Researchers including Kathryn Klar and Terry Jones have proposed a theory of contact between Hawaiians and the Chumash people of Southern California between 400 and 800 CE. The sewn-plank canoes crafted by the Chumash and neighboring Tongva are unique among the indigenous peoples of North America, but similar in design to larger canoes used by Polynesians for deep-sea voyages. "Tomolo'o", the Chumash word for such a craft, may derive from "tumula'au"/"kumula'au", the Hawaiian term for the logs from which shipwrights carve planks to be sewn into canoes. The analogous Tongva term, "tii'at", is unrelated. If it occurred, this contact left no genetic legacy in California or Hawaii. This theory has attracted limited media attention within California, but most archaeologists of the Tongva and Chumash cultures reject it on the grounds that the independent development of the sewn-plank canoe over several centuries is well-represented in the material record.