Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact

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The expression pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact refers to interactions or claims of interactions between Native American peoples and peoples of other continents — Europe, Africa, Asia, or Oceania — before the historically recorded European discovery of America by Christopher Columbus.

This article summarizes the main claims that have been made for Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic content. Some of these claims are no longer seriously defended, and none are widely supported. Nonetheless, archaeology is always changing as new discoveries, techniques, and technology add new evidence and engender new theories. While the land bridge theory of America's settlement has dominated archeological thinking for years, like any scientific theory it is open to challenge.

Consensus findings

Two contacts between the Americas and the rest of the world are accepted by a consensus of scholarship:

Native Americans and the Bering Strait

Beginning in 1926 when a cowboy discovered a mammoth skeleton with a spear-point in its ribs near Folsom, New Mexico, archeologists have focused on the theory that Ice Age migrations across Beringia and the Bering Strait approximately 9,000 to 12,000 years ago settled the Americas. The discovery of more artifacts near Clovis, New Mexico in the 1930s led to the name for these people - the Clovis culture. Linguistics suggests that there were three waves of contact from Siberia, the most recent being that of the ancestors of the Inuit. Recent evidence from molecular genetics suggests that the entire Amerindian population of the Americas may be derived from an effective founding population that was as small as 80 (Source: Hey, 2005).

For the past 75 years, the mainstream conclusion, called the "Bering land bridge theory", has been that the native cultures of America developed in complete isolation from the rest of humanity until the voyages of Columbus initiated contact from Europe. This theory interprets the archaeological record to show in situ, original cultural development through that period, with people interacting across local regions but not with other continents.

Vikings in Newfoundland

The sole exceptions mainstream archeology has accepted are visits by Leif Ericson and other Vikings to Newfoundland at the L'Anse aux Meadows site. These are the basis of the Vinland Sagas and this was accepted once physical evidence of Norse artefacts had been discovered. It should be noted that had not this evidence been found, mainstream scholars would still be rejecting the Vikings voyages as myths, an aspect of Academia that has to be taken into consideration in these matters.

A significant minority of scholars assert that ocean crossings impacted peoples in the Americas, and that migrations could as easily have been by sea as by land. Some of these diffusionists see enough cultural parallels to justify them, including discoveries at Monte Verde in southern Chile approximately 2,000 years older than Clovis. New evidence from the Gault site discoveries [1] offer some evidence that the Clovis culture bears more resemblance to European than to Siberian cultures.

The isolationist theory

The first detailed studies of Mesoamerican and South American archaeology appeared after the 1830s, in books such as the travels of Stephens in Mesoamerica and Prescott's accounts of the Spanish conquests of Mexico and Peru. Gradually, those reports convinced historians that the ancient monuments of the Americas were built by the ancestors of the current Native Americans.

For about a century, any suggestion of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contacts was automatically dismissed by most mainstream historians. The general belief was no trans-oceanic voyages to the Americas could have occurred before the age of European exploration, which culminated in Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. The presumed technical impossibility of such trips was supposedly confirmed by the lack of any solid evidence of cultural influences.

Possibility of ocean voyages

Over the last few decades, however, this theory has seen several challenges, and been somewhat weakened by various developments. For one thing, historians have found many reports and evidence of long ocean voyages prior to the European explorations.

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. Compared to the Atlantic and the Pacific, the Indian Ocean is a very easy one to travel on: centuries before modern Europeans arrived in the area, Arab traders had conducted a trade that linked 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.

The Vikings

Some ancient Viking chronicles talked about a land called Vinland to the west of Greenland. Historians debated the meaning of these chronicles, and whether the Vikings had ever visited the New World in Pre-Columbian times, yet they may have been some of the earliest European colonists in North America. These debates were settled by archeological evidence in 1961. In that year Helge Ingstad and Anne Stine Ingstad discovered the remains of a Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. This was clear proof that the Vikings had crossed the Atlantic by way of Iceland and Greenland around the year 1000. The North Atlantic crossing, however, is much shorter than other proposed voyages, and has two large islands as stepping stones.

Asian castaways to America

During the 19th century, Japanese castaways drifting along the Northern Pacific current for months in a disabled junk, are recorded to have reached the American Continent. This is the story of Otokichi, whose ship had lost its mast and rudder in a typhoon on a coastal navigation to Edo, and landed 14 months later in Washington in 1848. Such peripeteia likely happened to other Chinese and Japanese sailors in previous centuries as well.

Modern experiments

In the mid-20th century, several attempts were made to demonstrate the possibility of long survival on ocean voyages, like that of Alain Bombard. Norwegian writer Thor Heyerdahl used light reed boats (named Rá and Kon-Tiki), similar to those used in North Africa and Bolivia. By successfully crossing both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans with these craft, Heyerdahl demonstrated that there was no technical reason why the Americas could not have been settled from Africa, or the Pacific Islands from South America. The archeological significance if any of such voyages is debated, but these demonstrations made many of the general public curious about Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact. In 1977, adventurer, author and filmmaker Tim Severin constructed a boat fashioned from oxhides stretched over a wooden frame, and based on 6th century designs and materials. He sailed from Brandon Creek on Ireland's Dingle Peninsula to Newfoundland to prove that it was possible for Brendan the Navigator (see below) to have made his voyage.

Conjectured contacts

Early accounts

Many scholars accept the possibility of trans-oceanic contact, the question lies in the evidence and importance of such a voyage. 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 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's 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 passing away along with the others. People in Oviedo's time knew this story in several versions, but Oviedo disregarded it as myth.

Oviedo did believe others had reached the New World in ancient times, however. He cites Brother Theophilus de Cremona, who was working from Aristotle, that the ancient Carthagenians had discovered an abundant land beyond the Pillars of Hercules. They 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 Indes. Therefore, the New World's true discoverer was the legendary king of Spain Hesperus, after whom the Hesperides were named. While Oviedo praises Columbus' accomplishment, he insists the Italian was not discovering but re-discovering a land that was the rightful property of Spain.

Such nationalistic speculation was popular in all the nations of Europe during that time. The Portuguese claimed the Antilles settled by Portuguese monks was really the Indes, and the British claimed America had been settled by the Welsh prince Madoc in the middle ages (see below).

Religious dogmas and speculation

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.

Legendary trips

The medieval legend of Saint Brendan the Navigator claims that an Irish monk and a few companions crossed the Atlantic in a leather boat to a "blessed land" of many wonders. Modern interpretation holds that this "Promised Land of the Saints", as it is called, could have actually been America, based on internal evidence. A 1977 expedition (National Geographic Volume 152, Number 6 - December 1977) has reenacted this crossing in a leather boat thereby proving the feasibility of such a voyage. In a similar vein, although apparently unrelated to any such legend, followers of epigrapher Barry Fell claim that Irish Christian missionaries visited the Americas in the sixth century AD. These claims have been widely discredited in the academic community, although its proponents are still undeterred.[2]

Another legend says the Welsh prince Madoc (Madawg ab Owain Gwynedd) fled his country because of a succession war. In 1170 he sailed to the west 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, which first appeared in writing in 1583, is most likely a myth, but its proponents identify the Mandans and many other Native American tribes as descendants of Madoc's settlers. [3]

Historically-based claims

Since the early 19th century, some scholars have tried to use historical records to prove that several Old World civilizations could have been capable of a trans-oceanic voyage to the Americas. Candidates included Egyptians, Sumerians, Phoenicians and Afro-Phoenicians, Romans, Islamic West Africans, the Knights Templar, Venetians, and more.

Egyptians

Tests on internal tissue samples from Egyptian mummies have occasionally revealed traces of drugs only found in the Americas in antiquity, such as tobacco and coca. These findings have been dismissed by some as modern contamination, but the samples taken were of internal areas, making the chance of contamination less likely. None of the species of coca that grow outside of South America have ever been shown to contain cocaine, thus raising the serious question of where the Egyptians got cocaine. Some have used evidence such as the sweet potato and the peanut as evidence that there may have been trans-Pacific contact/trade, which did not necessarily have the Egyptians in any more active a role than customer.

Romans

In 1933, at Toluca Valley (72 kilometres west of Mexico City), a small ceramic head, depicting a bearded European face, was found. Termed the "Calixtlahuaca Head," it was found in a cement floor in a building that was abandoned in 1510, nine years before 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, thermoluminescence tests were carried out on a small ceramic head, dating it to some time between 870 BC and AD 1270 - thus, although not proving it came from the Roman era, proving it was pre-colonial.

In 1963, what appeared to be Roman coins were discovered in Ohio, across from Louisville, Kentucky. All but two 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 under the ground in what might have been a disentegrated leather pouch. These coins dated from approximately the same era as the Calixtlahuaca Head.

In 1975, two intact amphorae were recovered from the bottom of Guanabara Bay, 15 kilometers from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Six years later, archeologist Robert Marx discovered thousands of pottery fragments in the same locality, including 200 necks from amphorae. The amphorae have been analyzed to have been of Roman make from the 2nd Century BC. Additionally, Guanabara Bay has been known locally as the "Bay of Jars" since at least the 18th century, suggesting that amphorae have been discovered there since at least then.

Chinese

Peanuts, native to the New World, have been discovered in ruins in China dating back to 1st century.

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 1950's. 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' effort at historical revisionism, or at least his presentation of the 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.

Celtic/Scottish

Farley Mowat in his book The Farfarers postulates that there was trans-Atlantic exploration and migration of the Albans who were a Celtic people from the British Isles. Under pressure from the Vikings invasions, they migrated to Iceland and Greenland before settling in Ungava and Newfoundland. Once there they inter-married with the native populations and were assimilated. He claims there is physical and documentary evidence of these voyages.

A mixed crew of Highland Scots (Clan Sinclair & Clan Gunn) and Scottish Knights Templar were listed among the crew of Henry Sinclair's (Earl of the Orkneys) purported voyage from Scotland to North America in 1398. Sinclair held titles to lands in Scotland, and to islands belonging to the Norse. Fluent in Gaelic, Norse and Latin, Sinclair gained knowledge of the Viking voyages to the New World and set out to expand his dominion. Possible evidence of the voyage is preserved by the purported grave of a Scottish Knight found in Westford, Massachusetts. The "Westford Knight" reputedly lies below what some claim is an inscribed stone effigy of a knight bearing the arms of Clan Gunn upon his shield, which may add creedence to the La Merika theory, and it has been connected to what some interpret as images of American flora in the Rosslyn Chapel (which was built pre-Columbus). The "Westford Knight" image is far from clear, and it is probable most of its features formed naturally, rather than by human hand. The theory continues that the Scottish Templars shared information of the voyage with their Portuguese brethren, and that the knowledge found its way to Columbus' Portuguese navigators.

Portuguese

In 1472, the Portuguese navigator João Vaz Corte-Real was granted the title "discoverer of the Land of the Codfish". There is evidence suggesting he visited Newfoundland. The presence of Basque cod fishermen and whalers in North America, just a few years after Columbus, has been well established. It has therefore been conjectured that they may have made such trips earlier.

Others have conjectured that Columbus was able to convince the Catholic Monarchs of Castile to back up his proposal only because they were aware of some earlier trip. Some suggest that Columbus himself visited Canada or Greenland before 1492, because he wrote he had visited Thule once.

Other

Didrik Pining, with John of Kolno as his navigator, is said to have landed on the coast of Labrador in 1473.

In southern India, there is a temple that has an image of goddesses holding what appear to be maize.

Transatlantic contact during the Ice Age

It has been suggested that resemblances between the Aurignacian culture in Ice Age France and Ice Age Amerindian cultures, can be explained by occasional travel across the Atlantic Ocean. At the time, living conditions and available technology in the area were much like the recent traditional Inuit culture, and there was a continuous ice barrier across the Atlantic Ocean from Scotland or Scandinavia via Iceland and Greenland to North America; it would have been possible for men in Inuit-type boats to make the crossing occasionally, getting food by fishing, and water by melting ice, and hauling out on ice floes each night.

Lost continents and flying saucers

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.

Some have even proposed that a human species distinct from Homo sapiens sapiens had lived in the continent in a period overlapping with the Native Americans. Irrespective of the validity of that proposal, such contacts do not appear to have left any trace.

Trans-Pacific contact by 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, an hypothesis that Thor Heyerdahl proved possible by experiment. The presence in Polynesia of the kumara (sweet potato), a plant native to the Americas, has been cited as possible evidence of contacts, although alternative explanations are also put forward.

More recently, the efforts of linguist Kathryn A. Klar of UC Berkeley and archaeologist Terry L. Jones of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo have gained support for the trans-pacific theory using new evidence and research, to be published in the journal American Antiquity in July 2005. They believe Polynesians may have been in contact with southern California's Chumash tribe between 500 and 700 AD. Their evidence includes the construction and use of sewn-plank canoes by the Chumash and their neighbors, the Gabrielino, a technique used throughout the Polynesian Islands. These two tribes were the only ones in North America to use this technique, which was far more advanced than traditional Native American canoe-building methods. Linguistic research also indicates that the Chumash word for "sewn-plank canoe", tomolo'o, may have been derived from the Polynesian word for the Redwood logs used in their sewn-plank construction, kumulaa'au, logs which in fact reached the Polynesian Islands by drifting from North America across the Pacific. Other evidence includes newly-calibrated carbon-14 dating of abalone shells used in a Chumash headdress. Previous datings indicated that the shells were over 2,000 years old, implying that the Chumash had been fishing in deep sea waters before Polynesians allegedly arrived. The dating did not take into account varying levels of atmospheric carbon-14, however. John Johnson, curator of anthropology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, where the shells are currently stored, recalibrated the dating and found that the shells dated to approximately 600 AD. He announced his finding in April 2005 at an archaeology conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. [4]

Pre-Columbian African presence in the Americas

There is historical evidence to support speculation that there may have been a Pre-Columbian African presence in the Americas. This may have included exploration, as well as Africans settling on the continent. One of the most popular hypotheses regarding this subject, based on the facial features of their monumental sculptures, is that the Olmecs came from Africa across the Atlantic Ocean.

Historian Gaoussou Diawara has cited the legends of thirteenth-century Malian mansa Abubakari II as further evidence of African contact with the Americas, but these claims also have yet to be widely accepted.

Native American trans-oceanic voyages

The claims of Native American trans-oceanic voyages come from European sources. All these sources claim that, in different periods, Indi shipwreked on European coasts.

Roman Times

Pomponius Mela (Lib.III,Chap.5) writes, and is copied by Pliny the Elder, that Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer, proconsul in Gaul got '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 aequribus).

"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.

Additionally, in one of the preserved houses of Pompeii, there is a mosaic of what appears to be a pineapple - a fruit native to the New World.

Middle Ages

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.

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.

Contested evidence

Various artifacts which some think suggest other Pre-Columbian trans-Atlantic contact have been found, but in no case — other than the discovery of L'Anse aux Meadows — have these presented clear enough evidence to convince mainstream archeologists and historians.

External links

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 1550139894;
Kenneth L. Feder, "Frauds, myths, and mysteries : science and pseudoscience in archaeology" (3rd ed., Mountain View, Calif. : Mayfield Pub. Co., 1999)
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);
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 0934893217;
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.
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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