Today in versatile tubers:

"Uhhgg...ugh...ugggh?"

-Study participants

Hey, guess what? In an article for British science journal Nature, A.G. Ioannidis et al. (which I gather is scientific paper-speak for other, less important researchers), writes that through I don't know, asking people to spit in a cup or swab their cheeks or whatever, they've found a genetic link between peoples of Polynesia and South America. This link, which is called an admixture, can come from only one thing: people from one end of the Pacific doin' it with people from the other. And this doin'it goes back to the twelfth century. 

"Noyce..."

                                 -Pervy scientists

Through the magic of genetic testing, it is now possible to tell who was boning whom over eight-hundred years ago. Thus confirming what a lot of people have long believed: that people from these two regions interacted long before Europeans showed up and that scientists are kind of pervy. Up till now a key piece of evidence of interaction between these civilizations was sweet potatoes which are native to South America, but have been in Polynesia for hundreds of years, suggesting some kind of pre1492 Pacific potato exchange. 

You'd think that'd be an open and shut thing. I mean, it's not like sweet potatoes would have fashioned outriggers and made the many thousands of miles-long journey across rough seas on their own, but here we are.

Fries, casserole, evidence for pre-Columbian
 contact. The sweet potato is a versital tuber.

Above: pics. 

Historians apparently needed more than yam-based evidence. Which they had. For years. They had Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl who in the 1940's made the trip from Peru to French Polynesia in a period-appropriate boat to prove it could be done. And there are the similarities between Polynesian and South American architecture. And, Polynesians have maintained a tradition of sailing using sophisticated navigational skills for centuries. But pics or it didn't happen I guess?

Now maybe this proof of twelfth century trans-Pacific booty calls (it's a scientific term) will finally gain acceptance for the theory of pre-Columbian contact between Polynesia and South America. Because hey, you know who didn't discover America? Columbus. But we all know that and we should trade his holiday in for a day off on election day.

Pictured: noted disease vector Christopher
Columbus, seen here not wearing a mask.