Following a scientific expedition to the Amazon basin, a Chinese expedition team claimed at an Indian culture debate meeting that there was a high possibility that the indigenous peoples who live in the Amazon region were descended from Chinese, China’s Jin Wan Bao reported Thursday.

Chinese experts based their claims on the many similar characteristics in appearance and language between the Amazonian peoples and Chinese. In particular, they pointed out how the local pronunciation of the word for “Indian,” “Yidian,” was similar to the Chinese word for “Anyang of the Yin Dynasty.”

Moreover, 16 statues and six jade batons were discovered in the Amazon region. The writing on the jade batons was the same as writing from the ancient Chinese Yin-Shang Dynasty. The writing, they claim, were the names of two mythical ancestors of the Chinese people.

The team also claimed that a stone anchor discovered in California in 1975, presumed to be 3,000 years old, was proof that Chinese crossed over to the Americas. They said when scientists performed chemical tests on the stone, it turned out to be of a kind of rock not found in the Americas, but of one only found along the Taiwan Straits.

Concerning the origins of indigenous Americans, however, the common view held by the international archeological world is that judging from things like language and the blue “Mongolian spot” commonly found on the backsides of many newly born indigenous Americans, they were most likely descended from northern peoples related to Mongolians who crossed into the Americas from Siberia.

(Cho Jung-shik, jscho@chosun.com )