Reply #18: There are various possible connections, but all fairly ancient [View All]

[starroute]

I don't know of anything that would enable Japanese and Mayans to understand each other's languages. However, there are many hints of trans-Pacific contacts in ancient times. It seems likely that until Columbus, trans-Pacific connections were far easier and more common than trans-Atlantic ones.

There are genetic similarities which suggest a connection around the end of the Ice Age. Some Native Americans in the southwestern US (Pima maybe?) have been found to be extremely close to some Japanese. This similiarity is not shared by other Asians or other North American Indians, which means it is unlikely to go back to the original peopling of the Americas.

There are linguistic indications. A linguist named Johanna Nichols has shown that certain distinctive features, such as numeral classifiers, are found in otherwise unrealated languages all around the Pacific Rim -- from China and Japan to New Guinea to the Pacific coast of the Americas. She thinks this is the result of contact around 12,000 years ago.

At a somewhat more recent point, pottery first shows up in the Americas in Ecuador, in just the area where the currents would bring anyone journeying from Japan. (Japan has the oldest pottery in the world.)

I also find I have a saved file of an article from a few years ago (which is no longer online) where a Japanese journalist was saying he felt a sense of familiarity in Mayan and Aztec art that he did not feel anywhere else.

And it's a little off-topic, but you might be interested in this article from a few weeks ago suggesting that Polynesians brought advanced boat-building skills to southern California around 400-800 AD:
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2005/08/03_chumash.shtml


On edit -- Link for Johanna Nichols' work:
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2005/08/03_chumash.shtml