Several experiments spanning decades have been performed in order to find a support to the popular theory. In the early 1990’s, Professor Bryan Sykes, a geneticist, performed several experiments in hopes of finding a continental origin of a group of people living on the Polynesian island of Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. By comparing the amount of mutations in the Rarotongans' mitochondria with the mitochondria on the Asian mainland and South America, Sykes discovered that Rarotongans actually migrated from Asia. Sykes found that Rarotongan and Asian mitochondria contained more similar mutations than when compared to South American lineages.This was rather groundbreaking because it contradicted the previous widely held theory that these islanders sailed across the Pacific from South America. This is solidified with the idea that mitochondria has no chance of genetic variation through each generation except for random mutations.