Pre-Columbian Africa-Americas contact theories
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Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories are speculative theories which propose that possible visits to the
Americas The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. Along with th ...
, possible interactions with the indigenous peoples of the Americas, or both, were made by people from Africa, Asia, Europe, or Oceania prior to Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the
Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...
in 1492 (i.e., during any part of the pre-Columbian era). Studies between 2004 and 2009 suggest the possibility that the earliest human migrations to the Americas may have been made by boat from Beringia and travel down the Pacific coast, contemporary with and possibly predating land migrations over the
Beringia land bridge Beringia is defined today as the land and maritime area bounded on the west by the Lena River in Russia; on the east by the Mackenzie River in Canada; on the north by 72 degrees north latitude in the Chukchi Sea; and on the south by the tip of ...
, which during the glacial period joined what today are Siberia and Alaska. Whether transoceanic travel occurred during the historic period, resulting in pre-Columbian contact between the settled American peoples and voyagers from other continents, is vigorously debated. Only a few cases of pre-Columbian contact are widely accepted by mainstream scientists and scholars. Yup'ik and Aleut peoples residing on both sides of the Bering Strait had frequent contact with each other, and Eurasian trade goods have been discovered in archaeological sites in Alaska. Maritime explorations by Norse peoples from Scandinavia during the late 10th century led to the Norse colonization of Greenland and a base camp L'Anse aux Meadows in
Newfoundland Newfoundland and Labrador (; french: Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador; frequently abbreviated as NL) is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region ...
, which preceded Columbus's arrival in the Americas by some 500 years. Recent genetic studies have also suggested that some eastern Polynesian populations have admixture from coastal western South American peoples, with an estimated date of contact around 1200 CE. Scientific and scholarly responses to other claims of post-prehistory, pre-Columbian transoceanic contact have varied. Some of these claims are examined in reputable peer-reviewed sources. Many others are based only on circumstantial or ambiguous interpretations of archaeological evidence, the discovery of alleged out-of-place artifacts, superficial cultural comparisons, comments in historical documents, or narrative accounts. They have been dismissed as fringe science, pseudoarchaeology, or pseudohistory.


Norse colonization of the Americas

Norse journeys to Greenland and Canada prior to Columbus's voyages are supported by historical and archaeological evidence. A Norse colony was established in Greenland in the late 10th century and lasted until the mid-15th century, with court and parliament assemblies ('' þing'') taking place at Brattahlíð and a bishop being posted at Garðar. The remains of a Norse settlement used as a base-camp at L'Anse aux Meadows in what is now
Newfoundland Newfoundland and Labrador (; french: Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador; frequently abbreviated as NL) is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region ...
, a large island on the Atlantic coast of Canada, were discovered in 1960 and have been radiocarbon-dated to between 990 and 1050 CE. More recently, tree-ring analysis of structures at the site have been dated to the year 1021. This remains the only site widely accepted as evidence of post-prehistory, pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact with the Americas. L'Anse aux Meadows was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1978. It is also possibly connected with the attempted colony of Vinland established by Leif Erikson around the same period or, more broadly, with Norse exploration of the Americas. Though L'Anse aux Meadows establishes that Norse colonists traveled to and built permanent structures in North America, few sources describing contact between indigenous peoples and Norse people exist. Contact between the Thule people (ancestors of the modern Inuit) and Norse in the 12th or 13th century is known. The Norse Greenlanders called these native people " skrælingar". Conflict between the Greenlanders and the "skrælings" is recorded in the ''
Icelandic Annals Icelandic Annals are manuscripts which record chronological lists of events of thirteenth, fourteenth century in and around Iceland, though some, like the Annal of the Oddaverjar and the Lawman's annal (Lögmannsannáll) reach the fifteenth century, ...
''. The term ''skrælings'' is also used in the Vínland sagas, which relate to events during the 10th century, when describing trade and conflict with native peoples.


Polynesian, Melanesian, and Austronesian contact


Genetic studies

Between 2007 and 2009, geneticist Erik Thorsby and colleagues published two studies in ''
Tissue Antigens ''HLA'' (formerly known as ''Tissue Antigens'') is a peer-reviewed scientific journal established in 1971. It covers research on allergy and immunology. It is published monthly by John Wiley & Sons and is the official journal of the European Federa ...
'' that evidence an Amerindian genetic contribution to human populations on Easter Island, determining that it was probably introduced before European discovery of the island. In 2014, geneticist Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas of The Center for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen published a study in '' Current Biology'' that found human genetic evidence of contact between the populations of Easter Island and South America, dating to approximately 600 years ago (i.e. 1400 CE ± 100 years). Two remains of "Botocudo" people (a term used to refer to Native Americans who live in the interior of Brazil that speak
Macro-Jê languages Macro-Jê (also spelled Macro-Gê) is a medium-sized language stock in South America, mostly in Brazil but also in the Chiquitanía region in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, as well as (formerly) in small parts of Argentina and Paraguay. It is centered o ...
), were found in research published in 2013 to have been members of mtDNA haplogroup B4a1a1, which is normally found only among Polynesians and other subgroups of Austronesians. This was based on an analysis of fourteen skulls. Two belonged to B4a1a1, while twelve belonged to subclades of mtDNA haplogroup C1 (common among Native Americans). The research team examined various scenarios, none of which they could say for certain were correct. They dismissed a scenario of direct contact in prehistory between Polynesia and Brazil as "too unlikely to be seriously entertained." While B4a1a1 is also found among the Malagasy people of Madagascar (which experienced significant Austronesian settlement in prehistory), the authors described as "fanciful" suggestions that B4a1a1 among the Botocudo resulted from the African slave trade (which included Madagascar). A 2020 study strongly questioned the premise of the paper as being based on outdated racial classifications. In 2020, a study in ''Nature'' found that populations in the Mangareva, Marquesas, and Palliser islands and Easter Island had genetic admixture from indigenous populations of South America, with the DNA of contemporary populations of Zenú people from the Pacific coast of
Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...
being the closest match. The authors suggest that the genetic signatures were probably the result of a single ancient contact. They proposed that an initial admixture event between indigenous South Americans and Polynesians occurred in eastern Polynesia between 1150 and 1230 CE, with later admixture in Easter Island around 1380 CE, but suggested other possible contact scenarios—for example, Polynesian voyages to South America followed by Polynesian people's returning to Polynesia with South American people, or carrying South American genetic heritage. Several scholars uninvolved in the study suggested that a contact event in South America was more likely.


Sweet potato

The
sweet potato The sweet potato or sweetpotato (''Ipomoea batatas'') is a dicotyledonous plant that belongs to the Convolvulus, bindweed or morning glory family (biology), family, Convolvulaceae. Its large, starchy, sweet-tasting tuberous roots are used as a r ...
, a food crop native to the Americas, was widespread in Polynesia by the time European explorers first reached the Pacific. Sweet potato has been radiocarbon-dated to 1000 CE in the Cook Islands. Current thinking is that it was brought to central Polynesia c. 700 CE and spread across Polynesia from there. It has been suggested that it was brought by Polynesians who had traveled across the Pacific to South America and back, or that South Americans brought it to Polynesia. It is also possible that the plant floated across the ocean after being discarded from the cargo of a boat. Phylogenetic analysis supports the hypothesis of at least two separate introductions of sweet potatoes from South America into Polynesia, including one before and one after European contact. Dutch linguists and specialists in Amerindian languages Willem Adelaar and Pieter Muysken have suggested that the word for sweet potato is shared by Polynesian languages and languages of South America.
Proto-Polynesian Proto-Polynesian (abbreviated PPn) is the hypothetical proto-language from which all the modern Polynesian languages descend. It is a daughter language of the Proto-Austronesian language. Historical linguists have reconstructed the language using ...
*''kumala'' (compare Easter Island ''kumara'', Hawaiian ''uala'',
Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the C ...
; even though a proto-form is reconstructed above, apparent
cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymology, etymological ancestor in a proto-language, common parent language. Because language c ...
s outside Eastern Polynesian are either definitely borrowed from Eastern Polynesian languages or irregular, calling Proto-Polynesian status and age into question) may be connected with dialectal Quechua and Aymara ''k'umar ~ k'umara''; most Quechua dialects actually use ''apichu'' instead, but ''comal'' was attested at extinct Cañari language on the coast of what is now Ecuador in 1582. Adelaar and Muysken assert that the similarity in the word for sweet potato "constitutes near proof of incidental contact between inhabitants of the Andean region and the South Pacific." The authors argue that the presence of the word for sweet potato suggests sporadic contact between Polynesia and South America, but not necessarily migrations.


''Ageratum conyzoides''

''
Ageratum conyzoides ''Ageratum conyzoides'' (billygoat-weed, chick weed, goatweed, whiteweed, mentrasto) is native to Tropical America, especially Brazil, and is an invasive weed in many other regions. It is an herb that is 0.5–1 m. high, with ovate leaves 2–6&n ...
'', also known as billygoat-weed, chick weed, goatweed, or whiteweed, is native to the tropical Americas, and was found in Hawaii by William Hillebrand in 1888 who considered it to have grown there before Captain Cook's arrival in 1778. A legitimate native name (''meie parari'' or ''mei rore'') and established native medicinal usage and use as a scent and in leis have been offered as support for the pre-Cookian age.


Turmeric

Turmeric (''Curcuma longa'') originated in Asia, and there is linguistic and circumstantial evidence of the spread and use of turmeric by the Austronesian peoples into Oceania and Madagascar. Günter Tessmann in 1930 (300 years after European contact) reported that a species of ''Curcuma'' was grown by the
Amahuaca The Amahuaca or Amhuaca are indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous peoples of the southeastern Amazon Basin in Peru and Brazil. Isolated until the 18th century, they are currently under threat from ecological devastation, disease and viole ...
tribe to the east of the Upper Ucayali River in Peru and was a dye-plant used for the painting of the body, with the nearby
Witoto people The Witoto (also Huitoto or Uitota) are an indigenous people in southeastern Colombia and northern Peru."Wi ...
using it as face paint in their ceremonial dances. David Sopher noted in 1950 that "the evidence for a pre-European, transpacific introduction of the plant by man seems very strong indeed".


Physical anthropology

In December 2007, several human skulls were found in a museum in
Concepción, Chile Concepción (; originally: ''Concepción de la Madre Santísima de la Luz'', "Conception of the Blessed Mother of Light") is a city and commune in central Chile, and the geographical and demographic core of the Greater Concepción metropolitan a ...
. These skulls originated on
Mocha Island Mocha Island ( es, link=no, Isla Mocha ) is a small Chilean island located west of the coast of Arauco Province in the Pacific Ocean. The island is approximately in area, with a small chain of mountains running roughly in north-south direction. ...
, an island which is located just off the coast of Chile on the Pacific Ocean, formerly inhabited by the Mapuche.
Craniometric Craniometry is measurement of the cranium (the main part of the skull), usually the human cranium. It is a subset of cephalometry, measurement of the head, which in humans is a subset of anthropometry, measurement of the human body. It is disti ...
analysis of the skulls, according to
Lisa Matisoo-Smith Lisa Matisoo-Smith (born 1963) is a molecular anthropologist and Professor at the University of Otago. As at 2018, she is Head of the Department of Anatomy. Biography Born in Hawai‘i in 1963, Matisoo-Smith also lived in Japan and California, f ...
of the University of Otago and
José Miguel Ramírez Aliaga José is a predominantly Spanish and Portuguese language, Portuguese form of the given name Joseph. While spelled alike, this name is pronounced differently in each language: Spanish ; Portuguese (or ). In French, the name ''José'', pronounced ...
of the
Universidad de Valparaíso Universidad (Spanish for "university") may refer to: Places * Universidad, San Juan, Puerto Rico * Universidad (Madrid) Football clubs * Universidad SC, a Guatemalan football club that represents the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala ...
, suggests that the skulls have " Polynesian features" – such as a pentagonal shape when they are viewed from behind, and rocker jaws. Rocker jaws have also been found at an excavation led José Miguel Ramírez in the coastal locality of
Tunquén file:Tunquen_beach.jpg, 250px, View of the Tunquén Beach and its lagoon from the north. Tunquén is a beach and locality in the coast of Valparaíso Region, Chile. The beach is known for its relatively intact nature lacking houses or other infrastr ...
, Central Chile. The site of excavation corresponds to an area with pre-Hispanic tombs and
shell middens A midden (also kitchen midden or shell heap) is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofac ...
( es, conchal). A global review of rocker jaws among different populations show that while rocker jaws are not unique to Polynesians " e rarity of rocker jaw in South American natives supports" the view of "Polynesian voyagers who ventured to the west coast of South America".


Disputed evidence


Araucanian chickens

In 2007, evidence emerged which suggested the possibility of pre-Columbian contact between the Mapuche people (Araucanians) of south-central Chile and Polynesians. Bones of Araucana chickens found at
El Arenal El Arenal may refer to the following places: Argentina * El Arenal, Santiago del Estero, a municipality and village in Santiago del Estero Mexico *El Arenal, Hidalgo, a town and municipality in the state of Hidalgo *El Arenal, Jalisco, a town and ...
site in the Arauco Peninsula, an area inhabited by Mapuche, support a pre-Columbian introduction of landraces from the South Pacific islands to South America. The bones found in Chile were radiocarbon-dated to between 1304 and 1424, before the arrival of the Spanish. Chicken DNA sequences were matched to those of chickens in American Samoa and Tonga, and found to be dissimilar to those of European chickens. However, this finding was challenged by a 2008 study which questioned its methodology and concluded that its conclusion is flawed, although the theory it posits may still be possible. Another study in 2014 reinforced that dismissal, and posited the crucial flaw in the initial research: "The analysis of ancient and modern specimens reveals a unique Polynesian genetic signature" and that "a previously reported connection between pre-European South America and Polynesian chickens most likely resulted from contamination with modern DNA, and that this issue is likely to confound ancient DNA studies involving haplogroup E chicken sequences." However, in a 2013 study, the original authors extended and elaborated their findings, concluding: A 2019 study of South American chickens "revealed an unknown genetic component that is mostly present in the Easter Island population that is also present in local chicken populations from the South American Pacific fringe". The Easter Island chicken's "genetic proximity with the SA continental gamefowl can be explained by the fact that both populations were not crossed with cosmopolitan breeds and therefore remain closer to the ancestral population that originated them. " The genetic proximity might also "be indicative of a common origin of these two populations".


California canoes

Researchers including Kathryn Klar and Terry Jones have proposed a theory of contact between
Hawaiians Native Hawaiians (also known as Indigenous Hawaiians, Kānaka Maoli, Aboriginal Hawaiians, First Hawaiians, or simply Hawaiians) ( haw, kānaka, , , and ), are the indigenous ethnic group of Polynesian people of the Hawaiian Islands. Hawaii ...
and the Chumash people of Southern California between 400 and 800 CE. The sewn-plank canoes crafted by the Chumash and neighboring Tongva are unique among the indigenous peoples of North America, but similar in design to larger canoes used by Polynesians and Melanesians for deep-sea voyages. '' Tomolo'o'', the Chumash word for such a craft, may derive from ''tumula'au''/''kumula'au'', the Hawaiian term for the logs from which shipwrights carve planks to be sewn into canoes. The analogous Tongva term, ''tii'at'', is unrelated. If it occurred, this contact left no genetic legacy in California or Hawaii. This theory has attracted limited media attention within California, but most archaeologists of the Tongva and Chumash cultures reject it on the grounds that the independent development of the sewn-plank canoe over several centuries is well-represented in the material record.


Clava hand-club and words for axes

Archaeological artefacts known as
clava hand-club Clava can refer to: * Mu Boötis, a triple star system in the constellation Boötes * Clava cairn, a type of Bronze Age circular chamber tomb cairn * Gracile nucleus In neuroanatomy, the dorsal column nuclei are a pair of nuclei in the dorsa ...
s found in Araucanía and nearby areas of Argentina have a strong resemblance to the mere okewa found in New Zealand. The clava hand-clubs are also mentioned in the Spanish chronicles dating to the Conquest of Chile. According to
Grete Mostny Grete Mostny (17 September 1914 – 15 December 1991) was a Jewish Austrian who became a leading Chilean anthropologist. She was born in Austria but had to leave because of the rise of the Nazis. She went to Belgium to complete her studies before ...
, clava hand-clubs "appear to have arrived to the west coast of South America from the Pacific". Polynesian clubs from Chatham Islands are reportedly the most similar to those of Chile. The clava hand-club is one of various Polynesian-like Mapuche artifacts known. On Easter Island, the word for a stone axe is '' toki''; among the New Zealand Maori, the word ''toki'' denotes an adze; in the Mapuche language of Chile and Argentina, the word for a stone axe is ''toki''; and further afield in
Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...
, the Yurumanguí word for an axe is ''totoki''. The Mapuche word ''toki'' may also mean "chief" and thus may be related to the Quechua word ''toqe'' ("militia chief") and the Aymara word ''toqueni'' ("person of great judgement"). In the view of Moulian et al. (2015) the possible South American links complicate matters regarding the meaning of the word ''toki'' because they are suggestive of Polynesian contact.


Claims of East Asian contact


Claims of contact with Ecuador

A 2013 genetic study suggested the possibility of contact between Ecuador and East Asia, that would have happened no earlier than 6,000 years ago (4000 BC) via either a trans-oceanic or a late-stage coastal migration that did not leave genetic imprints in North America. Further research did not support this but was rather "a case of a rare founding lineage that has been lost elsewhere by drift."


Claims of Chinese contact

Some researchers have argued that the Olmec civilization came into existence with the help of Chinese refugees, particularly at the end of the Shang dynasty. In 1975,
Betty Meggers Betty Jane Meggers (December 5, 1921 – July 2, 2012) was an American archaeologist best known for her work in South America. She was considered influential at the Smithsonian Institution, where she was long associated in research,Smithsonian Institution argued that the Olmec civilization originated around 1200 BCE due to Shang Chinese influences. In a 1996 book, Mike Xu, with the aid of Chen Hanping, claimed that celts from La Venta bear Chinese characters. These claims are unsupported by mainstream Mesoamerican researchers. Other claims of early Chinese contact with North America have been made. In 1882, approximately 30 brass coins, perhaps strung together, were reportedly found in the area of the
Cassiar Gold Rush The Cassiar Country, also referred to simply as the Cassiar, is a historical geographic region of the Canadian province of British Columbia. The Cassiar is located in the northwest portion of British Columbia, just to the northeast of the Stikin ...
, apparently near Dease Creek, an area which was dominated by Chinese gold miners. A contemporary account states:
In the summer of 1882 a miner found on De Foe (Deorse?) creek, Cassiar district, Br. Columbia, thirty Chinese coins in the auriferous sand, twenty-five feet below the surface. They appeared to have been strung, but on taking them up the miner let them drop apart. The earth above and around them was as compact as any in the neighborhood. One of these coins I examined at the store of Chu Chong in Victoria. Neither in metal nor markings did it resemble the modern coins, but in its figures looked more like an Aztec calendar. So far as I can make out the markings, this is a Chinese chronological cycle of sixty years, invented by Emperor Huungti, 2637 BCE, and circulated in this form to make his people remember it.
Grant Keddie, Curator of Archeology at the
Royal B.C. Museum Founded in 1886, the Royal British Columbia Museum (sometimes referred to as Royal BC Museum) consists of The Province of British Columbia's natural and human history museum as well as the British Columbia Provincial Archives. The museum is loca ...
identified these as good luck temple tokens minted in the 19th century. He believed that claims that these were very old made them notorious and that "The temple coins were shown to many people and different versions of stories pertaining to their discovery and age spread around the province to be put into print and changed frequently by many authors in the last 100 years." A group of Chinese Buddhist missionaries led by Hui Shen before 500 CE claimed to have visited a location called Fusang. Although Chinese mapmakers placed this territory on the Asian coast, others have suggested as early as the 1800s that Fusang might have been in North America, due to perceived similarities between portions of the California coast and Fusang as depicted by Asian sources. In his book ''1421: The Year China Discovered the World'', British author Gavin Menzies made the claim that the treasure fleets of Ming admiral Zheng He arrived in America in 1421. Menzies, Gavin. '' 1421: The Year China Discovered the World'' (Transworld Publishers, 2003). Professional historians contend that Zheng He reached the eastern coast of Africa, and dismiss Menzies's hypothesis as entirely without proof. In 1973 and 1975,
doughnut A doughnut or donut () is a type of food made from leavened fried dough. It is popular in many countries and is prepared in various forms as a sweet snack that can be homemade or purchased in bakeries, supermarkets, food stalls, and franc ...
-shaped stones that resembled stone anchors which were used by Chinese fishermen were discovered off the coast of California. These stones (sometimes called the ''Palos Verdes stones'') were initially thought to be up to 1,500 years old and therefore proof of pre-Columbian contact by Chinese sailors. Later geological investigations showed them to be made of a local rock which is known as
Monterey shale The Monterey Formation is an extensive Miocene oil-rich geological sedimentary formation in California, with outcrops of the formation in parts of the California Coast Ranges, Peninsular Ranges, and on some of California's off-shore island ...
, and they are thought to have been used by Chinese settlers who fished off the coast during the 19th century.


Claims of Japanese contact

Archaeologist
Emilio Estrada Emilio Estrada Carmona (28 May 1855 – 21 December 1911) was President of Ecuador Ecuador ( ; ; Quechua: ''Ikwayur''; Shuar: ''Ecuador'' or ''Ekuatur''), officially the Republic of Ecuador ( es, República del Ecuador, which liter ...
and co-workers wrote that pottery which was associated with the Valdivia culture of coastal Ecuador and dated to 3000–1500 BCE exhibited similarities to pottery which was produced during the
Jōmon period The is the time in Japanese history, traditionally dated between   6,000–300 BCE, during which Japan was inhabited by a diverse hunter-gatherer and early agriculturalist population united through a common Jōmon culture, which reached a c ...
in Japan, arguing that contact between the two cultures might explain the similarities. Chronological and other problems have led most archaeologists to dismiss this idea as implausible. The suggestion has been made that the resemblances (which are not complete) are simply due to the limited number of designs possible when incising clay. Alaskan anthropologist Nancy Yaw Davis claims that the
Zuni people The Zuni ( zun, A:shiwi; formerly spelled ''Zuñi'') are Native American Pueblo peoples native to the Zuni River valley. The Zuni are a Federally recognized tribe and most live in the Pueblo of Zuni on the Zuni River, a tributary of the Lit ...
of New Mexico exhibit linguistic and cultural similarities to the Japanese.Davis, Nancy Yaw (200). ''The Zuni Enigma''. W. W. Norton & Company. The Zuni language is a linguistic isolate, and Davis contends that the culture appears to differ from that of the surrounding natives in terms of blood type, endemic disease, and religion. Davis speculates that Buddhist priests or restless peasants from Japan may have crossed the Pacific in the 13th century, traveled to the American Southwest, and influenced Zuni society. In the 1890s, lawyer and politician James Wickersham argued that pre-Columbian contact between Japanese sailors and Native Americans was highly probable, given that from the early 17th century to the mid-19th century several dozen Japanese ships are known to have been carried from Asia to North America along the powerful Kuroshio Currents. Japanese ships landed at places between the Aleutian Islands in the north and Mexico in the south, carrying a total of 293 people in the 23 cases where head-counts were given in historical records. In most cases, the Japanese sailors gradually made their way home on merchant vessels. In 1834, a dismasted, rudderless Japanese ship was wrecked near Cape Flattery in the Pacific Northwest. Three survivors of the ship were enslaved by Makahs for a period before being rescued by members of the Hudson's Bay Company. Another Japanese ship went ashore in about 1850 near the mouth of the
Columbia River The Columbia River (Upper Chinook: ' or '; Sahaptin: ''Nch’i-Wàna'' or ''Nchi wana''; Sinixt dialect'' '') is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, C ...
, Wickersham writes, and the sailors were assimilated into the local Native American population. While admitting there is no definitive proof of pre-Columbian contact between Japanese and North Americans, Wickersham thought it implausible that such contacts as outlined above would have started only after Europeans arrived in North America and began documenting them.


Claims of Indian contact

In 1879,
Alexander Cunningham Major General Sir Alexander Cunningham (23 January 1814 – 28 November 1893) was a British Army engineer with the Bengal Engineer Group who later took an interest in the history and archaeology of India. In 1861, he was appointed to the newly ...
wrote a description of the carvings on the
Stupa A stupa ( sa, स्तूप, lit=heap, ) is a mound-like or hemispherical structure containing relics (such as ''śarīra'' – typically the remains of Buddhist monks or nuns) that is used as a place of meditation. In Buddhism, circumamb ...
of Bharhut in central India, dating from c. 200 BCE, among which he noted what appeared to be a depiction of a custard-apple ('' Annona squamosa''). Cunningham was not initially aware that this plant, indigenous to the New World tropics, was introduced to India after
Vasco da Gama Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira (; ; c. 1460s – 24 December 1524), was a Portuguese explorer and the first European to reach India by sea. His initial voyage to India by way of Cape of Good Hope (1497–1499) was the first to link E ...
's discovery of the sea route in 1498, and the problem was pointed out to him. A 2009 study claimed to have found carbonized remains that date to 2000 BCE and appear to be those of custard-apple seeds. Grafton Elliot Smith claimed that certain motifs present in the carvings on the Mayan stelae at Copán represented the Asian elephant, and wrote a book on the topic entitled ''Elephants and Ethnologists'' in 1924. Contemporary archaeologists suggested that the depictions were almost certainly based on the (indigenous) tapir, with the result that Smith's suggestions have generally been dismissed by subsequent research. Some objects depicted in carvings from Karnataka, dating from the 12th century, that resemble ears of maize (''
Zea mays Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...
''—a crop native to the New World), were interpreted by Carl Johannessen in 1989 as evidence of pre-Columbian contact. These suggestions were dismissed by multiple Indian researchers based on several lines of evidence. The object has been claimed by some to instead represent a "Muktaphala", an imaginary fruit bedecked with pearls.


Claims of African and West Asian contact


Claims of African contact

Proposed claims for an African presence in Mesoamerica stem from attributes of the Olmec culture, the claimed transfer of African plants to the Americas, and interpretations of European and Arabic historical accounts. The Olmec culture existed in what is now southern Mexico from roughly 1200 BCE to 400 BCE. The idea that the Olmecs are related to Africans was first suggested by José Melgar, who discovered the first colossal head at Hueyapan (now Tres Zapotes) in 1862. More recently, Ivan Van Sertima speculated an African influence on Mesoamerican culture in his book ''They Came Before Columbus'' (1976). His claims included the attribution of Mesoamerican pyramids, calendar technology, mummification, and mythology to the arrival of Africans by boat on currents running from Western Africa to the Americas. Heavily inspired by Leo Wiener (see below), Van Sertima suggested that the Aztec god
Quetzalcoatl Quetzalcoatl (, ; Spanish: ''Quetzalcóatl'' ; nci-IPA, Quetzalcōātl, ket͡saɬˈkoːaːt͡ɬ (Modern Nahuatl pronunciation), in honorific form: ''Quetzalcōātzin'') is a deity in Aztec culture and literature whose name comes from the Nahu ...
represented an African visitor. His conclusions have been severely criticized by mainstream academics and considered pseudoarchaeology. Leo Wiener's ''Africa and the Discovery of America'' suggests similarities between the
Mandinka people The Mandinka or Malinke are a West African ethnic group primarily found in southern Mali, the Gambia and eastern Guinea. Numbering about 11 million, they are the largest subgroup of the Mandé peoples and one of the largest ethnic-linguistic gro ...
of West Africa and native Mesoamerican religious symbols such as the winged serpent and the sun disk, or
Quetzalcoatl Quetzalcoatl (, ; Spanish: ''Quetzalcóatl'' ; nci-IPA, Quetzalcōātl, ket͡saɬˈkoːaːt͡ɬ (Modern Nahuatl pronunciation), in honorific form: ''Quetzalcōātzin'') is a deity in Aztec culture and literature whose name comes from the Nahu ...
, and words that have Mandé roots and share similar meanings across both cultures, such as "kore", "gadwal", and "qubila" (in Arabic) or "kofila" (in Mandinka). Malian sources describe what some consider to be visits to the New World by a fleet from the
Mali Empire The Mali Empire ( Manding: ''Mandé''Ki-Zerbo, Joseph: ''UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. IV, Abridged Edition: Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century'', p. 57. University of California Press, 1997. or Manden; ar, مالي, Māl ...
in 1311, led by Abu Bakr II. According to the only known primary-source-based copy of Christopher Columbus's journal (transcribed by Bartolomé de las Casas), the purpose of Columbus's third voyage was to test both (1) the claims of King John II of Portugal that "canoes had been found which set out from the coast of Guinea est Africaand sailed to the west with merchandise" and (2) the claims of the native inhabitants of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola that "there had come to Española from the south and south-east, a black people who have the tops of their spears made of a metal which they call ''guanin'', of which he had sent samples to the Sovereigns to have them assayed, when it was found that of 32 parts, 18 were of gold, 6 of silver and 8 of copper". Brazilian researcher Niede Guidon, who led the excavations of the
Pedra Furada Pedra Furada (, meaning pierced rock) is an important collection of over 800 archaeological sites in the state of Piauí, Brazil. These include hundreds of rock paintings dating from circa 12,000 years before present. More importantly, charcoa ...
sites, "said she believed that humans...might have come not overland from Asia but by boat from Africa", with the journey taking place 100,000 years ago, well before the accepted dates for the earliest human migrations that led to the prehistoric settlement of the Americas.
Michael R. Waters Michael Waters is an American academic working as a professor of anthropology and geography at Texas A&M University, where he holds the Endowed Chair in First American Studies."Dr. Michael R. Waters." Geography Profile. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 201 ...
, a geoarchaeologist at Texas A&M University, noted the absence of genetic evidence in modern populations to support Guidon's claim.


Claims of Arab contact

Early Chinese accounts of Muslim expeditions state that Muslim sailors reached a region called Mulan Pi ("magnolia skin") (). Mulan Pi is mentioned in ''
Lingwai Daida ''Lingwai Daida'' (), variously translated as ''Representative Answers from the Region beyond the Mountains'', ''Notes Answering urious Questionsfrom the land beyond the Pass'' or other similar titles, is a 12th-century geographical treatise wri ...
'' (1178) by
Zhou Qufei Zhou may refer to: Chinese history * King Zhou of Shang () (1105 BC–1046 BC), the last king of the Shang dynasty * Predynastic Zhou (), 11th-century BC precursor to the Zhou dynasty * Zhou dynasty () (1046 BC–256 BC), a dynasty of China ** West ...
and '' Zhufan Zhi'' (1225) by
Chao Jukua Zhao Rukuo (; 1170–1231), also read as Zhao Rugua, or misread as Zhao Rushi, was a Chinese historian and politician during the Song dynasty. He wrote a two-volume book titled ''Zhu Fan Zhi''. The book deals with the world known to the Chinese in t ...
, together referred to as the "
Sung Document Zhao Rukuo (; 1170–1231), also read as Zhao Rugua, or misread as Zhao Rushi, was a Chinese historian and politician during the Song dynasty. He wrote a two-volume book titled ''Zhu Fan Zhi''. The book deals with the world known to the Chinese in t ...
". Mulan Pi is normally identified as Spain and Morocco of the Almoravid dynasty (Al-Murabitun), though some fringe theories hold that it is instead some part of the Americas. One supporter of the interpretation of Mulan Pi as part of the Americas was historian
Hui-lin Li Hui-lin Li (李慧林, 1911–2002) was a Chinese botanist, academic, and researcher who worked at the University of Pennsylvania, National Taiwan University, and Chinese Academy of Sciences. Biography Hui-lin Li was born in Soochow, a city close ...
in 1961, and while
Joseph Needham Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham (; 9 December 1900 – 24 March 1995) was a British biochemist, historian of science and sinologist known for his scientific research and writing on the history of Chinese science and technology, in ...
was also open to the possibility, he doubted that Arab ships at the time would have been able to withstand a return journey over such a long distance across the Atlantic Ocean, pointing out that a return journey would have been impossible without knowledge of prevailing winds and currents. According to
Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
historian Abu al-Hasan Ali al-Mas'udi (871–957),
Khashkhash Ibn Saeed Ibn Aswad Khashkhash ibn Saeed ibn Aswad ( ar, خَشْخَاش ٱبْن سَعِيد ٱبْن أَسْوَد, '; born in Pechina, Andalusia) was a Moorish navigator of Islamic Iberia. According to Muslim historian Abu al-Hasan Ali al-Mas'udi (871-957), K ...
sailed over the Atlantic Ocean and discovered a previously unknown land (', ar, أرض مجهولة) in 889 and returned with a shipload of valuable treasures. The passage has been alternatively interpreted to imply that Ali al-Masudi regarded the story of Khashkhash to be a fanciful tale.


Claims of ancient Phoenician contact

In 1996,
Mark McMenamin Mark A. S. McMenamin (born c. 1957) is an American paleontologist and professor of geology at Mount Holyoke College. He has contributed to the study of the Cambrian explosion and the Ediacaran biota. He is the author of several books, most ...
proposed that Phoenician sailors discovered the New World c. 350 BC.Scott, J. M. 2005. ''Geography in Early Judaism and Christianity.'' Cambridge University Press, pp. 182–183. The Phoenician state of Carthage minted gold staters in 350 BC bearing a pattern in the reverse exergue of the coins, which McMenamin initially interpreted as a map of the Mediterranean with the Americas shown to the west across the Atlantic. McMenamin later demonstrated that these coins found in America were modern forgeries.


Claims of ancient Judaic contact

The Bat Creek inscription and
Los Lunas Decalogue Stone The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone is a large boulder on the side of Hidden Mountain, near Los Lunas, New Mexico, about south of Albuquerque, that bears a nine-line inscription carved into a flat panel. The stone is also known as the Los Lunas Myster ...
have led some to suggest the possibility that Jewish seafarers may have traveled to America after they fled from the Roman Empire at the time of the
Jewish–Roman Wars The Jewish–Roman wars were a series of large-scale revolts by the Jews of the Eastern Mediterranean against the Roman Empire between 66 and 135 CE. The First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE) and the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE) were nati ...
in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. However, American archaeologists Robert C. Mainfort Jr. and Mary L. Kwas argued in ''American Antiquity'' (2004) that the Bat Creek inscription was copied from an illustration in an 1870 Masonic reference book and introduced by the Smithsonian field assistant who found it during excavation activities. As for the Decalogue Stone, there are mistakes which suggest that it was carved by one or more novices who either overlooked or misunderstood some details on a source Decalogue from which they copied it. Since there is no other evidence or archaeological context in the vicinity, it is most likely that the legend at the nearby university is true—that the stone was carved by two anthropology students whose signatures can be seen inscribed in the rock below the Decalogue, "Eva and Hobe 3-13-30." Scholar
Cyrus H. Gordon Cyrus Herzl Gordon (June 29, 1908 – March 30, 2001) was an American scholar of Near Eastern cultures and ancient languages. Biography Gordon was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Lithuanian emigrant and physician Benjamin Gordon. ...
believed that Phoenicians and other
Semitic Semitic most commonly refers to the Semitic languages, a name used since the 1770s to refer to the language family currently present in West Asia, North and East Africa, and Malta. Semitic may also refer to: Religions * Abrahamic religions ** ...
groups had crossed the Atlantic in antiquity, ultimately arriving in both North and South America. This opinion was based on his own work on the Bat Creek inscription. Similar ideas were also held by
John Philip Cohane John Philip Cohane, born in New Haven, Connecticut was an American author. He later moved to Ireland where he wrote books on etymology and ancient astronaut themes. Books Cohane published ''The Indestructible Irish'' in 1968 in which he proposed t ...
; Cohane even claimed that many geographical placenames in the United States have a Semitic origin.


Claims of European contact


Solutrean hypothesis

The Solutrean hypothesis argues that Europeans migrated to the New World during the
Paleolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...
era, circa 16,000 to 13,000 BCE. This hypothesis proposes contact partly on the basis of perceived similarities between the flint tools of the
Solutrean culture The Solutrean archaeological industry, industry is a relatively advanced flint tool-making style of the Upper Paleolithic of the Final Gravettian, from around 22,000 to 17,000 Before Present, BP. Solutrean sites have been found in modern-day ...
in modern-day France, Spain and Portugal (which thrived circa 20,000 to 15,000 BCE), and the Clovis culture of North America, which developed circa 9000 BCE. The Solutrean hypothesis was proposed in the mid-1990s. It has little support amongst the scientific community, and genetic markers are inconsistent with the idea.


Claims of ancient Roman contact

Evidence of contacts with the civilizations of Classical Antiquity—primarily with the Roman Empire, but sometimes also with other contemporaneous cultures—have been based on isolated archaeological finds in American sites that originated in the Old World. For example, the Bay of Jars in Brazil has been yielding ancient clay storage jars that resemble Roman amphorae for over 150 years. It has been proposed that the origin of these jars is a Roman shipwreck, although it has also been suggested that they could be 15th- or 16th-century Spanish olive oil jars. Archaeologist Romeo Hristov argues that a Roman ship, or the drifting of such a shipwreck to American shores, is a possible explanation for the alleged discovery of artifacts that are apparently ancient Roman in origin (such as the Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca bearded head) in America. Hristov claims that the possibility of such an event has been made more likely by the discovery of evidence of travels by Romans to Tenerife and
Lanzarote Lanzarote (, , ) is a Spanish island, the easternmost of the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean. It is located approximately off the north coast of Africa and from the Iberian Peninsula. Covering , Lanzarote is the fourth-largest of the i ...
in the
Canary Islands The Canary Islands (; es, Canarias, ), also known informally as the Canaries, are a Spanish autonomous community and archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, in Macaronesia. At their closest point to the African mainland, they are west of Morocc ...
, and of a Roman settlement (from the 1st century BCE to the 4th century CE) on Lanzarote. In 1950, an Italian botanist, Domenico Casella, suggested that a depiction of a pineapple (a fruit native to the New World tropics) was represented among wall paintings of Mediterranean fruits at
Pompeii Pompeii (, ) was an ancient city located in what is now the ''comune'' of Pompei near Naples in the Campania region of Italy. Pompeii, along with Herculaneum and many villas in the surrounding area (e.g. at Boscoreale, Stabiae), was buried ...
. According to
Wilhelmina Feemster Jashemski Wilhelmina Mary Feemster Jashemski (July 10, 1910 – December 24, 2007) was an American scholar of the ancient site of Pompeii, where her archaeological investigations focused on the evidence of gardens and horticulture in the ancient city. ...
, this interpretation has been challenged by other botanists, who identify it as a pine cone from the umbrella pine tree, which is native to the Mediterranean area.


Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca head

A small terracotta sculpture of a head, with a beard and European-like features, was found in 1933 in the Toluca Valley, southwest of Mexico City, in a burial offering under three intact floors of a pre-colonial building dated to between 1476 and 1510. The artifact has been studied by Roman art authority Bernard Andreae, director emeritus of the German Institute of Archaeology in Rome, Italy, and Austrian anthropologist
Robert von Heine-Geldern Robert Freiherr von Heine-Geldern (16 July 1885 - 25/26 May 1968), known after 1919 as Robert Heine-Geldern, was a noted Austrian ethnologist, ancient historian, and archaeologist, and a grandnephew of poet Heinrich Heine. Biography Heine-Gelder ...
, both of whom stated that the style of the artifact was compatible with small Roman sculptures of the 2nd century. If genuine and if not placed there after 1492 (the pottery found with it dates to between 1476 and 1510), the find provides evidence for at least a one-time contact between the Old and New Worlds. According to
Arizona State University Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the ...
's Michael E. Smith, a leading Mesoamerican scholar named John Paddock used to tell his classes in the years before he died that the artifact was planted as a joke by Hugo Moedano, a student who originally worked on the site. Despite speaking with individuals who knew the original discoverer (García Payón), and Moedano, Smith says he has been unable to confirm or reject this claim. Though he remains skeptical, Smith concedes he cannot rule out the possibility that the head was a genuinely buried post-Classic offering at Calixtlahuaca.


14th- and 15th-century European contact

Henry I Sinclair, Earl of Orkney and feudal baron of Roslin (c. 1345 – c. 1400), was a Scottish nobleman who is best known today from a modern legend which claims that he took part in explorations of Greenland and North America almost 100 years before Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas. In 1784, he was identified by Johann Reinhold ForsterJohann Reinhold Forster, ''History of the Voyages and Discoveries Made in the North'', Printed for G.G.J. and J. Robinson, London, 1786 as possibly being the Prince
Zichmni Zichmni is the name of an explorer-prince who appears in a 1558 book by Caterino Zeno of Venice, allegedly based on letters and a map (called the Zeno map) dating to the year 1400 by the author's ancestors, brothers Nicolò and Antonio Zeno. Zi ...
who is described in letters which were allegedly written around 1400 by the
Zeno brothers The Zeno brothers, Nicolò (c. 1326 – c. 1402) and Antonio (died c. 1403), were Italian noblemen from the Republic of Venice who lived during the 14th century. They came to prominence in 1558, when their descendant, Nicolò Zeno the Younger ...
of
Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400  ...
, in which they describe a voyage which they made throughout the
North Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the "Old World" of Africa, Europe and ...
under the command of Zichmni.T. J. Oleson
"Zeno, Nicolò"
in ''Dictionary of Canadian Biography'', vol. 1, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed October 1, 2014
According to ''The Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online'', "the Zeno affair remains one of the most preposterous and at the same time one of the most successful fabrications in the history of exploration." Henry was the grandfather of
William Sinclair, 1st Earl of Caithness William Sinclair (1410–1480), 1st Earl of Caithness (1455–1476), last Earl (Jarl) of Orkney (1434–1470 de facto, –1472 de jure), 2nd Lord Sinclair and 11th Baron of Roslin was a Norwegian and Scottish nobleman and the buil ...
, the builder of Rosslyn Chapel near Edinburgh, Scotland. The authors
Robert Lomas Robert Lomas is a British writer, physicist and business studies academic. He writes primarily about the history of Freemasonry as well as the Neolithic period, ancient engineering, and archaeoastronomy. Career In engineering and business stu ...
and
Christopher Knight Christopher or Chris Knight may refer to: Film and television *Christopher Knight (actor) (born 1957), American actor * Christopher Knight (filmmaker), blogger and filmmaker * Chris Knight (''Neighbours''), fictional character in the soap opera '' ...
believe some carvings in the chapel were intended to represent ears of New World corn or maize,Christopher Knight and
Robert Lomas Robert Lomas is a British writer, physicist and business studies academic. He writes primarily about the history of Freemasonry as well as the Neolithic period, ancient engineering, and archaeoastronomy. Career In engineering and business stu ...
. ''The Hiram Key''. Fair Winds Press, 2001 .
a crop unknown in Europe at the time of the chapel's construction,. Knight and Lomas view these carvings as evidence supporting the idea that Henry Sinclair traveled to the Americas well before Columbus. In their book they discuss meeting with the wife of the botanist Adrian Dyer and explain that Dyer's wife told them that Dyer agreed that the image thought to be maize was accurate. In fact Dyer found only one identifiable plant among the botanical carvings and instead suggested that the "maize" and "aloe" were stylized wooden patterns, only coincidentally looking like real plants. Specialists in medieval architecture have variously interpreted the carvings as stylised depictions of wheat, strawberries, or lilies.Historian Mark Oxbrow, quoted i
"The ship of dreams"
by Diane MacLean, Scotsman.com, May 13, 2005
Henry Yule Oldham Henry Yule Oldham, (14 December 1862 – 14 March 1951) was a teacher and geographer who, in 1901, conducted the definitive version of the Bedford Level experiment, a proof that the Earth is a sphere. Early life Oldham was born in Düsseldorf, Ge ...
suggested that the
Bianco world map The Bianco World Map is a map created by ''Andrea Bianco'', a 15th-century Venetian sailor and cartographer. This map was a part of a nautical atlas including ten pages made of vellum (each measuring 26 × 38 cm). These vellum pages we ...
depicted part of the coast of Brazil before 1448. This was immediately opposed by members of the
Royal Geographical Society The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), often shortened to RGS, is a learned society and professional body for geography based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical scien ...
but later repeated by American and European historians. This was later refuted by Abel Fontoura da Costa, who proved that it actually depicted Santiago, the largest island of the
Cape Verde , national_anthem = () , official_languages = Portuguese , national_languages = Cape Verdean Creole , capital = Praia , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , demonym ...
archipelago. Some have conjectured that Columbus was able to persuade the Catholic Monarchs of Castile and
Aragon Aragon ( , ; Spanish and an, Aragón ; ca, Aragó ) is an autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. In northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces (from north to sou ...
to support his planned voyage only because they were aware of some recent earlier voyage across the Atlantic. Some suggest that Columbus himself visited Canada or Greenland before 1492, because according to Bartolomé de las Casas he wrote he had sailed 100 leagues past an island he called Thule in 1477. Whether Columbus actually did this and what island he visited, if any, is uncertain. Columbus is thought to have visited Bristol in 1476. Bristol was also the port from which
John Cabot John Cabot ( it, Giovanni Caboto ; 1450 – 1500) was an Italian navigator and explorer. His 1497 voyage to the coast of North America under the commission of Henry VII of England is the earliest-known European exploration of coastal North ...
sailed in 1497, crewed mostly by Bristol sailors. In a letter of late 1497 or early 1498, the English merchant John Day wrote to Columbus about Cabot's discoveries, saying that land found by Cabot was "discovered in the past by the men from Bristol who found 'Brasil' as your lordship knows". There may be records of expeditions from Bristol to find the " isle of Brazil" in 1480 and 1481. Trade between Bristol and Iceland is well documented from the mid-15th century. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés records several such legends in his ''Historia general 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 caravel's
ship pilot A maritime pilot, marine pilot, harbor pilot, port pilot, ship pilot, or simply pilot, is a mariner who maneuvers ships through dangerous or congested waters, such as harbors or river mouths. Maritime pilots are regarded as skilled professionals ...
, a man called
Alonso Sánchez Alonso Sánchez de Huelva was an alleged 15th-century mariner and merchant born in Huelva, Spain, on Andalusia's Atlantic coast. Legend has it that he reached America several years before Christopher Columbus did.. After the European discovery o ...
, and a few others 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, though Oviedo himself regarded it as a myth. In 1925, Soren Larsen wrote a book claiming that a joint Danish-Portuguese expedition landed in Newfoundland or Labrador in 1473 and again in 1476. Larsen claimed that Didrik Pining and
Hans Pothorst Hans Pothorst ( 1440 – 1490) was a privateer, likely from the German city Hildesheim. In 1925, researcher Sofus Larsen proposed that Pothhorst may have landed in North America, along with Didrik Pining, in the 1470s, almost twenty years before ...
served as captains, while João Vaz Corte-Real and the possibly mythical
John Scolvus John Scolvus or John of Kolno may have been a navigator of the late 15th century. It has been claimed he was among a group of early Europeans to reach the shores of the Americas prior to Columbus, arriving in 1476 as steersman of Didrik Pining, a ...
served as navigators, accompanied by Álvaro Martins. Nothing beyond circumstantial evidence has been found to support Larsen's claims. The historical record shows that Basque fishermen were present in Newfoundland and Labrador from at least 1517 onward (therefore predating all recorded European settlements in the region except those of the Norse). The Basques' fishing expeditions led to significant trade and cultural exchanges with Native Americans. A fringe theory suggests that Basque sailors first arrived in North America prior to Columbus' voyages to the New World (some sources suggest the late 14th century as a tentative date) but kept the destination a secret in order to avoid competition over the fishing resources of the North American coasts. There is no historical or archaeological evidence to support this claim.


Irish and Welsh legends

The legend of Saint Brendan, an Irish monk from what is now
County Kerry County Kerry ( gle, Contae Chiarraí) is a county in Ireland. It is located in the South-West Region and forms part of the province of Munster. It is named after the Ciarraige who lived in part of the present county. The population of the co ...
, involves a fantastical journey into the Atlantic Ocean in search of Paradise in the 6th century. Since the discovery of the New World, various authors have tried to link the Brendan legend with an early discovery of America. In 1977, the voyage was successfully recreated by
Tim Severin Timothy Severin (25 September 1940 – 18 December 2020) was a British explorer, historian, and writer. Severin was noted for his work in retracing the legendary journeys of historical figures. Severin was awarded both the Founder's Medal ...
using a replica of an ancient Irish currach. According to a British myth, Madoc was a prince from Wales who explored the Americas as early as 1170. While most scholars consider this legend to be untrue, it was used to bolster British claims in the Americas vis-à-vis those of Spain. The "Madoc story" remained popular in later centuries, and a later development asserted that Madoc's voyagers had intermarried with local Native Americans, and that their Welsh-speaking descendants still live somewhere in the United States. These "Welsh Indians" were credited with the construction of a number of landmarks throughout the Midwestern United States, and a number of white travelers were inspired to go look for them. The "Madoc story" has been the subject of much speculation in the context of possible pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact. No conclusive archaeological proof of such a man or his voyages has been found in the New or Old World; however, speculation abounds connecting him with certain sites, such as Devil's Backbone, located on the Ohio River at Fourteen Mile Creek near Louisville, Kentucky. A plaque at
Fort Mountain State Park Fort Mountain State Park is a Georgia state park located between Chatsworth and Ellijay on Fort Mountain. The state park was founded in 1938 and is named for an ancient rock wall located on the peak.The plaque has been changed, leaving no reference to Madoc or the Welsh. Biologist and controversial amateur epigrapher
Barry Fell Howard Barraclough Fell (June 6, 1917 – April 21, 1994), better known as Barry Fell, was a professor of invertebrate zoology at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. While his primary professional research included starfish and sea urch ...
claims that Irish Ogham writing has been found carved into stones in the Virginias. Linguist
David H. Kelley David Humiston Kelley (April 1, 1924 in Albany, New York – May 19, 2011) was an American archaeologist and epigrapher. He was associated with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and later with the University of Calgary. He is most noted for his ...
has criticized some of Fell's work but nonetheless argued that genuine Celtic Ogham inscriptions have in fact been discovered in America. However, others have raised serious doubts about these claims.


Claims of transoceanic travel from the New World to the Old World


Claims of Egyptian coca and tobacco

Traces of coca and
nicotine Nicotine is a naturally produced alkaloid in the nightshade family of plants (most predominantly in tobacco and ''Duboisia hopwoodii'') and is widely used recreationally as a stimulant and anxiolytic. As a pharmaceutical drug, it is used fo ...
which are found in some Egyptian mummies have led to speculation that Ancient Egyptians may have had contact with the New World. The initial discovery was made by a German toxicologist, Svetlana Balabanova, after examining the mummy of a priestess who was named
Henut Taui Henut Taui, or Henuttaui, Henuttawy (''floruit, fl.'' ca 1000 BCE) was an Ancient Egyptian priestess during the Twenty-first Dynasty of Egypt, 21st Dynasty whose remains were Mummy#The Egyptian mummies, mummified. She is mainly known for being on ...
. Follow-up tests on the hair shaft, which were performed in order to rule out the possibility of contamination, revealed the same results. A television show reported that examinations of numerous
Sudan Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...
ese mummies which were also undertaken by Balabanova mirrored what was found in the mummy of Henut Taui."Curse of the Cocaine Mummies" written and directed by Sarah Marris. (Producers: Hilary Lawson, Maureen Lemire and narrated by Hilary Kilberg). A TVF Production for Channel Four in association with the Discovery Channel, 1997. Balabanova suggested that the tobacco may be accounted for since it may have also been known in China and Europe, as indicated by analyses run on human remains from those respective regions. Balabanova proposed that such plants native to the general area may have developed independently, but have since gone extinct. Other explanations include fraud, though curator Alfred Grimm of the Egyptian Museum in Munich disputes this. Skeptical of Balabanova's findings, Rosalie David, Keeper of Egyptology at the Manchester Museum, had similar tests performed on samples which were taken from the Manchester mummy collection and she reported that two of the tissue samples and one hair sample tested positive for the presence of nicotine. Sources of nicotine other than tobacco and sources of cocaine in the Old World are discussed by the British biologist Duncan Edlin. Mainstream scholars remain skeptical, and they do not see the results of these tests as proof of ancient contact between Africa and the Americas, especially because there may be possible Old World sources of cocaine and nicotine. Two attempts to replicate Balabanova's findings of cocaine failed, suggesting "that either Balabanova and her associates are misinterpreting their results or that the samples of mummies tested by them have been mysteriously exposed to cocaine." A re-examination of the mummy of Ramesses II in the 1970s revealed the presence of fragments of tobacco leaves in its abdomen. This finding became a popular topic in fringe literature and the media and it was seen as proof of contact between Ancient Egypt and the New World. The investigator Maurice Bucaille noted that when the mummy was unwrapped in 1886 the abdomen was left open and "it was no longer possible to attach any importance to the presence inside the abdominal cavity of whatever material was found there, since the material could have come from the surrounding environment." Following the renewed discussion of tobacco sparked by Balabanova's research and its mention in a 2000 publication by Rosalie David, a study in the journal ''
Antiquity Antiquity or Antiquities may refer to: Historical objects or periods Artifacts *Antiquities, objects or artifacts surviving from ancient cultures Eras Any period before the European Middle Ages (5th to 15th centuries) but still within the histo ...
'' suggested that reports of both tobacco and cocaine in mummies "ignored their post-excavation histories" and pointed out that the mummy of Ramesses II had been moved five times between 1883 and 1975.


Claims of travel in Roman times

Pomponius Mela writes, Pomponius Mela.
De situ orbis libri III
', chapter 5.
and is copied by Pliny the Elder, that Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer (died 59 BCE), proconsul in Gaul, received "several Indians" (''Indi'') who had been driven by a storm to the coasts of
Germania Germania ( ; ), also called Magna Germania (English: ''Great Germania''), Germania Libera (English: ''Free Germania''), or Germanic Barbaricum to distinguish it from the Roman province of the same name, was a large historical region in north- ...
as a present from a Germanic king:
''Metellum Celerem adjicit, eumque ita retulisse commemorat: Cum Galliae proconsule praeesset, Indos quosdam a rege uevorumdono 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.''
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 Germania. They thus resisted the sea, but suffered from the cold for the rest of their travel, and that is the reason why they left.
Frederick J. Pohl Frederick Julius Pohl (August 18, 1889 – February 21, 1991) was a prolific playwright, literary critic, editor and book writer. He is best known for his books espousing speculative and controversial historical theories of Pre-Columbian trans-oc ...
suggested that these castaways were possibly American Indians. This account is open to question, since Metellus Celer died just after his consulship, before he ever got to Gaul.


Icelander DNA finding

In 2010, Sigríður Sunna Ebenesersdóttir published a genetic study showing that over 350 living Icelanders carried mitochondrial DNA of a new type, C1e, belonging to the C1 clade which was until then known only from Native American and East Asian populations. Using the deCODE genetics database, Sigríður Sunna determined that the DNA entered the Icelandic population not later than 1700, and likely several centuries earlier. However Sigríður Sunna also states that "while a Native American origin seems most likely for his new haplogroup an Asian or European origin cannot be ruled out". In 2014, a study discovered a new mtDNA subclade C1f from the remains of three people found in north-western Russia and dated to 7,500 years ago. It has not been detected in modern populations. The study proposed the hypothesis that the sister C1e and C1f subclades had split early from the most recent common ancestor of the C1 clade and had evolved independently, and that subclade C1e had a northern European origin. Iceland was settled by the Vikings 1,130 years ago and they had raided heavily into western Russia, where the sister subclade C1f is now known to have resided. They proposed that both subclades were brought to Iceland through the Vikings, and that C1e went extinct on mainland northern Europe due to population turnover and its small representation, and subclade C1f went extinct completely.


Norse legends and sagas

In 1009, legends report that Norse explorer Thorfinn Karlsefni abducted two children from Markland, an area on the North American mainland where Norse explorers visited but did not settle. The two children were then taken to Greenland, where they were baptized and taught to speak Norse. In 1420, Danish geographer Claudius Clavus Swart wrote that he personally had seen "
pygmies In anthropology, pygmy peoples are ethnic groups whose average height is unusually short. The term pygmyism is used to describe the phenotype of endemic short stature (as opposed to disproportionate dwarfism occurring in isolated cases in a pop ...
" from Greenland who were caught by Norsemen in a small skin boat. Their boat was hung in
Nidaros Cathedral Nidaros Cathedral ( no, Nidarosdomen / Nidaros Domkirke) is a Church of Norway cathedral located in the city of Trondheim in Trøndelag county. It is built over the burial site of Olav II of Norway, King Olav II (c. 995–1030, reigned 1015–102 ...
in Trondheim along with another, longer boat also taken from "pygmies". Clavus Swart's description fits the Inuit and two of their types of boats, the
kayak A kayak is a small, narrow watercraft which is typically propelled by means of a double-bladed paddle. The word kayak originates from the Greenlandic word ''qajaq'' (). The traditional kayak has a covered deck and one or more cockpits, each se ...
and the umiak. Similarly, the Swedish clergyman Olaus Magnus wrote in 1505 that he saw in Oslo Cathedral two leather boats taken decades earlier. According to Olaus, the boats were captured from Greenland pirates by one of the Haakons, which would place the event in the 14th century. In Ferdinand Columbus's biography of his father Christopher, he says that in 1477 his father saw in Galway, Ireland, two dead bodies which had washed ashore in their boat. The bodies and boat were of exotic appearance, and have been suggested to have been Inuit who had drifted off course.


Claims of Inuit travel to the Old World

It has been suggested that the Norse took other indigenous peoples to Europe as slaves over the following centuries, because they are known to have taken Scottish and Irish slaves. There is also evidence of Inuit coming to Europe under their own power or as captives after 1492. In Scotland, they were known as the
Finn-men Finn-men, also known as, Muckle men, Fion and Fin Finn, were Inuit sighted around the north of Scotland. Sightings The first recorded sighting was in Orkney, in 1682. James Wallace, writing in about 1688, described a Finn-man in his "little Boa ...
. A substantial body of Greenland Inuit folklore first collected in the 19th century told of journeys by boat to Akilineq, here depicted as a rich country across the ocean.


Claims of Incan travel to Oceania

Peruvian historian
José Antonio del Busto Duthurburu José Antonio del Busto Duthurburu (August 21, 1932 – December 25, 2006) was a Peruvian historian. Biography He completed his studies at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. After completing his studies he devoted himself to teaching ...
popularized the theory that Inca ruler Topa Inca Yupanqui may have led a maritime exploration voyage across the Pacific Ocean around 1465, eventually reaching
French Polynesia )Territorial motto: ( en, "Great Tahiti of the Golden Haze") , anthem = , song_type = Regional anthem , song = " Ia Ora 'O Tahiti Nui" , image_map = French Polynesia on the globe (French Polynesia centered).svg , map_alt = Location of Frenc ...
and Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Different Spanish chroniclers of the 16th century recount stories told to them by Inca peoples, in which Yupanqui embarked on a sea voyage, eventually reaching two islands referred to as ''Nina Chumpi'' ("fire belt") and ''Hawa Chumpi'' ("outer belt", also spelled ''Avachumpi, Hahua chumpi''). According to the stories, Yupanqui returned from the expedition bringing back with him black-skinned people, gold, a chair made of brass, and the skin of a horse or an animal similar to a horse. Del Busto speculates the "black-skinned people" may have been Melanesians."¿Viajarón los Incas por Oceanía?"
''Revista Enraizada''. (In Spanish) 2020.
As supporting evidence the author points to a 1924 expedition to French Polynesia by linguist Paul Rivet, where he found that natives in the islands of Mangareva and
Temoe Temoe, or Te Moe, is a small atoll of the Gambier Islands in French Polynesia. It is located in the far southeast of the Tuamotu group archipelago. It lies about 37 km southeast from the Gambier Islands and more than southeast from Mataiva, ...
had a legend about a "king Tupa" who had arrived to those islands travelling by sea from the east. Moreover, the stonework at the
Ahu Vinapu Ahu Vinapu is an archaeological site on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in Eastern Polynesia. The ceremonial center of Vinapu includes one of the larger ahu on Rapa Nui. The ahu exhibits extraordinary stonemasonry consisting of large, carefully fitte ...
site in Rapa Nui has been said by proponents of the theory to bear a striking resemblance to the Inca Chullpa structures in South America. Critics have pointed out that Yupanqui's expedition—assuming it ever took place—could have reached the Galapagos Islands or some other part of the Americas instead of Oceania.


Claims based on religious traditions or symbols


Claims of pre-Columbian contact with Christian voyagers

During the period of
Spanish colonization of the Americas Spain began colonizing the Americas under the Crown of Castile and was spearheaded by the Spanish . The Americas were invaded and incorporated into the Spanish Empire, with the exception of Brazil, British America, and some small regions ...
, several indigenous myths and works of art led a number of Spanish chroniclers and authors to suggest that Christian preachers may have visited Mesoamerica well before the Age of Discovery. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, for example, was intrigued by the presence of cross symbols in Mayan hieroglyphs, which according to him suggested that other Christians may have arrived in ancient Mexico before the Spanish conquistadors.
Fray Diego Durán Fray or Frays or The Fray may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities *Fray, a phenomenon in Terry Pratchett's '' The Carpet People'' *Fray, the main character in the video games: **''Fray in Magical Adventure'' **''Fray CD' ...
, for his part, linked the legend of the Pre-Columbian god
Quetzalcoatl Quetzalcoatl (, ; Spanish: ''Quetzalcóatl'' ; nci-IPA, Quetzalcōātl, ket͡saɬˈkoːaːt͡ɬ (Modern Nahuatl pronunciation), in honorific form: ''Quetzalcōātzin'') is a deity in Aztec culture and literature whose name comes from the Nahu ...
(whom he describes as being chaste, penitent, and a miracle-worker) to the Biblical accounts of Christian apostles. Bartolomé de las Casas describes Quetzalcoatl as being fair-skinned, tall, and bearded (therefore suggesting an Old World origin), while Fray Juan de Torquemada credits him with bringing agriculture to the Americas. Modern scholarship has cast serious doubts on several of these claims, since agriculture was practiced in the Americas well before the emergence of Christianity in the Old World, and Mayan crosses have been found to have a very different symbolism from that present in Christian religious traditions. According to Pre-Columbian myth, Quetzalcoatl departed Mexico in ancient times by travelling east across the ocean, promising he would return. Some scholars have argued that Aztec emperor Moctezuma Xocoyotzin believed Spanish
conquistador Conquistadors (, ) or conquistadores (, ; meaning 'conquerors') were the explorer-soldiers of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires of the 15th and 16th centuries. During the Age of Discovery, conquistadors sailed beyond Europe to the Americas, O ...
Hernán Cortés Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano, 1st Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca (; ; 1485 – December 2, 1547) was a Spanish ''conquistador'' who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of w ...
(who arrived in what today is Mexico from the east) to be Quetzalcoatl, and his arrival to be a fulfilling of the myth's prophecy, though others have disputed this claim. Fringe theories suggest that Quetzalcoatl may have been a Christian preacher from the Old World who lived among indigenous peoples of ancient Mexico, and eventually attempted to return home by sailing eastwards.
Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora Don Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora (August 14, 1645 – August 22, 1700) was one of the first great intellectuals born in the New World - Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain (Mexico City). He was a criollo patriot, exalting New Spain over Old. ...
, for example, speculated that the Quetzalcoatl myth might have originated from a visit to the Americas by Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century CE. Later on, Fray Servando Teresa de Mier argued that the cloak with the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which the Catholic Church claims was worn by
Juan Diego Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, also known as Juan Diego (; 1474–1548), was a Chichimec peasant and Marian visionary. He is said to have been granted apparitions of the Virgin Mary on four occasions in December 1531: three at the hill of Tepeyac a ...
, was instead brought to the Americas much earlier by Thomas, who used it as an instrument for evangelization. Mexican historian Manuel Orozco y Berra conjectured that both the cross hieroglyphs and the Quetzalcoatl myth might have originated on a visit to Mesoamerica by a Catholic Norse missionary in medieval times. However, there is no archaeological or historical evidence to suggest that the Norse explorations ever made it as far as ancient Mexico or Central America. Other proposed identities for Quetzalcoatl (attributed to their proponents pursuing religious agendas) include
St. Brendan Brendan of Clonfert (c. AD 484 - c.577), is one of the early Celtic Christianity, Irish monastic saints and one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland. He is also referred to as Brendan the Navigator, Brendan the Voyager, Brendan the Anchorite, Br ...
or even Jesus Christ. According to one historian, a fleet of
Knights Templar , colors = White mantle with a red cross , colors_label = Attire , march = , mascot = Two knights riding a single horse , equipment ...
departed from La Rochelle in 1307, fleeing persecution from king
Philip IV of France Philip IV (April–June 1268 – 29 November 1314), called Philip the Fair (french: Philippe le Bel), was King of France from 1285 to 1314. By virtue of his marriage with Joan I of Navarre, he was also King of Navarre as Philip I from 12 ...
.Villatoro, Manuel P. (October 12, 2019).
El 'otro' 12 de octubre: la flota perdida de la Orden del Temple que pudo llegar a América antes que Colón
. ''ABC Historia''. Retrieved June 6, 2021.
What destination, if any, was reached by this fleet is uncertain. A fringe theory suggests the fleet may have made its way to the Americas, where the Knights Templar interacted with the aboriginal population. It is speculated this hypothetical visit may have influenced the cross symbols made by Mesoamerican peoples, as well as their legends about a fair-skinned deity. Helen Nicholson of
Cardiff University , latin_name = , image_name = Shield of the University of Cardiff.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms of Cardiff University , motto = cy, Gwirionedd, Undod a Chytgord , mottoeng = Truth, Unity and Concord , established = 1 ...
has cast doubt on the existence of this voyage, arguing that the Knights Templar did not have ships capable of navigating the Atlantic Ocean.


Claims of ancient Jewish migration to the Americas

Since the first centuries of European colonization of the Americas and up until the 19th century, several European intellectuals and theologians tried to account for the presence of the Amerindian aboriginal peoples by connecting them to the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, who according to Biblical tradition, were deported following the conquest of the Israelite kingdom by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. In the past as well as in the present, these efforts were and still are being used to further the interests of religious groups, both Jewish and Christian, and they have also been used to justify European settlement of the Americas. One of the first people to claim that the indigenous peoples of the Americas were descendants of the Lost Tribes was the Portuguese rabbi and writer Menasseh Ben Israel, who in his book ''The Hope of Israel'' argued that the discovery of the alleged long-lost Jews heralded the imminent coming of the Biblical Messiah. In 1650, a Norfolk preacher,
Thomas Thorowgood Thomas Thorowgood (died 1669), B.D., was a Puritan minister and preacher in King's Lynn, Norfolk, England. He was the first English author to argue in 1650 that American Indians were descended from the Lost Ten Tribes of the biblical ancient Isr ...
, published ''Jewes in America or Probabilities that the Americans are of that Race'', for the New England missionary society. Tudor Parfitt writes:
The society was active in trying to convert the Indians but suspected that they might be Jews and realized they better be prepared for an arduous task. Thorowgood's tract argued that the native population of North America were descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes.
In 1652 Sir Hamon L'Estrange, an English author writing on history and theology, published ''Americans no Jews, or improbabilities that the Americans are of that Race'' in response to the tract by Thorowgood. In response to L'Estrange, Thorowgood published a second edition of his book in 1660 with a revised title and included a foreword written by John Eliot, a Puritan missionary who had translated the Bible into an Indian language.


Latter Day Saint movement's teachings

The Book of Mormon, a
sacred text Religious texts, including scripture, are texts which various religions consider to be of central importance to their religious tradition. They differ from literature by being a compilation or discussion of beliefs, mythologies, ritual prac ...
of the Latter Day Saint movement, which its founder and leader, Joseph Smith Jr, published in 1830 when he was 24 years old, states that some ancient inhabitants of the New World are descendants of Semitic peoples who sailed from the Old World. Mormon groups such as the
Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies The Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) was an informal collaboration of academics devoted to Latter-day Saint historical scholarship. ThFoundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS)was established in 1979 as a ...
attempt to study and expand on these ideas. In a 1998 letter to the
Institute for Religious Research The Institute for Religious Research (IRR) is an American Christian apologetics and counter-cult organization based in Cedar Springs, Michigan. It declares itself to be a non-denominational, non-profit Christian foundation for the study of rel ...
, the National Geographic Society stated that "Archaeologists and other scholars have long probed the hemisphere's past and the society does not know of anything found so far that has substantiated the Book of Mormon." Some LDS scholars hold the view that archaeological studies of the Book of Mormon's claims are not meant to vindicate the literary narrative. For example, Terryl Givens, professor of English at the University of Richmond, points out that there is a lack of historical accuracy in the Book of Mormon in relation to modern archaeological knowledge. In the 1950s, Professor M. Wells Jakeman popularized the belief that the
Izapa Stela 5 Izapa Stela 5 is one of a number of large, carved stelae found in the ancient Mesoamerican site of Izapa, in the Soconusco region of Chiapas, Mexico along the present-day Guatemalan border. These stelae date from roughly 300 BCE to 50 or 100 BCE, ...
represents the Book of Mormon prophets Lehi and Nephi's tree of life vision and was a validation of the historicity of the claims of pre-Columbian settlement in the Americas. His interpretations of the carving and its connection to pre-Columbian contact have been disputed. Since that time, scholarship on the Book of Mormon has concentrated on cultural parallels rather than "smoking gun" sources.


See also

*
Ancient maritime history Maritime history dates back thousands of years. In ancient maritime history, evidence of maritime trade between civilizations dates back at least two millennia. The first prehistoric boats are presumed to have been dugout canoes which were devel ...
* * * *
Columbian exchange The Columbian exchange, also known as the Columbian interchange, was the widespread transfer of plants, animals, precious metals, commodities, culture, human populations, technology, diseases, and ideas between the New World (the Americas) in ...
* * Diffusion (anthropology) * Genetic history of indigenous peoples of the Americas * *
Hyperdiffusionism in archaeology Hyperdiffusionism is a pseudoarchaeological hypothesis suggesting that certain historical technologies or ideas originated with a single people or civilization before their adoption by other cultures. Thus, all great civilizations that share simil ...
*
Institute for the Study of American Cultures The Institute for the Study of American Cultures (ISAC) was an organization devoted to the study of pre-Columbian contact between the Old and New Worlds. Although as an organization it did not espouse any particular theory, it was strongly oriented ...
*
Jean Cousin (navigator) Jean Cousin, also Jehan Cousin, was a 15th-century French Normand navigator who was said to have discovered the New World in 1488, four years before Christopher Columbus, when he landed in Brazil around the mouth of the Amazon.''A savage mirror: ...
*
Jewish Indian theory Jewish Indian theory (or Hebraic Indian theory, or Jewish Amerindian theory) was the erroneous idea that some or all of the Ten Lost Tribes, lost tribes of Israel had travelled to the Americas and that all or some of the indigenous peoples of the Am ...
* * * * *
Origins of Paleoindians The settlement of the Americas began when Paleolithic hunter-gatherers entered North America from the North Asian Mammoth steppe via the Beringia land bridge, which had formed between northeastern Siberia and western Alaska due to the lowerin ...
* Pre-Columbian rafts * *


Notes


References

* Ashe, Geoffrey, ''The Quest for America'' (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971); * * Fagan, Brian M. ''The Great Journey''. Thames and Hudson. (1987) * Feder, Kenneth L. (1999) "Frauds, myths, and mysteries: science and pseudoscience in archaeology" (3rd ed., Mountain View, Calif. : Mayfield Pub. Co. * Fell, Barry (1984) '' America B.C.: Ancient Settlers in the New World'' (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984) * William J. Hamblim ''Archaeology and the Book of Mormon'' (Provo, Utah: Maxwell Institute, 1993), Volume 5, Issue 1, pp. 250–272
Text
; * Gerol, E. Harry ''Dioses, Templos y Ruinas''. * (2006) ''Ritual and Power in Stone: The Performance of Rulership in Mesoamerican Izapan Style Art'', University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas, . * * Howgaard, William (1971) ''The Voyages of the Norsemen to America'' (New York: The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1914, Kraus Reprint Co., 1971); * Hristov, Romeo H. and Santiago Genovés T. (2001

Paper prepared for the 66th—Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, New Orleans (2001). * Huyghe, Patrick (1992) ''Columbus was Last: A Heretical History of who was First'' (New York: Hyperion, 1992; Anomalist Books, 2005) * Ingstad, Helge ''Westward to Vinland'' (New York: St. Martins, 1969); * Johnson, Adrian ''America Explored'' (New York: The Viking Press, 1974); * Jones, Gwyn ''A History of the Vikings'' (Oxford University Press, 1984); * Jones, Peter N. ''American Indian mtDNA, Y Chromosome Genetic Data, and the Peopling of North America''. Boulder: Bauu Press. 2004; * * Arlington Mallery and Mary Roberts Harrison, ''The Rediscovery of Lost America'' (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1979); * Marcus, G. J., "The Conquest of the North Atlantic" (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980); * Mowat, Farley (1998) ''The Farfarers'' (Toronto, Key Porter Books, 1998) ; * 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); * Gary A. Rendsburg, "'Someone Will Succeed in Deciphering Minoan': Minoan Linear A as a West Semitic Dialect," Biblical Archaeologist, 59:1 (1996), pp. 36–43, esp. p. 40. * Seaver, K.A. (1995) ''The Frozen Echo: Greenland and the Exploration of North America ca A.D. 1000–1500'' Stanford University Press * Smith, Michael E.

, accessed December 2007. * 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. ; * Sorenson, John L.; Raish, Martin H. (1996) ''Pre-Columbian Contact with the Americas Across the Oceans: An Annotated Bibliography.'' 2v. 2d ed., rev., Provo, Utah: Research Press, . * Sorenson, John L. and Johannessen, Carl L. (2009) ''World Trade and Biological Exchanges Before 1492,'' Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, ; * Stirling, Matthew (1967) "Early History of the Olmec Problem", in ''Dumbarton Oaks Conference on the Olmec'', E. Benson, ed., Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C. * * * Wauchope, Robert (1962) ''Lost Tribes & Sunken Continents''. University of Chicago Press. * Williams, Stephen (1991) "Fantastic Archaeology: The Wild Side of North American Prehistory", Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, /. * ''Man across the sea: Problems of Pre-Columbian contacts'' (Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1971). * Report of Severin's trip in the ''National Geographic Magazine'', Volume 152, Number 6 (December 1977).


Further reading

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Pre-Columbian Trans-Oceanic Contact Anthropology Fringe science Hyperdiffusionism Pseudohistory Theories of history ja:アメリカ大陸の発見