Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories

Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact is 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. However, evidence for those claims is 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 North America have been proven for certain.

Overview

The 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, and the backing of priority claims. 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 until the 1970s did not have a coherent scientific model.

The isolationist view

Popular views began to change by the 1830s, as the history and character of the pre-Columbian American civilizations became better known through 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 research. 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.

Another strong argument for the isolationist view was provided in the late 20th century, as carbon dating and molecular genetics began to shed light on the origins of native populations. It turned out that, while the human presence all over Eurasia is attested by fossil finds spanning several hundred thousand years, no human remains found in the Americas were older than about 13,000 years. This date roughly coincides with the last ice age, a time when the sea level was substantially lower than it is today. This coincidence, and the great genetic similarity 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 two or three distinct migration waves. On the other hand, if it was the ice age that made the migrations possible, the route must have been closed again when that cold spell ended and the sea level rose again to its present level, 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. At the time, it was also widely believed that large scale trans-oceanic travel became possible only in the 15th century, after key advances in European and Chinese shipbuilding and navigation technology. Thus, most archeologists came to believe that the native cultures of the Americas had been completely cut off from the Old World after the closing of the Bering routes, 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 any solid evidence of Old World influences on the American civilizations.

Questioning the isolationist view

The isolationist view has prevailed in the absence of evidence to the contrary. Nonetheless, some people find that historical records and/or cultural similarities provide convincing evidence for various pre-Columbian contacts. In fact, the standard single route migration model for the population of the Americas has been increasingly challenged in recent years, by claims of human artifacts that are dated 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 of the important routes of migration into the Americas.

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. Unfortunately, many of the prime sites for study are now beneath sea level on the continental shelf since, during the ice age, sea level was substantially lower than it is today. Nonetheless, some American anthropologists are currently pursuing such evidence.

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. 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.

The Norse in the New World

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 of contact with indigenous peoples (the Greenlanders may been the first inhabitants of the island in hundreds of years, and contact with the Inuit did not begin until about 1150 ), 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 referring 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 Vinlad 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. The shipbuilding and navigational skills of the Viking 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. 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.

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 occured 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.

American civilization

Although much scientific debate characterizes the study of early migrations into the Americas, the matter of later, 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 influences 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 noticeable impact on either New or Old World societies.

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. Moreover, except for the very 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. Finally, evidence has yet to be found of external genetic contributions to the genome of the indigenous Americans between the time of early migrations and the arrival of Columbus, i.e. during the time period of the emergence of the American civilizations.

Circumstantial evidence

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.

Historical long-range travel

The Japanese castaway Otokichi in 1849.

Madagascar

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 before the year 1000.

Arab sea trading

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).

Asian castaways

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. A legend from Hawai'i suggests that a Japanese trading vessel got stranded at Maui around 1260 .

Modern experiments

The Kon-Tiki

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.

The Ra II

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 and in a modern inflatable boat, but alone and without taking any food or water reserves.

Severin's Currach

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).

Claims of cultural and biological similarities

Polynesians

The realization that Polynesians had been able to spread as far as Easter Island 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; any 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 the intercoastal route hypothesis.

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 AD. 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.

Africans

File:Olmec1.jpg

An Olmec head monument.

Some sources claim that the facial features of the ancient Olmecs, as seen on their statues, are more similar to those of native Africans than to other native peoples of the Americas. These observations have led some authors, such as Ivan van Sertima and James W. Loewen, 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 nothern Africa, or the ancient peoples who lived in the Sahara before it became a desert.

However, critics argue 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 of the "were-jaguar", half man, half cat, in early Mesoamerican religions. In any case, this African connection has not been demonstrated by genetic studies of people or plant life.

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.

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. While it is possible that both the yam and the gourd could have floated across the Atlantic ocean and planted themselves on the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico for humans to find and use, some suggest that sophisticated crops such as cotton and its usage on both sides of the Atlantic may indicate a shared knowledge of raising crops.

The main theories for an African presence in Mesoamerica are divided into two timelines: The first is the Olmec timeline which begins in 3113 BC and ends in 400 BC. It is evident by statues, stone carvings, religious beliefs, crops and figurines showing a perceived African influence. The second is the Islamic timeline which roughly begins in 1313 AD and ends in the 16th century AD. There are some primary-source accounts of European explorers, including Christopher Columbus of Blacks in the New World.

1311-13: Mali Empire – 400 Mali Navy ships discover a land across the ocean to the West after being dragged off course by ocean currents. Only one ship stays on course and reports this incident, one year later, to Prince Abubakari II. The captain of the lone surviving ship relates their discovery of a Western Current to Prince Abubakari II; The off-course Mali fleet of 400 ships conducts both trade and warfare with peoples encountered in the western lands. Prince Abubakari II, abdicates as king of the Mali Empire, and sets off to explore the coast of the central isthmus of the western lands. In 1324, Musa I is said to have stopped in Cairo on his way to Mecca and related this account to the Islamic historian, Al-Umars, to whom the emperor had related his rise to power and that "his predecessors had launched two expeditions from West Africa to discover the limits of the Atlantic Ocean" about the discovery of the Western Currents."

There is some evidence that his successor, Musa II, sent out another expedition that may have 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." These samples were sent back to Spain by Christopher Columbus, and the proportion was found to be identical to what was being forged in African Guinea (West Africa) which accordingly falls into the realm of the Mali Empire. "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 ... The Mandinga traded gold and cloth called 'almaizar'...“ Quotation from Christopher Columbus as recorded by Bartolomé de las Casas.

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".

1498: During Christopher Columbus' third voyage to the Indies, Christopher 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 [Fogo, or Fuego] which is one of the Cape Verdes distance 12 leagues from this, may be seen an island, and that the King Don Juan [Portugal – Dom Joao II ] 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."

1499 Christopher Columbus writes about West African traders found in what is now the Republic of Panama

1502-07-30 Christopher Columbus' 4th Voyage arrives at the coast of modern day Nicaragua; explorers claim center portion of the isthmus of Central America for the Kingdom of Spain 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 Gracios a Dios, are almost black in color.” At the same time in this very same region, lived a tribe of Indigenous Americans known as the Almamy. In Mandinka and Arabic languages Almamy was the designation of “Al-Imam” or “Al-Imamu,” the person who leads the Prayer, or in some cases, the chief of the community, and/or a member of the Imami Muslim community.

1512c. Tule [Redmen] Nation of what is now the Republic of Panama engage in warfare against the people of the Mandinga [Afro-Darienite] nation

1513-09 Members of the Native Nations in present-day Panama relate to explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa about their war with the “dark men” Mandinga [Afro-Darienite] Nation after Vasco Nunez de Balboa sighted them during his explorations [as reported by Peter Martyr]

Another sighting was by Lopez de Gomara who described the people as identical to Africans seen in Guinea.

The next sighting by Labbe' Brasseur de Bourbourg reported two indigenous peoples in what is now the Republic of Panama, the Mandinga with “black skin” and the Tule with “red skin”.

Fray Gregoria Garcia reports on “black skinned people” sighted in what is now The Republic of Columbia - Cartagena.

Author Michael Coe reports that Alonzo Ponce spoke of a boatload of "Moors" who landed off what is now the Republic of Mexico – Campeche and terrorized the natives.

Alphonse de Quatrefages, author of the book "The Human Species" speaks of distinct Black tribes among the Indigenous Americans like the Jamassi of what is now USA - Florida, the Charruas of what is now Brazil, and a people in what is now St. Vincent.

In the European colonial era of the Americas, it was known that "Moorish" and "Portuguese" Muslim slaves of the Spanish Empire escaped into the wilderness of both continents of the Americas. For further information, please look up the term "Melungeon".

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 ancient 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 with 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 cocoa, which some have proposed were brought to them by Carthaginian merchants. However, most Egyptologists would rather ascribe those results to modern contamination or some other experimental error until they are verified by other scientists.

Phoenicians, Greek 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. However, none of these 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.

The Calixtlahuaca Head

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 Heine-Geldern studied the head, declaring that it fit Roman schools of art from the 2nd century CE. In 1999, the head was dated by thermoluminescence to 870 BC--1270 AD. However, 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.

Roman coins in the Midwest

In 1963, what appeared to be Roman coins were discovered in New Albany, Indiana, across from Louisville, Kentucky [3]. All but two of the coins have vanished; the remaining ones appear to depict Roman Emperors Claudius II 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.

Amphorae in Guanabara Bay

In 1982, Brazilian newspapers reported that fragments of amphorae had been recovered by professional treasure hunter Robert Frank Marx, from the bottom of Guanabara Bay, offshore 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 3rd century. A bottom survey by Harold E. Edgerton of MIT located what seemed to be remains of two disintegrating ships.

These claims however collapsed 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. To prove his story, Santarelli recovered 8 of the amphors. The story pretty much died there. Robert Marx, incidentally, was prohibited to work in Brazil (as in several other countries) by alleged ethical misconduct in an unrelated find.

Language

It has often been noted that the Aztec word for "god", teo, is very similar to the Greek theos. This and other similarities have been advanced as proofs of contact. However, linguists generally prefer to ascribe such shared words to coincidence. See mass lexical comparison for further discussion.

Ornamentation

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. However, 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.

Chinese

Peanuts, native to South America, were in the early 1970s, according to unreliable Chinese reports, found at a 4,000 year old archeological site. Likewise, there are those who 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 archeological record in Mexico over thousands of years. While these claims are debated and questioned, no one argues against the fact that it was only after the Columbian Exchange that these plants, in their New world versions, become widely spread and important in China's food system.

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.

Indians

In southern India, there is a temple that has an image of goddesses holding what appear to be maize, a crop native to the Americas. However, other grasses like sorghum and millet found in India bear some resemblance to maize and are probably the basis for the image.

Claims based on legends and documents

Carthaginians

According to the 16th century Spanish historian Oviedo, 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.

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 previously visited by another 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 St. Brendan. The document describes Brendan's boat as "a light vessel, with wicker sides and ribs… covered it 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:

• An immense "crystal column" with a "silver canopy" rising from the sea (an iceberg?);
• An island covered with slag, with no trees but full of smiths' forges, inhabited by giants who threw masses of "burning slag" at the ship (volcanos in Iceland?),
• And huge fishes spouting foam, which they mistook for an island (whales?).

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, the actual destination and even the reality of St. Brendan's trip are still uncertain.

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 pre-historic buildings found in North America, and do not fit any of the known living use patterns of Native Americans (Olsen, 2003). However, all such stone structures are usually considered by professional archaeologists to have been built in the colonial era. For an example of this, see America's Stonehenge. There are claims that Ogham writing has been found carved into stones in the Virginias[4] and other places in the Americas, although none of these finds have ever been confirmed by credible linguists, epigraphers, or archaeologists.

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 get more people. In 1174 he had collected more ships and people, including women, and sailed to the unknown land 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. However, this claim has not been supported by any reliable evidence, and it is quite possible that Madoc's legend is just a myth.

Zichmni, aka 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.

In the 19th century, some historians have speculated that Zichmni was 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. 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.

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 scholar 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.

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.

Zheng He

The achievements of Chinese navigation have been widely known in the West at least since the work of Joseph Needham and John King Fairbank in the 1950s. Gavin Menzies, in his book 1421: The Year China Discovered The World, popularized the further and highly controversial thesis that the fleet of Zheng He arrived at America in 1421. Menzies' presentation of this idea has been found unconvincing by most historians, but it is intriguing enough that it has led to proposals of other Chinese-American contacts, e.g. by off-course Ming Dynasty ships. The possibility of Muslim trips from Asia (see Sung Document) has also been discussed.

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.

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 16th 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 (1500).

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-Portugese expedition. Pining definitely reached Greenland, but how much further he went is subject to conjecture.

English

From at latest the reign of King Henry VII (r.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.

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.

Caecilius Metellus

Pomponius Mela (Lib.III,Chap.5) writes, and is copied by Pliny the Elder, that Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer, 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).

"Metellum Celerem adjicit, eumque ita retulisse commemorat: Cum Galliae proconsule praeesset, Indos quosdam a rege [Suevorum] dono sibi datos; unde in eas terras devenissent requirendo, cognôsse, vi tempestatum ex Indicis aequoribus abreptos, emensosque quae intererant, tandem in Germaniae litora exiise. Restat ergo pelagus; sed reliqua lateris ejusdem assiduo gelu durantur, et ideo deserta sunt." (Pomponius Mela (Book III,Chap.5)).

"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."

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.

Antonio Galvano

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

Bartolomé de las Casas

According to Bartolomé de las Casas there were two dead bodies that looked like Indians found on Flores (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.

Tupac Inca Yupanqui

Tupac Inca Yupanqui, the tenth Inca emperor, is said to have led a 10 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 tradition 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.

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 achaeologists.

Religious accounts

A number of diffusionist theories involving ancient visitors are mandated by or inspired on religious beliefs. The Book of Mormon, for instance, holds that a number of Israelites migrated from the Middle East to ancient America around 600 to 700 BC. Others have speculated that one of the lost tribes of Israel may have ended up in America.

Parodies

In the comic book Asterix and the Great Crossing, one of the latest of the books written by René Goscinny, the invincible Gauls Asterix and Obelix and their dog Dogmatix are trapped in a storm when they are trying to fish. After the storm, the three arrive by accident at the island of Manhattan and interact with an Indian tribe (that successively is erroneously identified as a tribe of Cretans, Hispani and Thracians) but they are forced to escape when the native chief tries to marry his daughter to Obelix. The trio reach Ellis Island just in time to meet a Viking boat whose crew mistakes them for "New World people" and later returns to Denmark with Asterix, Obelix and Dogmatix on board. However, the Viking monarch identifies them as Gauls and scolds the Viking sailors, thinking that they were on vacation in modern France all the time.

Bibliography

• Barry Fell, America B.C. : Ancient Settlers in the New World (New York: Simon & Schuster , 1984);
• Gavin Menzies, 1421 : The year China discovered America ( ? , 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).

See also

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

External links

• Paper given at the 66th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (2001) on The Calixtlahuaca Head
• Interpreting the Clovis Artifacts from the Gault Site by Michael B. Collins and Thomas R. Hester, at the University of Texas.
• African Presence in the Americas Before Columbus
• The Mystery of the Cocaine Mummies (Transcript of television broadcast)
• Olmec head photo at Michigan State University.
• Carthaginians in the New World