see why they'd go to Australia since there's very little they'd find appealing offhand, the climate can be rough, the currents/winds aren't the best, and its already densely populated. If they need empty space, they have New Zealand. That said, if they did go to Australia, it could be pretty rough on some groups of Aboriginals since I'd expect Polynesian culture to evolve in a militaristic direction.

I also disagree there would be a population boom. The crops the Polynesians had were sufficient for pretty much everywhere beside New Zealand and the islands at their height were in many cases more densely populated than they are today.

Okay, you have made a lot of great points. However, it is thought (at least according to Wikipedia) that metallurgy in Mesoamerica actually started because traders from Ecuador brought it around 800 AD. Not only that, it is thought by some people that the Inca started exploring the Pacific around 1470, making contact with Mangareva island, in French Polynesia, as well as Easter Island. There is potential for contact between Native Americans and Polynesians, and if the costal South Americans facing the Pacific make some naval technological upgrades to seafaring, such as the classic outrigger, then there is greater potential for greater contact between Polynesians and Native American South Americans.

 

[Arkenfolm]

Okay, you have made a lot of great points. However, it is thought (at least according to Wikipedia) that metallurgy in Mesoamerica actually started because traders from Ecuador brought it around 800 AD.

In Western Mexico it did, but it's a stretch to say all Mesoamerican metallurgy came about from that route instead of other routes.

Not only that, it is thought by some people that the Inca started exploring the Pacific around 1470, making contact with Mangareva island, in French Polynesia, as well as Easter Island. There is potential for contact between Native Americans and Polynesians, and if the costal South Americans facing the Pacific make some naval technological upgrades to seafaring, such as the classic outrigger, then there is greater potential for greater contact between Polynesians and Native American South Americans.

The Inca thing is almost certainly pseudohistory on the level of Malinese sailors discovering America.

 

[Napoleone the Kiwi]

You do have a point. However, you have to remember that Pre Colombian Native Americans of the Pacific South American coasts operated ships in the form of balsa rafts that were so advanced, they had the sail and were extremely impressive to Spanish chroniclers. Plus, balsa rafts had sails, which to Polynesian sailors would appear very advanced. Not only that, but the balsa rafts have been proven to have the capabilities to sail to Polynesia and even Australia and back, most notably Thor Heyerdahl and his Kon-Tiki rafting expedition, with the Kon-Tiki raft itself having literally no metal within its construction, albeit rafts could and were damaged by storms and waves. That still does not diminish the naval capabilities of the basal rafts, and any stranded Native American sailor with a willing hosting Polynesian tribe to shelter them could explain how the balsa rafts works, and how to cook manioc and maize properly. If the Polynesians and costal Native American South Americans were to adapt naval techniques from each other, it could be that the chances of trans Pacific Ocean trade would be way higher, allowing for enough Native American crops to pass into Polynesia, causing the population boom and the technology exchange needed to provide both a motive and opportunity to set settlements up in Australia, though I doubt the Polynesians or the Native Americans-indeed, given how balsa rafts could reach Australia, it is possible for a Native American South American civilization to set up a outpost in Australia- would have the same approach to the Australian Aboriginals as the British, more likely opting to intermingle heavily with the Australian Aboriginals, and create Polynesian-Australian Aboriginal creole communities or Native American-Australian Aboriginal creole communities in Australia.

Balsa rafts cannot navigate the Pacific and did not navigate the Pacific. Abel Tasman noted when he made contact with the early Maori that their waka had sails. Eastern Polynesians were far better sailors than any pre-contact South American culture. Balsa rafts are a massive step back in technology compared to what Polynesians had considering they successfully reached South America themselves. Any contact with South America would be from West to East, not East to West as it was so IRL.

Thor Heyerdahl's expedition was an exercise in luck and stupidity considering you cannot float a Balsa raft to Hawaii, New Zealand, or Rapa Nui. The ocean currents physically stop such a thing from ever occurring. That it also took 109 days while fully provisioned for such a thing would have killed any would-be explorers from South America using such rafts considering they didn't know land was there and would have to have been very lucky to have provisioned themselves for such a voyage.