The ancient Austronesian-speakers were expert navigators. Their outrigger canoes and sailboats were capable of crossing the distant seas. The Malagasy sailed from the Malay archipelago to Madagascar, an island across the Indian Ocean, and probably reached Africa. As the possible predecessors of the Polynesians, large seagoing canoes called "bangka" ("vaka" in several Polynesian dialects and "waka" in Maori) were first developed by Austronesians in the Philippine archipelago which were then used to settle and establish long-distance trade networks with distant Pacific islands from the Micronesian island nations of Guam and Palau as far away as Hawaii and Easter Island and probably reached the Pacific coastline of the Americas. Proof of these trade exchanges are the prevalence of "kumara" or sweet potato in the Pacific Islands which is endemic to South America, and the abundance of chicken bones in ancient South American archaeological dig sites whose closest genetic relatives are those of chickens from Asia. At least three hundred years before the arrival of Europeans, the Makasar and the Bugis from Sulawesi, in what is now Indonesia, as well as the Sama-Bajaus of the Malay Archipelago, carried out long-distance commerce with their "prau" or "paraw" ("sailboat") and established settlements in north Australia, which they called "Marege".