Mountainous Marquesas belong to French Polynesia. It is a chain of islands in the South Pacific. The biggest islands in this group are Nuku Hiva and Hiva Oa.
It is still not clear when Marquesas Islands were first inhabited. It was probably between AD 100 and 600, but some evidence suggests that it may be even later, around AD 1000. The Marques Islands were the next step in the Polynesian expansion across the Pacific, and the first settlers arrived here from Tahiti. Polynesians were the best navigators on Earth and they did not stop on Marquesas, but continued scanning the Pacific Ocean for new lands. Two hundred years later, Marquesas discoed Hawaii to the north and Easter Island to the southeast. There are even speculations with some evidence that they could reach the shores of South America.
DNA research proved that contact between Polynesians from the Marquesas and a Native American group of present-day Colombia occurred at around AD 1150. The earliest sign of contact was found among the inhabitants of the island of Fatu Hiva. This is in line with the earlier genetic studies of sweet potatoes which suggested that the plant was domesticated in Peru, and then spread across Polynesia around 1,000 years ago. Most likely the Polynesians reached the shores of South America and then returned to the Pacific islands, taking with them sweet potatoes and DNA of the people they met.
