Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories

Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact refers 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.

Overview

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 clearly attributed by certain dogmatic religious beliefs, and of course by the scarcity of knowledge about the origins and history of the American native peoples, which lacked a coherent scientific model until the mid-20th century.

Isolationist view

In the late 1500s, the Jesuit scholar José de Acosta suggested peoples of the Americas arrived via a now-submerged land bridge from Asia as primitive hunters, later settling into sedentary communities and cities. In Notes on the State of Virginia, (1781), Thomas Jefferson theorized that ancestors of Native Americans crossed the Bering Strait from Asia.

Over time, traveler reports (such as the books by John Lloyd Stephens on Mesoamerica), documented research (such as William H. Prescott's accounts of the Spanish conquests of Mexico and Peru), and extensive archaeological discoveries revealed more about the history of pre-Columbian society. This data eventually led many historians to embrace isolationist views: namely, that the pre-Columbian civilizations had evolved gradually over several millennia, and that most (if not all) of their native culture and knowledge had in fact been developed solely by themselves--with little or no contribution from ancestors of the current Native Americans.

The isolationist view came to prevail 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 fewer than three distinct migration waves. On the other hand, if the ice age made land 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 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 substantial evidence of Old World influences on the American civilizations.

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 an 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.

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 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 2006 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.

Norse Interactions in the New World

Main article: Norse colonization of the Americas

Norse journeys to North America are supported by both historical and archaeological evidence. Norse presence in Greenland, begun in the late 10th century. In 1961, archaeologists Helge and Anne Ingstad uncovered remains of a Norse settlement at the L'Anse aux Meadows site in Newfoundland, Canada, proving some truth to main thrusts in Vinland sagas.

It is possible that Vinland may have been North America. Since the 19th century, it was accepted as fact in some countries. Speculations and disputes about the authenticity of the Vinland map made people further question Norse settlement in America, since Norse contact with natives had little (if any) effect on indigenous culture.

Indigenous peoples and the Norse

Few sources for contact between Natives [Americans] and Norse settlers exist. Contact between the Thule people, ancestors of the modern Inuit, and Norse between the 12th or 13th centuries is known for certain. The Greenlanders called these incoming settlers "skraelings", meaning "wretches" in Old Norse. Conflict between the Greenlanders and "skraelings" is recorded in the Icelandic Annals, as one of the few sources mentioning contact. Previous contact between native peoples and the Norse in Vinland, however, probably occurred from the outset. Major documentation major sources for this are the Vinland sagas, recorded hundreds of years later. The sagas record fights with natives referred to as "skraelings", unrelated to the Thule of Greenland.

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. Indigenous agriculture developed over thousands of years. 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. Major agricultural development could have occurred well before any verified external cultural contacts did. The relatively early appearance (c. 7,000 BCE) of the African gourd (with its inherent ability to float, even across the ocean), is the exception. There is no clear evidence of any other non-indigenous domesticated plant in the Americas before this.

In 1995, professor Hakon Hjelmqvist published an article in Svensk Botanisk Tidskrift on pre-Columbian chili peppers in Europe. 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. Around the first century CE, the Roman poet Martialis described "Pipervee crudum" (raw pepper), but describes them as long and containing seeds, a description which seems to fit chili peppers.

Circumstantial evidence

Feasibility of Early Trans-oceanic Travel

Many people, including orthodox anthropologists, believe pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact was virtually impossible, and therefore the only cultural kin to Native Americans were other autochthonous people. Mainstream scholarship is dubious about pre-Columbian transoceanic voyaging for a reason, however. Some historical evidence has been destroyed, while other evidence is still buried.

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 speculative, they definitely open up the question of such contacts.

Historical long-range travel

The Japanese castaway Otokichi in 1849.

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 [considered African and not Middle Eastern at the time] and 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.

Possible Cultural and Biological Similarities

Polynesians

Polynesians had spread to Easter Island and Hawaii by boat, which subsequently led to theories of trans-Pacific contacts with Oceania. The presence in the Cook Islands of the kumara (sweet potato), a plant native to the Americas, dating to 1000 AD has been cited as evidence of that Americans could have traveled to Oceania. It is possible, however, that this plant or its seed-bearing parts simply managed to float across the Pacific without human contact ever occurring. However a 2007 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of chicken bones at El Arenal near the Arauco Peninsula, Arauco Province, Chile is seen as offering definite proof of Oceania-to-America contact. Chickens originated in southern Asia but the bones were radio carbon dated to 1304 to 1424, well before Spanish arrival. DNA sequences taken were exact matches to those of chickens from the same period in American Samoa and Tonga, both over 5000 miles away from Chile. The genetic sequences were also similar to those found in Hawaii and Easter Island, the closest island at only 2500 miles.

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; 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.

A Polynesian contact with the prehispanic Mapuche culture in central-south Chile has been suggested because of apparently similar cultural traits, including words like toki (stone axes and adzes), hands clubs similar to the Maori wahaika, the sewn-plank canoe as used on Chiloe island, the curanto earth oven (Polynesian umu) common in southern Chile, fishing techniques such as stone wall enclosures, a hockey-like game, and other potential parallels. Some strong westerlies and El Niño wind blow directly from central-east Polynesia to the Mapuche region, between Concepcion and Chiloe. A direct connection from New Zealand is possible, sailing with the "roaring forties". In 1834, some escapees from Tasmania arrived at Chiloe Island after sailing for 43 days.

Aboriginals

The Fuegians peoples of Tierra del Fuego at the extreme tip of South America appear to be physically, culturally and linguistically distinct from other Native Americans and some proponents of this theory suggest they may be mixed descendants of both relative newcomers from Asia and American Aborigines. Both Tehuelches and Selk'nams practiced body-painting rituals similar that of Aboriginals. Unlike most other Amerindian peoples, they appeared taller than most Europeans (See: Patagon myth).

Africans

Main article: Pre-Columbian Africa-Americas contact theories

Further information: Pre-Columbian Islamic contact theories

Evidence for an African presence in Mesoamerica point to Olmec culture, the presence of African crops, certain Islamic sources, and European accounts of early sightings of blacks in the New World.

The Olmec culture extended from roughly 1200 BCE to 400 BCE. Cited evidence for an African presence include statues, stone carvings, religious beliefs, crops and figurines showing African influence. Some facial features of the ancient Olmecs, as seen on their statues, exhibit seemingly African physical characteristics. Research by authors such as Ivan van Sertima and James W. Loewen, propose that the statues depict visitors from Africa; which could have been either permanent (i.e. settlers), or temporary (explorers, military, traders, etc.) The origin of those 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 stone imagery carved on Olmec and Mayan stelae seem to depict interactions between Africans and Native Americans.

The presence of one African native plant species, the bottle gourd, in Mesoamerica has been cited as possible evidence of trans-oceanic contact. The bottle gourd could have also came to the Americas by floating, or possibly as a seed in the droppings of a bird. Islamic sources describe what some consider to be 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 told the Islamic historian, Al-Umari that "his predecessors had launched two expeditions from West Africa to discover the limits of the Atlantic Ocean."

According to Ivan van Sertima, Christopher Columbus was told by natives of Hispaniola that black-skinned visitors had preceded the Europeans. Van Sertima claims Columbus acquired metal spearheads left behind by these black strangers and sent them to Spain, where they were found to be of similar composition to metals forged in Guinea, West Africa. 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: "canoes had been found which start from the coast of Guinea and navigate to the west with merchandise." Las Casas later wrote: "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.

Fernando Colón, the son of Christopher, wrote about dark-skinned people near Punta de Caxinas (today, Punta de Castilla) seen in Honduras: "But those of the east, as far as Cape Gracias a Dios, are almost black...". [1]

African contact shows links to the West African Mandinka people of the Mali empire to the Mandinga of Panama. In 1513, explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed Panama. Chronicler Peter Martyr d'Anghiera reports his encounter with the Tule, a tribe related to the Kuna of present-day Panama and Colombia. The Tule tell Balboa of their war against the Mandinga ("dark men") nation, whom Balboa reportedly sighted. Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg also described the Mandinga as having "black skin" and the Tule as having "red skin".

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. Spanish historian López de Gomara described certain peoples as identical to Africans seen in Guinea. [[Category:Articles with unsourced statements from February 2007]] Although an associate of Hernan Cortes, López de Gomara never traveled to the Americas, and his account of Cortes' exploits was criticized as a hagiography full of error and exaggeration [2].

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, who came to the New World well after Columbus.

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

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 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. 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. These results may have resulted from modern contamination or some other experimental error in the absence of verification by other scientists.

Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans

Evidence 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 terracotta 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 BCE – CE 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 [[3]. 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 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 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, an MIT researcher, 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 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 alleged 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 these finds can be explained 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.

Some contact claimants note that the Aztec word for "god", teo, is similar to Greek theos and Latin deus. 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. Additionally, the dubious Bat Creek inscription has led to possibility of Jewish seafarers may have come to America after fleeing the Roman Empire at the time of the Jewish Revolt.

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. 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. While this information is evident, archaeological claims are debated and questioned [4], few argue 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. Stylistic similarities also exist between Shang Dynasty bronzes and Totem pole carvings of the Pacific Northwest coast of North America. [5]

Japanese

Alaskan anthropologist Nancy Yaw Davis claims that the Zuni people of New Mexico exhibit linguistic and cultural similarities to the Japanese. The Zuni language is an isolate, and the culture appears to differ more from any other surrounding natives through blood type, endemic disease and religion. Davis speculates that Buddhist priests or restless peasants from Japan may have crossed the Pacific by the 13th Century and influenced Zuni society. However, some dismiss her comparisons as being typical of pre-20th Century diffusionist thinking.

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 pearl millet, which bear some resemblance to maize. . 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.

Arabs and Moors

Main article: Pre-Columbian Islamic contact theories

Several medieval Arabic sources suggest that Muslim explorers from Islamic Spain and Northwest Africa may have travelled in expeditions across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas between the 9th and 14th centuries. The earliest of these was the navigator Khashkhash Ibn Saeed Ibn Aswad, from Cordoba, Islamic Spain, who in 889, sailed from Delba (Palos), crossed the Atlantic, reached the Americas, and returned with fabulous treasures. Another Muslim navigator, Ibn Farrukh, from Granada, sailed into the Atlantic on February 999, landed in Gando (Canary islands) visiting King Guanariga, and continued westward where he saw and named two islands, Capraria and Pluitana. He arrived back in Spain in May 999.

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. 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 and other places in the Americas, although none of these finds have ever been confirmed by credible linguists, epigraphers, or archaeologists.

Late contact claims

There are many historically-based claims of late trans-oceanic contacts in the 14th century — right before Columbus.

Zheng He

Main article: 1421 hypothesis

See also: Pre-Columbian Islamic contact theories

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. Menzies' "1421 hypothesis" has been found unconvincing by many professional historians. The hypothesis has led to proposals of other Chinese-American contacts, e.g. by off-course Ming Dynasty ships. Also, the possibility of Muslim trips from Asia (see Sung Document) has 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 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.

Danish and Portuguese

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 made two voyages to Greenland. The second one returned in 1478 via Iceland to Scandinavia where Pining was appointed governor for the Danish King, by then King of Norway as well as of Denmark. For three years Pining was the Danish King's governor in Iceland. <http://www.worldstatesmen.org/Iceland.htm> In 1480 he and his co-captain Pothurst who had been sailing with Pining on both voyages to Greenland, resumed their pirate activities south of the Greenlandic waters. It seems as if Pining was what one could call a Crown-pirate since he later signed documents as member of the King's Council.(source: Diplomatarium Norvegicum bind 2 nr 955 from 1489)

During one of the voyages Corte-Real the older and one of his sons participated as navigators on one of the ships. The documents on this topic can easiest be read in "Larsen Soren, the Pining voyage, The Discovery of North America Twenty Years Before Columbus, 1925 "

In 1476/77 during the voyage in Greenlandic water, Pothurst, Pinning and Corte-Reals were driven southward by the wind and had to stay the winter on the American mainland, as shown in the above-mentioned work.

Caecilius Metellus

Pomponius Mela writes, and is copied by Pliny the Elder, that Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer (d. 59 BCE), 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 eastern 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.

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 BCE (see Lehites). Others have speculated that one of the lost tribes of Israel may have ended up in America.

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);
• Jones, Peter N. American Indian mtDNA, Y Chromosome Genetic Data, and the Peopling of North America. Boulder: Bauu Press. 2004;
• 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. {{cite book}}: line feed character in |publisher= at position 7 (help)

• 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)
• 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

External links

• [6] 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: [http://www.ghi-dc.org/bulletinF03/79.pdf 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)

• [7] Anthropologist Offers Surprising Theory of Zuni Past