Ancient Visitors to the Americas

Originally posted by niv
My understanding is that the date of first arrival is being continuously pushed backwards. Recently remains have been found in South America that push the accepted date past 13,000. That doesn't count the extensive disputed evidence that native americans arrived much, much earlier.

here is the evidence you linked to

Mike Waters, an archaeologist at Texas A&M University, and Paul Renne, a geologist with the University of California at Berkeley and the Berkeley Geochronology Center, visited the site and examined the markings. Waters says the proposed footprint tracks cross several different layers of ash and in some cases form rectangular patterns.

This suggests that the marks may not be footprints at all but rather modern quarry marks left when workers cut and extracted rectangular slabs of the concretelike ash. "I found some quarry workers who told me they made those marks with steel digging tools," Waters says. "They even offered to show me how they did it." Renne said that the site was too disturbed by modern human activity to yield conclusions; for the evidence to be convincing, Gonzalez would have to find such prints in a completely undisturbed context. Renne, Waters, and others have questioned the dating techniques and the age of 40,000 years. They believe the ash layers are much older, making them even less likely to hold human footprints.

how is this extenisve evidence ?

As I understand it, from reading the thread, the original question, before much arcane minutia came out to cloud the issue, was if there was pre-1492 contact with the Americas?

It would seem that everyone wants hard evidence of that. Would about 5 or 6 tons be enough?

Google a town named Heavener, Oklahoma. (That's pronounced as in heaving a rock, and I mention it because they a bit touchy when it is pronounced the way one would use in conjunction with the mythical Eternal Abode.)

In that town is a park called Runestone Park.

Also look into the work of a lady named Gloria Farley, she too can be googled. There is a wealth of physical evidence in this area that shows that many travelers passed this way.

As a note, the river system in a wilderness are the superhighways, and any artifacts are usually found near such. And yes, she does mention the Egyptian connections among others. As a matter of fact, the god Horus has a place in all of this.

There's enough reading there to keep you all arguing for at least another week or so. I offer this equally to both sides of the debate, as I look forward to many more enjoyable hours of amusement on this thread.

en.wikipedia.org...

Local tradition attributes the inscription to wandering pre-Columbian Norsemen, however inscription has been rejected by Scandinavian philologists and runologists, who consider it to be modern (19th or 20th century)

what was it P.T.Barnum once said ?

I see how this works. Local Authority figure on threads. You don't go to far into all the evidence, and you pick and chose which 'expert' to use.

Some folks here have a future in politics as spin doctors.

Quoted by Marduk

the Olmec culture has been dna typed (and is not African).

The Olmec culture is usually dated 1400-400BC. Was it possible to acurately DNA test a culture this old? Where did this DNA sample originate?
Both the writing system and the language of the www.meta-religion.com..." target="_blank" class="postlink" rel="nofollow">Olmec's is related to similar found in West Africa. The stone heads look, well, African! How does one explain the lack of corresponding African DNA?

the olmec writing is not african
here is olmec

here is mayan

here is the vai script (african)

olmec is clearly amerindian
www.ancientscripts.com...

The Epi-Olmec script turned out to be structurally similar to the Maya

the stone heads of which there are many do not all look african

www.latinamericanstudies.org...
so I guess the lack of african dna can be explained because they werent from africa
your source quotes as its reference a work from 1832
we know a little more than that now




[edit on 19-5-2007 by apollyon_uk]

Does anyone have info on the midwestern cave that contained a wealth of apparently egyptian artifacts and gold items? Possibly Illinois or Ohio? As I recall it was attributed to an early Mauritanian king in about the first century who was fleeing the Romans. Of course the big question was how all the artifacts ended up in the midwest in a cave!

Marduk, I have searched all over the internet and can't find anything that says we know what the DNA of the Olmecs was. Can you give sources?
Thank you.

Some folks here have a future in politics as spin doctors.

Well it's not just Apollyon_UK who quotes selectively here. A certain other person likes to quote DNA profiles of the Hopi.

What in hell Hopi from new Mexico have to do with Cocaine is a little bit superfluous to the argument, but that hasn't stopped him before. Hopi are several hundred miles north of where coc aine grows and several hundred miles west of where tobacco grows and hundreds of miles inland from any location where seafarers who might have traded with Egyptians had any kind of port.

In one of the earlier pages in this thread Marduk's objection to Cocaine in Egypt was that the plant could not grow there... Well duh!

Talk about subjectively creating your own objection and then citing it as "proof!"

Why Marduk did coc aine need to be grown in Egypt at all ?

We are talking about the possibility of trade contact. That's all. We don't need to establish if there was DNA traces or anything like that to establish if there was contact.

It wasn't just jakyll who sometimes didn't have the facts or do his homework was it Marduk ?

my posts were backed on most occaisons by links from factual sources whereas all your information was from some old show on discovery but you can't remember what it was on

...but then you were probably too intent on insulting jakyll to notice your own inconsistencies ?

Your pronouncement Marduk ridiculing the claim of earlier contact from the British Isles was as ignorant as it was sneering:

thats very interesting. perhaps you can provide a link to this library or if not then its address in Bristol so I can go visit ?
I'm not being lazy but after an exhaustive internet search the only national archive I can find in bristol is this one

freepages.family.rootsweb.com...

www.welshdragon.net...

I guess your assurance Marduk that all American Indian DNA was Asian in origin was also selectively based on the Hopi too ?

Wouldn't want a tribe of white indians to upset your theories either would we ?

In fact the Welsh folklore is very ancient and predates the Roman invasion of the British Isles. Welsh folklore about a marvelous civilisation far to the West across the [Atlantic] ocean mimics Plato's account of Atlantis and suggests the Celtic people (related to the Basques some say) had considerable knowledge of the Western Atlantic. Go read the Mabinogion.

Thewalkingfox, you reveal your ignorance of those 18th century parties which you refer to. At those parties the mummies were crushes and ground up. Their ground dust was infused into drinks and consumed because it was said to have medicinal quality.

These mummies would not have survived intact had they been at such parties. Cocaine and tobacco was found inside the intestines of such mummies.

Marduk objects that tobacco could not have been found inside the intestines because people did not eat or consume tobacco. Gosh... generations of sailors chewed tobacco and swallowed it.

In Yemen and Somalia they chew a narcotic berry from Soccotra for the same reasons. to get high. Wouldn't it be fascinating if Phonecian sailors chewed tobacco or coc aine to cope with thirst on long voyages ?
What if their habit caught on with Egyptian merchants ?

Of course the first archaeologists to dig up dinasours in belgium were at first denounced as pseudohistorians.

Before Heinrich Schliemann dug up Troy, it was denounced as a myth pedaled by a pseudohistorian.

the average weight of the blocks in the great pyramid at Giza is 2.5 tonnes I would love to know how they moved 400 tonne slabs of stone,and then lifed them 100's of ft into the air as well but as they didn't i don't spend too much time worrying about it

Nice to hear Marduk admit he doesn't know everything or care much about what he doesn't know. Very selective of him. Is that what they call a pseudohistorian approach ?
To reject whichever does not fit your theory ?

By Marduk's reckoning since we have no proof how it got there, should we just pretend it never happened, or vigorously argue that they don't really weigh 400 tons ?

Is that the approach taken to explaining coc aine inside mummies aswell ?

Actually the slabs at Baalbeck, weighing 1,000 tons each are so troublesome I doubt Marduk will ever get around to considering those either.

encarta.msn.com...

www.telusplanet.net...

I don't have time to do more for you, so the rest of the information out there is up to you to find and study. But, I hope these two links are a help to you. If wolves have been proven to have travelled from Asia to America over 500 000 years ago, then what reasons are there that early humans could not have followed, say, 100 000 to 200 000 years ago?
There is the Clovis/Solutrean spear tip question that begs for a credible answer. Why do the two styles match so closely, and why do no Asian speartips match the Clovis ones if indeed the Clovis people came from Asia?
If I find a link from a native site regarding their 'older brother/younger brother' traditions, which are quite widespread, in both North and South America, I'll post it for you.

sy.gunson
do you really want me to answer that
i'll give you an example
you claim that coc aine has been found in the stomachs of mummies for instance
tell me
do you know what a canopic jar is ?
en.wikipedia.org...
would you like for me now to provide unlimited evidence of what happened to the stomach of a dead pahroah and why it is unlikely that coc aine was ever found in one ?
that would leave you looking rather foolish wouldnt it


while we're on the subject of my ignorance perhaps you can tell me what you mean by slabs at baalbeck as its my understanding that only one, namely "the Stone of the Pregnant Woman" weighs in excess of 1000 tonnes (approx 1200) and because of its weight was discovered to be too heavy to move which is the reason it sits today where it was cut
still in the quarry
actually the last person I heard claim that the three stones in the trilithon weighed more than 1000 tonnes their source turned out to be Zechariah Sitchin so is that what youre saying, you think the three stones in the top of the trilithon weigh more than 1000 tonnes each. you know incidentally these three stones weigh about twice as much as the egytpian obelisk that now stands in st peters square but when you consider than in the case of Baalbek the stones were transported about 1/2 a mile from the quarry and the case of the obelisk it was transported from Egypt to Rome Baalbek suddently starts to evaporate as meaningful doesnt it
"The elder Pliny in his Natural History refers to the obelisk's transportation from Egypt to Rome by order of the Emperor Gaius (Caligula) as an outstanding event. The barge that carried it had a huge mast of fir wood which four men's arms could not encircle. One hundred and twenty bushels of lentils were needed for ballast. Having fulfilled its purpose, the gigantic vessel was no longer wanted. Therefore, filled with stones and cement, it was sunk to form the foundations of the foremost quay of the new harbour at Ostia."
(James Lees-Milne, Saint Peter's (1967).)
en.wikipedia.org...

now if you like Sy I could go through your rant point by point in this type of detail with links to really credible sites that support every word I say but I don't really feel the need to do that right now
so let me know if youre interested eh

Originally posted by sy.gunson

In one of the earlier pages in this thread Marduk's objection to Cocaine in Egypt was that the plant could not grow there... Well duh!

If this is such convincing evidence of contact with the Americas, then why haven't the original researchers ever made this claim? You can read a sane discussion of the coc aine/nicotine mummies, including Q.&A. with the original (surviving) researchers that made the discovery, at the following page:
www.hallofmaat.com...[/ url]

After reading this, then perhaps you'd like to opine on exactly why it is that you think you can draw conclusions that even the original researchers can't.

Originally posted by sy.gunsonI guess your assurance Marduk that all American Indian DNA was Asian in origin was also selectively based on the Hopi too ?

There is no Amerindian DNA that cannot be explained through the Arctic land bridge theory. It's just simple fact. That doesn't mean that there was no contact - it does mean that no DNA survives from such contact if it ever happened.

Originally posted by sy.gunsonThewalkingfox, you reveal your ignorance of those 18th century parties which you refer to. At those parties the mummies were crushes and ground up. Their ground dust was infused into drinks and consumed because it was said to have medicinal quality.

These mummies would not have survived intact had they been at such parties. Cocaine and tobacco was found inside the intestines of such mummies.

Again, read the link I gave you. The mummies in question, every single one of them that seem anomalous, were all privately held for decades. Yet somehow they escaped being ground up and ingested. They were, however, featured at mummy "unwrapping parties." It was a status thing, not a homeopathic thing.

Originally posted by sy.gunsonBefore Heinrich Schliemann dug up Troy, it was denounced as a myth pedaled by a pseudohistorian.

Troy was never "denounced" as a myth. It was thought that it was likely to be mythical. The main point of the archaeologists (they weren't called that back then) that thought Troy might be real was that it was featured so often in Greek culture that perhaps it may have been a real place. That is the reason people went out looking for it. Schliemann was the last one, but he didn't really "discover" Troy, though he is credited with it. Troy was actually discovered by Frank Calvert:

Away from performing his consular duties, Frank carried on careful, exploratory excavations on the family-owned land which incorporated the mound of Hisarlik. He was convinced that this was the site of the ancient city of Troy. After the Crimean War he confided his views to Heinrich Schliemann. Calvert owned the eastern half of the Hisarlik mound, site of the ancient city, and the Turkish government the western half. During his 1873-1890 excavations, Schliemann recovered artefacts from the mound of Hisarlik and was subsequently credited with the discovery of Troy.

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Calvert]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Calvert

the average weight of the blocks in the great pyramid at Giza is 2.5 tonnes I would love to know how they moved 400 tonne slabs of stone,and then lifed them 100's of ft into the air as well but as they didn't i don't spend too much time worrying about it

Nice to hear Marduk admit he doesn't know everything or care much about what he doesn't know. Very selective of him. Is that what they call a pseudohistorian approach ?
To reject whichever does not fit your theory ?
The average weight is estimated to be 2.5 tons. The blocks from the upper two-thirds of the G.P get progressively smaller and smaller as you go up. Given the average, you should be able to see that near the top the blocks are considerably less than one ton each.

So no, they really didn't lift "400 tonne (dang Brits) slabs of stone 100's of ft into the air."

Not that there weren't some rather large granite stones in the G.P.

Originally posted by sy.gunsonBy Marduk's reckoning since we have no proof how it got there, should we just pretend it never happened, or vigorously argue that they don't really weigh 400 tons ?

A couple of stones in the G.P. are pretty big. The vast majority are not all that big. Do you know the density of limestone? I don't - but a good estimate for dirt is one ton per cubic yard. I assume that limestone is denser, so 2.5 tons is only 2.5 yards by one yard by one yard in dimension. A little longer than an average man's height in length, and only a yard high and a yard deep. That's more than 2.5 tons in limestone. Not all that big when you think about it.

Originally posted by sy.gunsonActually the slabs at Baalbeck, weighing 1,000 tons each are so troublesome I doubt Marduk will ever get around to considering those either.

There just no trouble at all with Baalbek and the fact that you think there is shows your lack of curiosity regarding some of the more extreme of these sorts of pseudohistorical (or alternate history) claims.

Baalbek is a Roman site. Through and through. Been excavated.

Source

The Romans had some rather sophisticated cranes. There are more startling constructions in Rome than anything you find at Baalbek.

In the end, no one can say if some ancient culture or another sometime in the past did or did not ever visit the Americas. But what can be said is that there no reason to believe that they did. At least, not so far.

Harte

Well we can surmise now that Polynesian's beat Columbus to the America's. If Islanders in canoes were able to do it i'd be willing to bet on even earlier visitors.

cbs news scitech link

And now, researchers led by Alice Storey at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, report finding evidence that may ruffle some scholarly feathers. They found chicken bones of Polynesian origin at a site in what is now Chile.

Radiocarbon dating of chicken bones at the site on the Arauco Peninsula in south central Chile indicated a range of A.D. 1321 to 1407, well before the Spanish arrival in the Americas.

Originally posted by mojo4sale
Well we can surmise now that Polynesian's beat Columbus to the America's. If Islanders in canoes were able to do it i'd be willing to bet on even earlier visitors.

Did you doublecheck the date? 1400 AD, at a time when their sailing technology was at its peak. And it's not that implausible, given that they were at Easter Island.

Yes i did realise that Byrd, but it does push the timeline further back than the Spanish visitations, it also raises the question of what contamination of flora and fauna may have happened between these peoples, the sweet potato springs to mind.
And i would suggest that Phoenician sailing expertise 14 centuries before the Polynesian's was of a higher level?
My point being, if the Polynesians were able to travel over 4000kms across open ocean, then i dont see the difficulty in accepting that the Phoenicians would have been capable of similar journey's, particularly if they used the Azores as a resupply point for trips to the America's.

mojo

I realise its not evidence of seafarers reaching the new world but it does pose the question of whether sea voyages were more common than first thought. If mariners were able to find their way repeatedly across open water this far back is it not possible that the New World was visited much earlier.

Link

ARCHAEOLOGISTS in Cyprus have discovered what they believe could be the oldest evidence yet that organised groups of ancient mariners were plying the east Mediterranean, possibly as far back as 14,000 years ago.

Zheng He is a Chinese sailor, went on Seven expeditions some around the world, some to the America's. It is probably his maps that the Prie Rie antartica maps are based upon. He was an accomplished explorer.

China had the worlds largest sailing fleets when Europe was debating if the earth was flat or round. They sailed in massive flotillas, hundreds of large sailing vessels, these were also known as treasure fleets

The empress of china destroyed the sailing fleets in the 16th century, and are only now being rebuilt This allowed Europe to expand its influence to the world, otherwise they would never have been able to compete with the chinese Navy.

China invented the triangular sail, this allowed tacking into the wind and gave sailors control over their sailing vessel. when interaction between asia and europe occured, Europe replaced the square rigger with the triangular sail we all recognize today.

BUt CHina was in the America's long before columbus, and sailed the globe unchallenged for centuries.

ha ha ha ha ha...........the olmecs were
clearly african. i find it amusing that some
will do anything they can to prove it impossible
that africans contributed nothing to the human
experience..alas, it is true. history is but a lie
agreed upon.

I grew up in Newfoundland (an island off the eastern coast of Canada) about an hours drive from a site known today as L'anse aux Meadows. It's the only verified Viking settlement in North America outside Greenland, and many people today believe it to be the mythical 'Vinland' of the Sagas. It's actually a UNESCO world heritage site, and a really fascinating place to visit. The site's been dated to around 1100 AD, exactly the time Leif Erikson is said to have attempted to settle Vinland. Although the settlement there didn't last long (probably because of the notoriously bitter winters there or attacks from the not so friendly natives), there's a lot of (unverified) evidence that the Norse moved further inland, and even established trade with the natives on Canada's mainland.

There's an oral tradition among the Algonquin people of a place called Saguenay populated by bearded men who would trade furs and metals. Although no such place was ever found, it could certainly have existed at one point and the stories passed down through generations.

An archaeological dig on an Indian settlement in Maine turned up a Norse coin from around the 10th century. The coin had a small hole through the middle, so it was probably worn as an amulet of some sort. The coin was initially believed to be proof that Vikings had actually settled there, but no other Viking artifacts were ever found. It's my understanding that most experts today believe that it's actually proof of some degree of trade between Viking settlements either in Canada or further south along the eastern American seaboard.

Other, decidedly less concrete evidence, such as the various runestones discovered in Minnesota and Oklahoma (among other places) point to the possibility of Norse exploration even further inland. Some of these runestones are of dubious origins at best.

This is really interesting stuff, backed up by some irrefutable evidence. The fact that Columbus is hailed today as the first European to 'discover' the New World is probably because he made a deal of it, and not because he was actually the first to do so.