Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact

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Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact is used to refer to interactions between the indigenous peoples of the Americas and peoples of other continents – Europe, Africa, Asia, or Oceania – before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492. Many such events have been proposed at various times, based on historical reports, archaeological finds, and cultural comparisons. Some of those claims are listed in this article. Evidence for those claims is, however, generally scant and circumstantial, and only a few of them are taken seriously by researchers; only Native American migration from Siberia and the presence of the Norse in present-day Atlantic Canada have been proven for certain.

Contents 1 Overview 1.1 Diffusionist view 1.2 Isolationist view 1.3 Questioning the isolationist view 2 Pacific intercoastal migration 3 Norse in the New World 3.1 Indigenous peoples and the Norse 4 Evolution of American civilizations 5 Agriculture 6 Circumstantial evidence 6.1 Feasibility of early trans-oceanic travel 6.2 Historical long-range travel 6.3 Modern experiments 6.4 Claims of cultural and biological similarities 6.4.1 Polynesians 6.4.2 Africans 6.4.3 Egyptians and Mesopotamians 6.4.4 Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans 6.4.5 Chinese 6.4.6 Indians 7 Claims based on legends and documents 7.1 Carthaginians 7.2 Saint Brendan 7.3 Culdee monks 7.4 Prince Madoc of Wales 7.5 Zichmni and Henry Sinclair 7.6 Abubakari II 8 Late contact claims 8.1 Zheng He 8.2 Spanish 8.3 Portuguese 8.4 German and Polish 8.5 English 9 Reverse contact claims 9.1 Caecilius Metellus 9.2 António Galvão 9.3 Bartolomé de las Casas 9.4 Tupac Inca Yupanqui 10 Lost continents, UFOs, and La Merika 11 Religious accounts 12 Notes 13 References 14 See also 15 External links

[edit] Overview

[edit] Diffusionist view

Theories of pre-Columbian contact have been fairly popular in the Western world since the 16th century. Several reasons may account for the spread of these diffusionist theories, including political propaganda, justification for colonialism, the backing of priority claims, or simply a naive tendency to explain the origins of New World civilizations in the context of Biblical tradition or other known Old World civilizations.

Proponents of such contacts often stated or implied the ethnocentric premise that Native Americans — generally portrayed as savages — could not have developed the sophisticated technical and scientific knowledge of some New World civilizations without outside help. These theories were also helped by certain religious beliefs, and of course by the scarcity of data about the origins and history of the American native peoples, which did not have a coherent scientific model until the mid-20th century.

[edit] Isolationist view

In the late 1500s, the Jesuit scholar José de Acosta suggested that the peoples of the Americas arrived via a now-submerged land bridge from Asia as primitive hunters and later settled into sedentary communities and cities. Over time, traveler reports (such as the books by John Lloyd Stephens on Mesoamerica), documentary research (such as William H. Prescott's accounts of the Spanish conquests of Mexico and Peru), and extensive archaeological findings revealed more about the history and character of pre-Columbian society. This data eventually led most historians to embrace an isolationist view: namely, that the pre-Columbian civilizations had evolved gradually over several millennia, and that most (if not all) of their culture and knowledge had in fact been developed by the ancestors of the current Native Americans.

The isolationist view became more prevalent in the 20th century, as carbon dating and molecular genetics began to shed light on the origins of native populations. While the human presence in Eurasia is attested by fossil finds spanning several hundred thousand years, human remains older than 13,000 years in the Americas seemed to be scarce to nonexistent. This time frame roughly coincides with the most recent ice age, a time when the sea level was substantially lower than it is today. This coincidence, and genetic similarities between the indigenous peoples of the Americas and certain Siberian and East Asian populations, led scientists to believe that the Americas were populated by migrations across the Bering Strait, which would have been mostly dry land at the time.

Linguistic and genetic studies suggest no less than three distinct migration waves. On the other hand, if the ice age made the migrations possible, the route must have been closed again when it ended and the sea level rose again some 9,000 years ago. Between the 1950s and the 1980s, the Bering Land Bridge theory came to be viewed as proved beyond any doubt. It was also believed at the time that trans-oceanic travel only became possible in the 15th century, after key advances in Old World shipbuilding and navigation. Most archeologists came to believe that the native cultures of the Americas had been isolated from the Old World after the closing of the Bering land route, when they were still in the Neolithic hunter-gatherer stage; and had developed without any outside influences for the next 9,000 years until the time of Columbus. This belief is supported by the lack of solid evidence of Old World influences on the American civilizations.

[edit] Questioning the isolationist view

The standard single route migration model for the population of the Americas has been increasingly challenged in recent years by claims of human artifacts dating between 15,000 and 50,000 years, a time period in which inland routes were blocked by massive ice sheets. Human remains from 9,000 years ago such as the Kennewick Man have anatomical features that differ somewhat from those of modern indigenous populations. These raise the possibility that the Bering Land Bridge model may be too simplistic. For instance, intercoastal navigation along the Pacific shores of Siberia and Alaska may have provided an alternate route, independent of sea level or ice sheets. However, there is no dispute that the Bering Land Bridge was at least one important migration route into the Americas.

Proponents of the Solutrean hypothesis suggest that Upper Paleolithic settlers from Europe could have crossed the Atlantic along the ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum, bringing with them tool-making methods which may have influenced the Clovis tool complex. Paleoclimate models created by Professor Richard Peltier at the University of Toronto seem to indicate that at that time, the Atlantic Ocean froze every winter. The model suggests that a 10-meter thick sheet of ice stretched from western Europe to the eastern coast of North America. Some researchers suggest that recent finds of stone age spear points at Cactus Hill, Virginia dating to 17,000 years ago seem to indicate a transitional style between the Solutrean tool-making style and the later Clovis technology. DNA analysis of the central Ontario Ojibwa Native Americans by Dr. Michael Brown of Mercer University, in Macon, Georgia has indicated that their DNA markers are similar to those found in early stone age peoples of Europe.^[1]

[edit] Pacific intercoastal migration

A growing body of recent evidence indicates that besides the Bering land bridge, another possibly equally important migration route into the Americas existed along the Pacific shoreline. This theory does not suggest potentially hazardous open ocean crossings, but instead, gradual movement close to shore, probably in pursuit of favorable fishing areas. From coastal areas, people could have migrated inland, bypassing the vast northern ice sheet. This theory may account for the appearance of human activity well within the Americas during the time when inland migration routes were blocked by the ice sheets as well as later migrations by Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut peoples. Unfortunately, many of the prime sites for study now lie beneath sea level on the continental shelf since sea levels were substantially lower during the ice age than today.

A recent article in the Los Angeles Times reports findings (to be published in Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology) that new DNA-based research uniquely links the DNA retrieved from a 10,000-year-old fossilized tooth from an Alaska island, with specific coastal tribes in Tierra del Fuego, Ecuador, Mexico and California. ^[2] Unique DNA markers found in the tooth were connected only with these specific coastal tribes, and were not found in any of the other indigenous peoples in the Americas. This finding lends substantial credence to a migration theory that at least one set of early peoples moved south along the west coast of the Americas in boats.

[edit] Norse in the New World

Main article: Norse colonization of the Americas

The case of the Norse trips to North America stands out as being fairly well supported by both historical and archaeological evidence. Norse presence in Greenland, begun in the late 10th century and culminating in the founding of a colony by Erik the Red, has been well known to Europeans since the Middle Ages. However, because of Greenland's isolated location, and minimal contact with indigenous peoples (the Greenlanders may have been the first inhabitants of the island in hundreds of years, and contact with the Inuit did not begin until about 1150^[3]), Viking presence there has not usually been considered a European discovery of America per se. More impressive to the public imagination is the potential of Norse arrival and colonization of islands closer to shore. The so-called Vinland sagas of Icelandic and Norse literature tell of travels by Leif Eriksson and other Vikings, around the year 1000, to a land called Vinland to the west of Greenland. Speculation that the accounts were true and referred to some part of North America raged for decades. In 1961, archaeologists Helge and Anne Ingstad uncovered remains of a Norse settlement at the L'Anse aux Meadows site in Newfoundland, Canada, proving that at least the main thrust of the Vinland sagas was true.

The speculation that Vinland may have been North America has been fairly popular since the 19th century, and was even accepted as fact in some countries^[Who?]. The shipbuilding and navigational skills of the Vikings were well-known, and the trip from Greenland to Newfoundland would have been a relatively short one. Nevertheless, this claim was strongly resisted by many scholars^[Who?]. Nationalistic biases definitely played a role in the controversy, which was further muddled by disputes about the authenticity of the Vinland map and of other finds attributed to the Vikings, such as the Kensington Runestone, the Newport Tower, and many "runic" inscriptions scattered all over the continent, from Oklahoma to Paraguay. Though the L'Anse aux Meadows find settled the question of Norse settlement in America, it did not have much effect on the disputes about earlier finds. Nor did Norse contact with the native peoples in Vinland have much effect on indigenous culture.^[3]

[edit] Indigenous peoples and the Norse

There are few sources for contact between indigenous Americans and Norse settlers. The Dorset culture had long since died off before Norse arrival in Greenland; a later migration of people known as the Late Dorset culture arrived at around the same time, but remained in the northwestern part of the island, far from the Norse settlements. It was only when the Thule people, the ancestors of the modern Inuit, arrived in the 12th or 13th centuries that contact is known for certain. The Greenlanders called these newcomers "skraelings", meaning "wretches" in Old Norse. Conflict between the Greenlanders and "skraelings" is recorded in the Icelandic Annals, one of the few sources mentioning contact. Contact between native peoples and the Norse in Vinland, however, probably occurred from the outset, though the major sources for this are the Vinland sagas, recorded hundreds of years later. The sagas record fights with the natives, which it calls "skraelings", though they were not related to the Thule of Greenland.

[edit] Evolution of American civilizations

Although much scientific debate characterizes the study of early migrations into the Americas, only the Norse evidence of pre-Columbian contacts rises above speculation. Critics view the claim that such pre-Columbian contacts initiated or significantly influenced native American civilizations as highly unlikely, as the broad body of archaeological evidence suggests that indigenous societies evolved independently of Old World influences. Claims of trans-oceanic influence are often based on minor coincidences or exaggerated similarities between various Old and New World cultures. A lack of evidence of cultural influence, however, does not rule out the possibility of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contacts; it merely suggests that such contacts had no observable impact on either New or Old World societies.

[edit] Agriculture

Major cradles of civilization emerged on the basis of the domestication and development of wild plants. In the Americas, the principal domesticated plant was maize, a domesticate of the Mexican wild grass teosinte. This indigenous plant and many others were domesticated thousands of years before any of the claimed external contacts, and the evidential record of the gradual development of maize and other plants demonstrates an indigenous agriculture over thousands of years as well.

Established native American civilizations tended to arise when the productivity of domesticated agriculture attained a certain level whereby larger populations could be sustained and organized into more sophisticated societies. The evidence shows that major agricultural development happened well before any verified external contacts occurred. Except for the relatively early appearance (c. 7,000 BC) of the African gourd (with its inherent ability to float, even across the ocean), there is no clear evidence of any other non-indigenous domesticated plant in the Americas.

In 1995 professor Hakon Hjelmqvist published an article in Svensk Botanisk Tidskrift on pre-Columbian chili peppers in Europe.^[4] According to him, archaeologists at a dig in St Botulf in Lund found a Capsicum frutechens in a layer from the 13th century. Hjelmqvist also claims that Capsicum was described by the Greek Therophrasteus (370-286 BC) in his Historia Plantarum, and in other sources. The Roman poet Martialis (around the 1st century) described "Pipervee crudum" (raw pepper), but describes them as long and containing seeds, which does not fit the description of pepper.

[edit] Circumstantial evidence

[edit] Feasibility of early trans-oceanic travel

Some people continue to believe that pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact may have occurred because such voyages were technically quite possible. After all, the only essential requirements for a successful trans-oceanic trip are a boat that can withstand the open ocean weather for a few months, and means to store or obtain enough food and water to keep the crew alive for that duration. The historical and experimental evidence gathered over the last few decades shows that these requirements could have been met even in remote antiquity, millennia before Columbus's time. This circumstantial evidence includes reliable records of several maritime trips of comparable distance, and modern attempts to retrace possible contact routes with reproductions of ancient boats. While these reports and experiments are only speculative, they do open up the question of such contacts.

[edit] Historical long-range travel

Linguistic evidence has demonstrated that Madagascar, for example, was settled by Austronesian peoples from Indonesia. Their navigators were able to cross the Indian Ocean and large sections of the Pacific by the early 1st millennium.

Centuries before Columbus, Arab merchant ships regularly traveled between East Africa, the Middle East, India, and China. This trade has been well documented with written records and archeological finds (such as Chinese pottery in Zimbabwe).

In the 19th century, a Japanese junk lost its mast and rudder in a typhoon on its way to Edo, was carried by sea currents across the Northern Pacific, and reached the coast of Washington State 14 months later. One of the survivors, Otokichi, became a famous interpreter. Similar events may have happened to other Chinese and Japanese sailors in previous centuries.

[edit] Modern experiments

In 1947, Norwegian writer Thor Heyerdahl sailed for over 6,900 km across the Pacific, from Callao in Peru to the Raroia atoll in Tuamotu Islands, on the Kon-Tiki, a balsawood raft built after ancient Peruvian designs. In 1969, Heyerdahl turned to the Atlantic, and sailed 6,400 km from Safi in Morocco to Barbados in the Ra II, a reed boat of ancient Egyptian design. The Frenchman Alain Bombard had already done a similar trip in 1952, starting from the Canaries. Bombard sailed in a modern inflatable boat, but alone and without taking any food or water reserves.

In 1977, Irish writer Tim Severin sailed from Brandon Creek on Ireland's Dingle Peninsula to Newfoundland in a currach made with 6th century Irish designs and materials — namely, oxhides stretched over a wooden frame. (See the section on Saint Brendan below).

[edit] Claims of cultural and biological similarities

[edit] Polynesians

The realization that Polynesians had been able to spread as far as Easter Island and Hawaii by boat led to theories of trans-Pacific contacts with Oceania. The presence in Polynesia of the kumara (sweet potato), a plant native to the Americas, has been cited as possible evidence of contacts. It is possible, however, that this plant or its seed-bearing parts simply managed to float across the Pacific without human contact ever occurring.

Over the last 20 years, the dates and anatomical features of human remains found in Mexico and South America have led some archaeologists to propose that those regions were first populated by people who crossed the Pacific several millennia before the Ice Age migrations; according to this theory, these Pre-Siberian American Aborigines would have been either eliminated or absorbed by the Siberian immigrants. However, current archaeological evidence for human migration to and settlement of remote Oceania (i.e., the Pacific Ocean eastwards of the Solomon Islands) is dated to no earlier than approximately 3,500 BP;^[5] trans-Pacific contact with the Americas coinciding with or pre-dating the Beringia migrations of at least 11,500 BP is highly problematic, except for movement along intercoastal routes.

Recently, linguist Kathryn A. Klar of UC Berkeley and archaeologist Terry L. Jones of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo have proposed contacts between Polynesians and the Chumash and Gabrielino of southern California, between 500 and 700. Their chief evidence is the advanced sewn-plank canoe design, which is used throughout the Polynesian Islands, but is unknown in North America — except for those two tribes. Moreover, the Chumash word for "sewn-plank canoe," tomolo'o, may have been derived from kumulaa'au, the Polynesian word for the Redwood logs used in that construction.

[edit] Africans

Main article: Pre-Columbian Africa-Americas contact theories

Theories for an African presence in Mesoamerica rely upon Olmec culture, the presence of African crops, certain Islamic sources, and early European sightings of blacks in the New World.

The Olmec culture extended from roughly 1200 BC to 400 BC. Cited evidence for an African presence includes statues, stone carvings, religious beliefs, crops and figurines showing a perceived African influence. Some claim that the facial features of the ancient Olmecs, as seen on their statues, are similar to those of native Africans. These observations have led some authors, such as Ivan van Sertima and James W. Loewen,^[6] to propose that the statues depict visitors from Africa; which could be either permanent (i.e. settlers), or temporary (explorers, military, traders, etc.) The origin of those hypothetical visitors has been conjectured to be the Phoenician colonies in northern Africa, or the ancient peoples who lived in the Sahara before it became a desert. Some observers have noted that stone imagery carved on Olmec and Mayan stelae seem to depict individuals with perceived African features interacting with others with modern-day Native American features.

Critics argue, however, that the faces seen in Olmec imagery resemble those of African natives only superficially, and that they are not as different from those of American natives as the proponents assume. Scholars of Mesoamerica also point out the central role in early Mesoamerican religions of the "were-jaguar", a half-man, half-cat, similar to a shape-shifter in African shamanism.

The presence of African domesticated plants in Mesoamerica, such as cotton seeds, banana plants, bottle gourd, jack bean and the West African yam, has been cited as possible evidence of trans-oceanic contact. Some suggest that sophisticated crops such as cotton and its usage on both sides of the Atlantic indicate a shared knowledge of raising crops. Nonetheless, unequivocal African connections have yet to be demonstrated by genetic studies of people or plant life.

Islamic sources describe visits to the New World by a Mali fleet in 1311. According to these sources, 400 Mali Empire ships discovered a land across the ocean to the West after being swept off course by ocean currents. Only one ship returned, and the captain reported the discovery of a Western Current to Prince Abubakari II; the off-course Mali fleet of 400 ships is said to have conducted both trade and warfare with peoples of the "western lands." Prince Abubakari II then abdicated his throne and set off to explore these western lands. In 1324, the Mali king Mansa Musa is said to have stopped in Cairo on his way to Mecca and related this account to the Islamic historian, Al-Umari. Musa related that "his predecessors had launched two expeditions from West Africa to discover the limits of the Atlantic Ocean." There may be indications that his successor, Musa II, sent out another expedition that reached the Antilles.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus writes in his journal that, according to the natives of Hispaniola, "there had come to Hispaniola people who have the tops of their spears made of a metal which they call quanin, of which he had sent samples to the Sovereigns to have them assayed, when it was found that of 32 parts, 18 were gold, six of silver and eight of copper." This was said to be in the same proportion to similar metals forged in African Guinea (West Africa), within the realm of the Mali Empire. Bartolomé de las Casas quotes Columbus thus: "the Indians brought handkerchiefs of cotton, very symmetrically woven and worked in colors like those brought from Guinea, from the rivers of Sierra Leone and of no difference." Author P. V. Ramos points out in his essay "African Presence in Early America" that Christopher Columbus’ own impression of the Carib peoples was that they were "Mohemmedans" (it should be noted that early European explorers often described New World peoples in terms of familiar Old World cultures and religions).

In 1498, during Christopher Columbus' third voyage to the Indies, Columbus writes in his diary that "canoes had been found which start from the coast of Guinea and navigate to the west with merchandise." Las Casas later wrote that "certain principal inhabitants of the island of Santiago came to see them and they say that to the southwest of the Island of Huego, which is one of the Cape Verdes distance 12 leagues from this, may be seen an island, and that the King Don Juan was greatly inclined to send to make discoveries to the southwest, and that canoes had been found which start from the coast of Guinea and navigate to the west with merchandise." In 1499, Columbus writes about West African traders found in present-day Panama^{[citation needed]}.

On July 30, 1502, Christopher Columbus arrives at the Central American coast on his fourth voyage. Ferdinand Columbus, the son of Christopher, wrote about the dark brown-skinned people seen by his father in Honduras: "The people who live farther east of Pointe Cavinas, as far as Cape Gracias a Dios, are almost black in color".

In 1513, as explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crosses Panama, he encounters the Tule, a tribe related to the Kuna of present-day Panama and Colombia. The Tule tell Balboa of their recent war against the Mandinga ("dark men") nation, whom Balboa reportedly sighted previously. This account stems from chronicler Peter Martyr d'Anghiera. Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg also described the Mandinga as having "black skin" and the Tule as having "red skin". The Mandinka people are a west African group which descend from the Mali empire so this could be connected to the lost Mali ships.

The Dominican friar Gregorio Garcia, author of early speculative works on Native Americans, reported on "black-skinned people" sighted in present-day Colombia near where Cartagena now lies. Another sighting was made by López de Gomara, who described certain peoples as identical to Africans seen in Guinea.

Some accounts are unclear as to when or how the reported Africans or Blacks may have arrived in the New World. Author Michael Coe reports that Father Alonzo Ponce spoke of a boatload of "Moors" who landed off near present-day Campeche, Mexico and terrorized the natives. The French naturalist Armand de Quatrefages, author of "The Human Species", writes of distinct Black tribes among Native Americans like the Yamasee of Florida, the Charrúa of southern South America, and a people in St. Vincent. The latter may refer to the Garifuna, a people descended from Carib Indians and escaped African slaves.

The Melungeons, whose presence was first noted by European explorers in Appalachia in the mid-1600s, are thought to be possible partial descendants of Mediterranean and/or North African peoples in North America.^[7]

[edit] Egyptians and Mesopotamians

The similarity between the Egyptian pyramids and the temples of some New World civilizations; such as the Mayas, Aztecs, and Incas — has fueled many speculations that either the Egyptians had traveled to the Americas, or that the civilizations on both sides of the ocean had sprung from a common source (such as the mythical lost continent of Atlantis). Sometimes the comparison was made between the pyramids of the New World and the ziggurats of Mesopotamia, which would imply contact with the Sumerians or other people of the region. However, the similarities between Old and New World pyramids are not very strong, and get weaker as one recedes further into the past. The typical American pyramid was built as a platform for a temple, and was periodically enlarged with new layers; the design apparently evolved from an artificial earth mound, which was later covered with plaster and stone. In contrast, the Egyptian pyramid was just a tomb for one pharaoh and his immediate family, with no temple proper; it was never enlarged after its completion; and its design evolved from smaller stone tomb structures.

Other claims of contacts with Egypt were based on reports that some chemical tests run on Egyptian mummies had found traces of plant products native to the Americas, such as tobacco and coca, which some have proposed were brought to them by Carthaginian merchants. Most Egyptologists, however, would rather ascribe those results to modern contamination or some other experimental error until they are verified by other scientists.

[edit] Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans

Many claims of contacts with the civilizations of Classical Antiquity — chiefly the Roman Empire, but sometimes also with Greece, Carthage and other Phoenician cities, and other cultures of the age — have been based on isolated archaeological finds in American sites that were supposedly manufactured in the Old World. None of the finds have been sufficiently well-documented to dispel the possibility of the objects having been misidentified, misdated, or placed at the site at a more recent date — either accidentally, or as a fraud.

In 1933, at Toluca Valley (72 kilometres west of Mexico City), a small ceramic head, showing a beard and European-like features, was found embedded in the pavement of a building that had been abandoned in 1510, nine years before the Spaniards arrived. In 1961, Austrian anthropologist Robert von Heine-Geldern studied the head, declaring that it fit Roman schools of art from the 2nd century. In 1999, the head was dated by thermoluminescence to 870 BC – AD 1270. Nonetheless, as pointed out by archaeologist Michael E. Smith, the fieldwork documentation is so poor that it is not clear whether this object was indeed excavated at Calixtlahuaca or not.

In 1963, what appeared to be Roman coins were discovered in New Albany, Indiana, across from Louisville, Kentucky [2]. All but two of the coins have vanished; the remaining ones appear to depict Roman Emperors Claudius Gothicus and Maximinus. More recently, what appear to be Roman coins from the same period have been found on the other side of the Ohio River. The coins were found buried in what might have been a disintegrated leather pouch.

In 1982, Brazilian newspapers reported that fragments of amphorae had been recovered by professional treasure hunter and underwater archaeologist Robert Frank Marx, from the bottom of Guanabara Bay, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Elizabeth Lyding Mill of the University of Massachusetts has reportedly identified the finds as being Roman, manufactured at Kouass (Dehar Jedid) in Morocco, and dated them to the 3rd century. A bottom survey by Harold E. Edgerton a pioneer in the field from MIT located what seemed to be remains of two disintegrating ships.

This potential find aggravated Brazilian and Spanish government officials as Spain was in the process of planning the 500th anniversary celebration of Columbus' arrival in the New World. These claims were also disputed when Américo (Amerigo) Santarelli, an Italian professional diver living in Rio de Janeiro, revealed in a book that he had 18 such amphors made by a local potter, and had placed 16 of them himself at various places in the bay. He said that his intent was to recover the encrusted amphors later, to decorate his house at Angra dos Reis. It should be noted, however, that the Brazilian government prevented any additional research and dumped sand over the site in the bay to ensure no further artifacts would ever be recovered. Robert Marx, incidentally, was prohibited to work in Brazil due to his insistence on trying to locate the Roman wrecks.

Claims of contact have often been based on occurrences of similar motifs in art and decoration, or on depictions in one World of species or objects that are thought to be characteristic of the other World. Famous examples include a Maya statuette depicting a bearded man rowing, a cross in bas-relief at the Temple of the Cross in Palenque, or a pineapple in a mosaic on the wall of a house at Pompeii. Nevertheless, most of this "evidence" can be explained away as the result of mis-interpretation. The Palenque "cross", for instance, is almost certainly a stylized maize plant; and the Pompeii "pineapple" is more likely to be a pine cone.

It has often been noted that the Aztec word for "god", teo, is similar to Greek theos and Latin deus. This and other similarities have been advanced as proofs of contact. However, linguists generally ascribe such similar words to coincidence and identify them as false cognates, a common linguistic fallacy.

The established presence of Romans and probably Phoenicians in the Canary Islands has led some researchers to suggest that the islands may have been used as a stepping-off point for such journeys, as the islands lie along the same favorable sea route undertaken by Columbus on his first voyages to the Americas.

[edit] Chinese

According to some Chinese reports, peanuts, a plant native to South America, were found at a 4,000 year old archaeological site during the early 1970s.^{[citation needed]} Others claim that maize was cultivated in China well before 1492, even though the wild grass from which maize was domesticated, teosinte, is indigenous only to Mexico and adjacent parts of Central America, and numerous intermediate forms of the domesticated maize cobs form a continuum in the archaeological record in Mexico over thousands of years.^{[citation needed]} While these claims are debated and questioned[3], no one argues against the fact that it was only after the Columbian Exchange that these plants, in their New world versions, became significant in Chinese agriculture.

Others have pointed out stylistic similarities between the decorative motifs of ancient China and of the ancient Maya, and the great value that both placed on jade. However, the stylistic similarities are mainly subjective, and jade may have been valued simply for its intrinsic beauty and for its qualities as a sculptural material. Stylistic similarities also exist between Shang Dynasty bronzes and Totem pole carvings of the Pacific Northwest coast of North America. [4]

[edit] Indians

Some speculators claim an image of a goddess in a southern Indian temple is holding maize, a crop native to the Americas; the image is more usually taken to be of a native grass like sorghum or millet, which bear some resemblance to maize.^{[citation needed]}. It is also to be noted that there is a purported reference of Mayan civilization in the Indian epic Mahabharata. 'Mayudu' (a King known for his architectural skills) is asked by the Pandavas to build a palace for them. This 'Mayadu' and his people somewhat resemble the Maya Civilization, also known for its architecturally sound palaces and constructions. Some also see a resemblance between Mayan carvings and designs to those of early Hindu temples, including the postures of depictions of lions^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Claims based on legends and documents

[edit] Carthaginians

The fame of Carthaginian navigational prowess has led to speculation they may have reached the New World, or at least came close to it. The account of Himilco's voyage beyond the Pillars of Hercules preserved in Roman writer Avienus's work Ora Maritima contains some lines which may suggest Himilco sailed to the Sargasso Sea. Avienus says Himilco encountered an area plagued by floating masses of seaweed that concealed frightening sea monsters and slowed his ships' progress; this is similar to later accounts of the sea. Some sources claim this is actually a reference to some other weed-choked area, such as the Cabo de São Vicente in southern Portugal. ^[8]

Harvard zoologist and amateur epigrapher Barry Fell believed the 6th century BC admiral Hanno the Navigator came to America, where he left behind the Bourne Stone; this like many of Fell's other claims, is rejected by most scholars, who consider the stone a forgery or a much later Native American artifact. ^[9]

According to the 16th century Spanish historian Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, who relies on Brother Theophilus of Cremona, who in turn cites Aristotle, the ancient Carthaginians had discovered an abundant land beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and guarded their secret so that no other nation could conquer that land. Oviedo goes on to argue that the Hesperides of ancient myth were not the Canary Islands, as was the contemporary interpretation, but actually the West Indies.

[edit] Saint Brendan

Several Medieval documents claim that Irish monk Saint Brendan (c. 478 – 578) and seventeen fellow monks crossed the Atlantic in a leather boat to a "Land of the Promise of the Saints," which had been visited previously by the monk Father Barinthus. This land of wonders has often been conjectured to be some part of the New World.

The earliest surviving record of the tale dates from the 9th century, some 300 years after the time of Saint Brendan. The document describes Brendan's boat as "a light vessel, with wicker sides and ribs… covered… with cow-hide, tanned in oak-bark" – i.e., a currach – with tarred joints. The trip is said to have lasted seven years. The report contains many descriptions that are obviously fantasies, and some that are hard to understand, but some have been taken as possible depictions of phenomena endemic to the New World. For instance, an immense "crystal column" with a "silver canopy" rising from the sea seen by the monks has been suggested as a depiction of an iceberg, which are usually encountered in the seas near North America. The monks also find a treeless island covered in slag and full of smith's forges, where giants hurl masses of burning rock at their boat; this has been suggested to mean a volcano like the ones in Iceland. The protagonists also attempt to land on a huge fish spouting foam, which they mistook for an island; large whales were common in the North Atlantic seas.

These details, as well as geographical constraints, would suggest a route across the North Atlantic; but the fantastic description of the "blessed land" hardly matches the reality of Greenland or of the American Northeast. Thus, while the feasibility of the trip was confirmed in 1977 by Tim Severin,^[10] the actual destination and even the reality of Saint Brendan's trip are still uncertain.

[edit] Culdee monks

It is known that Culdee monks were persecuted by the Vikings in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. The Culdee originated in Ireland and Scotland; however, there is an oral tradition, subsequently recorded in the Sagas, of a pre-Norse presence in Iceland. There is speculation of a migration of Culdee refugees to Greenland, then to Labrador and Nova Scotia to flee the Vikings. The evidence given to support this theory is the existence in the Maine and New Hampshire areas of approximately 275 beehive stone huts. These stone structures are seen by some as similar to those found in Ireland and Scotland, where they were built in the Early Middle Ages or earlier. The structures are unlike prehistoric buildings found in North America, and do not fit any of the known living use patterns of Native Americans.^[11] However, professional archaeologists usually consider such stone structures to have been built in the colonial era. There are claims that Ogham writing has been found carved into stones in the Virginias^[12] and other places in the Americas, although none of these finds have ever been confirmed by credible linguists, epigraphers, or archaeologists.

[edit] Prince Madoc of Wales

Another Medieval legend says that the Welsh prince Madoc (Madawg ab Owain Gwynedd) sailed to the west in 1170, fleeing from a succession war, and found an unknown, fertile land. He left 120 men there, and returned to Wales to recruit more settlers. In 1174 he had collected more ships and people, including women, and sailed to the west again. No one ever heard of him again.

The story first appeared in writing in 1583. It has been suggested that Madoc was in fact of mixed Viking and Welsh parentage, which may add weight to the story. It has been claimed that the Mandans and many other Native American tribes are descendants of Madoc's settlers.^[13] However, this claim has not been supported by any reliable evidence, and it is quite possible that Madoc's legend is just a myth.

[edit] Zichmni and Henry Sinclair

A 1558 book published in Venice by a Nicolò Zeno claimed that his ancestors, the brothers Nicolò and Antonio Zeno, had crossed the North Atlantic in 1398. The expedition was allegedly commanded by a certain Prince Zichmni, and went as far as the coast of North America.^{[citation needed]}

In 1784 Johann Forster, a chronicler and companion of James Cook, published a book in which he speculated that 'Zichmni' was a corruption of the name 'Sinclair', and that the prince referred to in the narrative was in reality the Scottish nobleman Henry Sinclair, 1st Earl of Orkney. The identification was based on the coat of arms and the inscription on the Westford Knight, an allegedly pre-Columbian rock carving in Massachusetts.^[14] However, most historians consider Zeno's book (or the letters on which it puports to be based) to be a hoax; and analysis of the Westford Knight have concluded that most of the "drawing" consists of natural scratches, while the inscription and some details were added in fairly recent times.

[edit] Abubakari II

Abubakari II was the mansa of the Mali Empire in western Africa from 1310–1312, when he abdicated in order to explore the Atlantic. His expedition never returned, leading Malian playwright Gaoussou Diawara to speculate he may have reached the New World. Diawara says Abubakari may have reached the coast of Brazil and may have even returned to Mali, but the griots found his abdication shameful, and did not record his adventures fondly.^[15]

[edit] Late contact claims

There are many historically-based claims of trans-oceanic contacts in the 15th century — before Columbus, but too late to have had any influence on the development of the New World civilizations.

[edit] Zheng He

The British author Gavin Menzies popularized in his book 1421: The Year China Discovered The World the controversial hypothesis that the fleet of Zheng He arrived at America in 1421.^[16] Menzies' "1421 hypothesis" has been found unconvincing by practically all professional historians. The hypothesis has led to proposals of other Chinese-American contacts, e.g. by off-course Ming Dynasty ships.^{[citation needed]} Also, the possibility of Muslim trips from Asia (see Sung Document) has been discussed.

[edit] Spanish

Even in Columbus' time there was much speculation that other Old Worlders had made the trip in ancient or contemporary times; Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés records several in his General y natural historia de las Indias of 1526, which includes biographical information on Columbus. He discusses the then current story of a Spanish caravel that was swept off its course while on its way to England, and wound up in a foreign land populated by naked tribesmen. The crew gathered supplies and made its way back to Europe, but the trip took several months and the captain and most of the men died before reaching land. The ship's pilot, a man from somewhere in the Iberian peninsula (Oviedo says different versions have him as Portuguese, Basque, or Andalusian), and very few others finally made it to Portugal, but all were very ill. Columbus was a good friend of the pilot, and took him to be treated in his own house, and the pilot described the land they had seen and marked it on a map before dying. People in Oviedo's time knew this story in several versions, but Oviedo disregarded it as myth. ^[17]

[edit] Portuguese

In 1472, the Portuguese navigator João Vaz Corte-Real was granted the title "discoverer of the Land of the Codfish". It is conjectured that he visited Newfoundland. The presence of Basque cod fishermen and whalers in North America, just a few years after Columbus, has also been cited. Others have conjectured that Columbus was able to convince the Catholic Monarchs of Castile and Aragon to support his planned voyage only because they were aware of some earlier voyage. Some suggest that Columbus himself visited Canada or Greenland before 1492, because he wrote he had visited Thule once. In the first half of the 16th century, the Tupinambá people in the Rio de Janeiro region cut their hair in a monk-like fashion. According to Hans Staden, a sixteenth-century German sailor who was their prisoner for several years, they attributed the style to a European monk who had visited them some time before the official Portuguese discovery of Brazil in 1500.

[edit] German and Polish

Didrik Pining, with John of Kolno as his navigator, is said to have landed on the coast of Labrador in 1473 at the head of a joint Danish-Portuguese expedition. Pining definitely reached Greenland, but how much further he went is subject to conjecture.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] English

From at least the reign of King Henry VII (reigned 1485 – 1509), English fishermen were catching cod off of the coast of New England. King Henry was recorded as having threatened the captain of the fishermen with imprisonment if he would not reveal the location of this great cache of cod.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Reverse contact claims

While most claims of trans-oceanic contact are about non-Americans traveling to the Americas, there are a few reports of trips in the other direction.

[edit] Caecilius Metellus

Pomponius Mela writes, ^[18] and is copied by Pliny the Elder, ^[19] that Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer (d. 59 BC), proconsul in Gaul received "several Indians" (Indi) as a present from a Germanic king. The Indians were driven by a storm to the coasts of Germania (in tempestatem ex Indicis aequoribus).

Metellus Celer recalls the following: when he was proconsul in Gaul, he was given people from India by the king of the Sueves; upon requesting why they were in this land, he learnt that they were caught in a storm away from India, that they became castaways, and finally landed on the coast of Germany. They thus resisted the sea, but suffered from the cold for the rest of their travel, and that is the reason why they left.^[18]

It is unclear whether these castaways may have been people from India or Eastern Asia, or possibly Native Americans. Edward Herbert Bunbury suggested they were Finns. This account is open to some question, since Metellus Celer died just after his consulship, before he ever got to Gaul.

[edit] António Galvão

According to the Portuguese seafarer Antonio Galvão, "certain Indians" (certos Indios) were picked out of sea in 1153 and sent to Lübeck. Galvão said they were probably from Bacalao, a mythical island often believed to be Newfoundland.

[edit] Bartolomé de las Casas

According to Bartolomé de las Casas there were two dead bodies that looked like Indians found on Flores in the Azores. He said he found that fact in Columbus' notes, and it was one of the reasons for Columbus to assume India was on the other side of the ocean.^[20]

[edit] Tupac Inca Yupanqui

Tupac Inca Yupanqui, the tenth Inca emperor, is said to have led a ten-month expedition into the Pacific Ocean around 1480. The islands he visited are sometimes identified with the Galapagos, but more usually with western Polynesia, possibly the Tuamotus, Marquesas, or Easter Island. Being a seafaring people the Polynesians would not have been surprised by visitors from far across the sea, and oral traditions from Mangareva in the Tuamotus mention a light-skinned visitor from the east. Additionally Easter Island genealogies mention a king Tupa who reigned briefly before leaving by boat, and South American microorganisms have been identified there from a date comparable to Tupac's reign.

[edit] Lost continents, UFOs, and La Merika

The 19th century saw the spread of several "lost continent" theories such as the Atlantis of Rosicrucians and Theosophists, and James Churchward's proposals of Mu and Lemuria. In the 20th century, extra-terrestrial civilizations have been added to the long list of conjectural visitors to the Americas. According to popular writers like Erich von Däniken, these celestial visitors were the real builders of the ancient monuments of the Americas, or at least the masters who taught the natives how to build them. The La Merika theory claims that some old graveyards in Nova Scotia use an ancient measuring system of Rods and which contain grave stones which incorporate Masonic devices such as Crusader Crosses and Pentagrams. None of these 'theories' enjoy any support from serious historians or archaeologists.

[edit] Religious accounts

A number of diffusionist theories involving ancient visitors are mandated by or inspired on religious beliefs. The Book of Mormon, for instance, mentions two groups that travelled from the Old World to the New. The first left from the Tower of Babel and eventually sailed to the Americas (see Jaredites); the second group being that a number of Israelites that migrated from the Middle East to ancient America around 600 BC (see Lehites). Others have speculated that one of the lost tribes of Israel may have ended up in America.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Sorenson, John L. and Johannessen, Carl L. (2006) "Biological Evidence for Pre-Columbian Transoceanic Voyages." In: Contact and Exchange in the Ancient World. Ed. Victor H. Mair. University of Hawai'i Press. Pp. 238-297. ISBN-13: ISBN 978-0-8248-2884-4; ISBN-10: ISBN 0-8248-2884-4
• Barry Fell, America B.C. : Ancient Settlers in the New World (New York: Simon & Schuster , 1984);
• Gavin Menzies, 1421: The Year China Discovered the World ( ? , 2003);
• Geoffrey Ashe, The Quest for America (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971);
• Fagan, Brian M. The Great Journey. Thames and Hudson. 1987);
• E. Harry Gerol, Dioses, Templos y Ruinas;
• William Howgaard, The Voyages of the Norsemen to America (New York: The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1914, Kraus Reprint Co., 1971);
• Patrick Huyghe, Columbus was Last: A Heretical History of who was First (New York: Hyperion, 1992)
• Helge Ingstad, Westward to Vinland (New York: St. Martins, 1969);
• R.A. Jairazbhoy, Ancient Egyptians and Chinese in America (Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1974);
• Adrian Johnson, America Explored (New York: The Viking Press, 1974);
• Arlington Mallery and Mary Roberts Harrison, The Rediscovery of Lost America (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1979);
• Farley Mowat, The Farfarers (Toronto, Key Porter Books, 1998) ISBN 1-55013-989-4;
• Kenneth L. Feder, "Frauds, myths, and mysteries : science and pseudoscience in archaeology" (3rd ed., Mountain View, Calif. : Mayfield Pub. Co., 1999)
• Brad Olsen, Sacred Places North America, CCC Publishing, Santa Cruz, California (2003)
• Frederick J. Pohl, The Lost Discovery (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1952);
• Frederick J. Pohl, The Viking Explorers (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1966);
• Zoltan A. Simon, Atlantis: The Seven Seals (Vancouver, 1984);
• Michael E. Smith, The 'Roman Figurine' Supposedly Excavated at Calixtlahuaca. http://www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9/tval/RomanFigurine.html
• John L. Sorenson & Martin H. Raish, Pre-Columbian Contact with the Americas Across the Oceans: An Annotated Bibliography. 2v. 2d ed., rev. (Provo, Utah: Research Press, 1996) ISBN 0-934893-21-7;
• Robert Wauchope, Lost Tribes & Sunken Continents. (University of Chicago Press. 1962);
• Man across the sea: Problems of Pre-Columbian contacts (Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1971).
• Hey, J. (2005). On the number of New World founders: A population genetic portrait of the peopling of the Americas. Public Library of Science Biology, 3, e193.
• Brazilian newspaper O Globo, September 23, 1982.
• Article on Robert Marx in the online agazine Naufrágios (in Portuguese).
• Lawrence, Harold G. (1962). African Explorers of the New World. John Henry and Mary Louisa Dunn Bryant Foundation. ISBN B0007HV7US. 
• Van Sertima, Ivan (1976). They Came Before Columbus. Random House. ISBN 0-394-40245-6. 
• Von Wuthenau, Alexander (1975). Unexpected Faces in Ancient America: The Historical Testimony of Pre-Columbian Artists. Crown Publishers. ISBN 0-517-51657-8. 
• Stephen Williams, "Fantastic Archaeology: The Wild Side of North American Prehistory" (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991) ISBN 0-8122-8238-8/0-8122-1312-2
• Report of Severin's trip in the National Geographic Magazine, Volume 152, Number 6 (December 1977).

[edit] See also

• Diffusion (anthropology)
• Institute for the Study of American Cultures
• Kensington Runestone
• Models of migration to the New World
• Newport Tower
• Timeline of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact
• Viking colonization of the Americas
• Vinland map
• Westford Knight

[edit] External links

• [5] India on Pacific Waves.
• http://members.aol.com/carltred/AfricanPresence.htm African Presence in the Americas Before Columbus]
• Carthaginians in the New World
• Interpreting the Clovis Artifacts from the Gault Site by Michael B. Collins and Thomas R. Hester, at the University of Texas.
• Olmec head photo at Michigan State University.
• Paper given at the 66th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (2001) on The Calixtlahuaca Head
• The Mystery of the Cocaine Mummies (Transcript of television broadcast)
• Thomas Hughes: The German Discovery of America: A Review of the Controversy over Didrik Pining’s Voyage of Exploration in 1473 in the North Atlantic, in: GHI Bulletin, Nr. 33 (Fall 2003)