Did Amerindians or Pacific Islanders Voyage Long Distances to and from the Americas Before 1492?

Ideas about pre-Columbian trans-Pacific contact between Oceania and the Americas have captured the attention of both scholars and the general public since the sixteenth century. During this century, Europeans sought to discover, and later colonise the then unknown islands in the Pacific. Early European encounters with Amerindians bolstered attempts to comprehend the whereabouts of their origins, some of which were placed in, or involved the Pacific Ocean.