The roots of this tale can be found in the year 1567, when Damien de Goes, biographer of the sixteenth-century Portuguese kings, reported that a stone statue of a bareheaded man clothed in a Moorish cape and seated on a horse had been found at Corvo. His left arm rested on the horse's mane, while his right arm stretched straight out with the index finger pointing to the west. King Emmanuel of Portugal (1495-1521) sent for the statue, but those in charge of the project carelessly broke it. Nonetheless, the heads of the man and horse, and the right arm with the pointed finger are said to have been brought to the king's palace for display. De Goes added that in 1529 it was noted that the base on which the statue had stood was inscribed. Wax impressions of the inscriptions were made, but could not be read as the letters were very worn and "almost without form."
In 1628, Manoel de Faria y Sousa, another Portuguese historian, repeated de Goes's tale. It might well have died there, but in 1778 Johan Podolyn, a Swede born in Portugal, published a remarkable story. He claimed that in 1761, he went to Madrid to see Fr. Henrique Flores, a professor of theology and coin collector, who gave him two gold and five bronze coins from Carthage and two bronze coins from Cyrene, in North Africa, dated to ca. 200 B.C. He claimed that the coins were the remnants of a hoard found in November 1749 in a black pot near the foundation of a destroyed building in Corvo. Podolyn added to this account a description of the statue of Corvo, citing Faria y Sousa as his source, and discussed the possibility that Carthaginian sailors discovered Corvo, settled there, erected the statue, and left the coins. He then ventured the opinion that these colonists undertook an expedition "to the west," the statue indicating with its pointed finger where they had gone.

The statue strengthens my opinion that the islands were not only accidentally visited by the Phoenicians or the Carthaginians but that they had already settled there; for you cannot assume that a ship determined either for trade or for discovery had the whole statue already on board. You must rather conclude that they arrived there on one vehicle or several ones, during one voyage or several ones, that the crew liked the land, that they setteld there, established a municipality, kept up the connection to their home, and that they achieved a wealth which allowed them to build the mentioned monument.

The Piri Reis map shows the western coast of Africa, the eastern coast of South America, and the northern coast of Antarctica. The northern coastline of Antarctica is perfectly detailed. The most puzzling however is not so much how Piri Reis managed to draw such an accurate map of the Antarctic region 300 years before it was discovered, but that the map shows the coastline under the ice. Geological evidence confirms that the latest date Queen Maud Land could have been charted in an ice-free state is 4000 BC.

Below is a tracing of the coastlines on the map. Western Europe and Africa are easily recognizable, the Azores, Canary Islands and Cape Verde Islands are fairly accurate both as to location and the number and arrangements of individual islands. Eastern South America is also easily recognizable, but there are a lot of things not so easily recognized. The map, by the way, is very clear on the existence of mountains in the interior of South America (in brown on the tracing).

Three species of wild rice are native to North America:

Northern wild rice (Zizania palustris) is an annual plant native to the Great Lakes region of North America. Northern wild rice is the state grain of the U.S. state of Minnesota.

Wild rice (Z. aquatica), also an annual, grows in the Saint Lawrence River and on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States.

Texas wild rice (Z. texana) is a perennial plant only found in a small area along the San Marcos River in central Texas.

Manchurian wild rice (Z. latifolia; incorrect synonym: Z. caduciflora), is a perennial native to China.

The vegetable is especially common in China, where it is known as gaosun (Chinese: 高笋; pinyin: gāosǔn) or jiaobai (Chinese: 茭白; pinyin: jiāobái). Other names which may be used in English include coba, makomo (Japanese: マコモ), and water bamboo.

Rice is considered to have begun simultaneously in many countries over 6500 years ago.

One genetic study suggests that common wild rice, Oryza rufipogon, was the wild ancestor of Asian rice