Polynesia of the plant in the Cook Islands have been radiocarbon-dated to 1000, and current thinking is that it was brought to central Polynesia c. 700 and spread across Polynesia from there, possibly by Polynesians who had traveled to South America and back. Thor Heyerdahl proposed in the mid-20th century that the Polynesians had migrated from the northwest coast of Canada by large whale-hunting dugouts, and from South America on balsa-log boats. Many anthropologists have criticised Heyerdahl's theory, including Wade Davis in his book "The Wayfinders". Davis says that Heyerdahl "ignored the overwhelming body of linguistic, ethnographic, and ethnobotanical evidence, augmented
Tuamotuan language they were settled c. 700 AD by people from the Society Islands. Europeans first discovered the islands in 1521, when Ferdinand Magellan reached them while sailing across the Pacific Ocean. Subsequent explorers visited the islands over the centuries, including Thor Heyerdahl, the famous Norwegian ethnographer who sailed the Kon-Tiki expedition across the Pacific in 1947. The effects of early European visits were marginal as they had no political effects. The language, however, was ultimately affected by the Tahitian language, which was itself affected by European expansion. The eventual arrival of European missionaries in the 19th century also led to loanwords,