UC Berkeley Press Release

MEMO TO THE MEDIA
Researchers link Polynesians, California Indians

By Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations | 09 August 2005

BERKELEY – A University of California, Berkeley, lecturer and a professor of anthropology at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo say linguistic and archaeological evidence points to Polynesians landing in Southern California between 400 and 800 A.D. and sharing their boat-building skills with Chumash and Gabrielino Indians in the region.

UC Berkeley lecturer Kathryn Klar and Cal Poly's Terry Jones, an associate professor of anthropology, have published their work in the peer-reviewed journal American Antiquity, making linguistic and technological links between the Polynesians and California Indian tribes.

A story about this research appears in the Berkeleyan, UC Berkeley's weekly newspaper for faculty and staff members and also can be found at the UC Berkeley NewsCenter at:
https://newsarchive.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2005/08/03_chumash.shtml.

Klar and Jones acknowledge that more work is needed to prove for certain their theory of contact between the Polynesians and California Indians. It runs counter to the prevailing theory dismissing cultural diffusion and favoring the concept that local conditions serve as the basis of cultural change.