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OVERVIEW Diffusionist view Theories of pre-Columbian contact have been fairly popular in the Western World since the 16th century. Several reasons may account for the spread of these Diffusionist theories, including political Propaganda , justification for Colonialism , the backing of Priority Claims , or simply a naive tendency to explain the origins of New World civilizations in the context of Biblical tradition or other known civilizations. Proponents of such contacts often stated or implied the Ethnocentric premise that indigenous people such as Native Americans and the Rapanui of Easter Island were "savages" who could not have developed the sophisticated technical and scientific knowledge of some New World civilizations without outside help. These theories were influenced by certain Dogma tic Religious Beliefs , and by the scarcity of knowledge about the origins and history of the indigenous peoples, which lacked a coherent scientific model until the mid- 20th Century . Isolationist view In the late 1500s , the Jesuit scholar José De Acosta suggested peoples of the Americas arrived via a now-submerged land bridge from Asia as primitive hunters, later settling into sedentary communities and cities. In Notes On The State Of Virginia ( 1781 ), Thomas Jefferson theorized that ancestors of Native Americans crossed the Bering Strait from Asia. Over time, traveler reports (such as the books by John Lloyd Stephens on Mesoamerica ), documented research (such as William H. Prescott 's accounts of the Spanish conquests of Mexico and Peru ), and extensive archaeological discoveries revealed more about the history of pre-Columbian society. These data eventually led many historians to embrace isolationist views: namely, that the pre-Columbian civilizations had evolved gradually over several millennia, and that their culture and knowledge at the time of European contact had developed in isolation from peoples and cultures outside the Americas. The isolationist view came to prevail in the 20th century, as carbon dating and molecular genetics began to shed light on the origins of native populations. While the human presence in Eurasia is attested by Fossil finds spanning several hundred thousand years, human remains older than 13,000 years in the Americas seemed to be scarce to nonexistent. This time frame roughly coincides with the most recent Ice Age , a time when the sea level was substantially lower than it is today. This coincidence, and genetic similarities between the Indigenous Peoples Of The Americas and certain Siberian and East Asian populations, led scientists to believe that the Americas were populated by Migrations across the Bering Strait , which would have been mostly dry land at the time. Linguistic and genetic studies suggest no fewer than three distinct migration waves. On the other hand, if the ice age made land migrations possible, the route must have been closed again when it ended and the sea level rose again some 9,000 years ago. Between the 1950s and the 1980s, the Bering Land Bridge theory came to be viewed as proved beyond any doubt. It was also believed at the time that trans-oceanic travel only became possible in the 15th century, after key advances in Old World shipbuilding and navigation. Most Archeologists came to believe that the native cultures of the Americas had been isolated from the Old World after the closing of the Bering land route, when they were still in the Hunter-gatherer stage; and had developed without any outside influences for the next 9,000 years until the time of Columbus. This belief is supported by the lack of substantial evidence of Old World influences on the American civilizations. Questioning the isolationist view The standard single route migration model for the population of the Americas has been increasingly challenged in recent years by claims of human artifacts dating between 15,000 and 50,000 years, a time period in which inland routes were blocked by massive ice sheets. Human remains from 9,000 years ago such as the Kennewick Man have anatomical features that differ somewhat from those of modern indigenous populations. Finds such as these raise the possibility that the Bering Land Bridge may not have been the sole route of pre-Columbian migrants to the Americas. For instance, intercoastal navigation along the Pacific shores of Siberia and Alaska may have provided an alternate route, independent of sea level or ice sheets. However, there is no dispute that the Bering Land Bridge was an important migration route into the Americas. Proponents of the Solutrean Hypothesis suggest that Upper Paleolithic settlers from Europe could have crossed the Atlantic along the ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum , bringing with them tool-making methods which may have influenced the Clovis Tool Complex . Paleoclimate models created by Professor Richard Peltier at the University Of Toronto seem to indicate that at that time, the Atlantic Ocean froze every winter. The model suggests that a 10-meter thick sheet of ice stretched from western Europe to the eastern coast of North America. Some researchers suggest that recent finds of spear points at Cactus Hill , Virginia dating to 17,000 years ago seem to indicate a transitional style between the Solutrean tool-making style and the later Clovis technology. DNA analysis of the central Ontario Ojibwa Native Americans by Dr. Michael Brown of Mercer University , in Macon , Georgia has indicated that their DNA markers are similar to those found in early stone age peoples of Europe. "The First Canadians", aired on Jan. 8, 2007 on the National Geographic Channel. PACIFIC INTERCOASTAL MIGRATION A growing body of recent evidence indicates that besides the Bering Land Bridge , another possibly equally important migration route into the Americas existed along the Pacific shoreline. This theory does not suggest potentially hazardous open ocean crossings, but instead, gradual movement close to shore, probably in pursuit of favorable fishing areas. From coastal areas, people could have migrated inland, bypassing the vast northern ice sheet. This theory may account for the appearance of human activity well within the Americas during the time when inland migration routes were blocked by ice sheets as well as later migrations by Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut peoples. Unfortunately, many of the prime sites for study now lie beneath sea level on the continental shelf since Sea Level s were substantially lower during the Ice Age than today. A 2006 article in the ''s found in the tooth were connected only with these specific coastal tribes, and were not found in any of the other indigenous peoples in the Americas. This finding lends substantial credence to a migration theory that at least one set of early peoples moved south along the west coast of the Americas in boats. NORSE INTERACTIONS IN THE NEW WORLD See Also: Norse colonization of the Americas Norse journeys to North America are supported by both historical and archaeological evidence. Norse presence in Greenland apparently began in the late 10th century. In 1961, archaeologists Helge and Anne Ingstad uncovered remains of a Norse settlement at the L'Anse Aux Meadows site in Newfoundland , Canada , proving some truth to the main claims of Vinland sagas. It is possible that Vinland may have been North America. Since the 19th century, it was accepted as fact in some countries. Speculations and disputes about the authenticity of the Vinland Map made people further question Norse settlement in America, since Norse contact with natives had little (if any) effect on indigenous culture. Indigenous peoples and the Norse Few sources for contact between Natives {Link without Title} and Norse settlers exist. Contact between the Thule People , ancestors of the modern Inuit, and Norse between the 12th or 13th centuries is known for certain. The Greenlanders called these incoming settlers " Skraelings ", meaning "wretches" in Old Norse . Conflict between the Greenlanders and "skraelings" is recorded in the ''Icelandic Annals'', as one of the few sources mentioning contact. Previous contact between native peoples and the Norse in Vinland, however, probably occurred from the outset. Major sources for this are the Vinland sagas, recorded hundreds of years later. The sagas record fights with natives referred to as "skraelings", unrelated to the Thule of Greenland. AGRICULTURE Major Cradles Of Civilization emerged on the basis of the domestication and development of wild plants. In the Americas, the principal domesticated plant was Maize , a domesticate of the Mexican wild grass Teosinte . Indigenous agriculture developed over thousands of years. Established native American civilizations tended to arise when the productivity of domesticated agriculture attained a certain level whereby larger populations could be sustained and organized into more sophisticated societies. Major agricultural development occurred well before any verified external cultural contacts did. The relatively early appearance (c. 7,000 BC) of the African Gourd (with its inherent ability to float, even across the ocean), is the exception. There is no clear evidence of any other non-indigenous domesticated plant in the Americas before this. In 1995, professor Hakon Hjelmqvist published an article in '' Svensk Botanisk Tidskrift '' on pre-Columbian Chili Pepper s in Europe.1 According to him, archaeologists at a dig in St Botulf in Lund found a ''Capsicum frutechens'' in a layer from the 13th century. Hjelmqvist also claims that ''Capsicum'' was described by the Greek Theophrastus (370-286 BC) in his '' Historia Plantarum '', and in other sources. Around the first century AD, the Roman poet Martialis described "Pipervee crudum" (raw pepper), but describes them as long and containing seeds, a description which seems to fit Chili Pepper s. CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE Feasibility of early trans-oceanic travel Many people, including orthodox anthropologists, believe pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact was unlikely, and therefore the only cultural kin to Native Americans were other autochthonous people. Mainstream scholarship is dubious about claims of pre-Columbian transoceanic voyaging for a reason, since apart from the Norse and perhaps Polynesians, evidence to date has been circumstantial or nonexistent. However, historical evidence may have been destroyed by human or natural causes, while other evidence may still lie buried. Circumstantial evidence includes records of ocean voyages of comparable distance (such as in the case of the Polynesians) as well as modern attempts to retrace possible contact routes with reproductions of ancient boats. While these experiments may have fueled wide conjecture, they indicate that such voyages were technically possible. ''For more on modern efforts to reconstruct prehistoric trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic travel, see Thor Heyerdahl . Historical long-range travel in 1849 .]] Linguistic evidence has demonstrated that Madagascar , for example, was settled by Austronesian peoples from Indonesia . Their navigators were able to cross the Indian Ocean and large sections of the Pacific by the early 1st Millennium . Centuries before Columbus, Arab (considered African and not Middle Eastern at the time) and merchant ships regularly traveled between East Africa , the Middle East , India , and China . This trade has been well-documented with written records and archeological finds (such as Chinese pottery in Zimbabwe ). In the 19th Century , a Japan ese Junk lost its Mast and Rudder in a Typhoon on its way to Edo , was carried by sea currents across the Northern Pacific , and reached the coast of Washington State 14 months later. One of the survivors, Otokichi , became a famous interpreter. Possible cultural and biological similarities Polynesians Between 300 and 1200 CE Polynesia ns in canoes, spread throughout the Polynesian Triangle going at least as far as far as Easter Island , New Zealand and Hawaii ; and perhaps on to the Americas. The ''kumara'' ( Sweet Potato ), a plant native to the Americas was widespread in Polynesia when Europeans first reached the Pacific. Kumara has been radiocarbon-dated in the Cook Islands to 1000 AD, and current thinking is that it was brought to central Polynesia circa 700 AD and spread across Polynesia from there, most likely by Polynesians who had travelled to South America and backVAN TILBURG, Jo Anne. 1994. Easter Island: Archaeology, Ecology and Culture. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. It is possible, however, that South Americans brought it to the Pacific or that this plant or its seed-bearing parts simply floated across the Pacific without human contact ever occurring. A 2007 study published in the '''' 10.1073/pnas.0703993104, 7 June 2007 Polynesian contact with the prehispanic Mapuche culture in central-south Chile has been suggested because of apparently similar cultural traits, including words like ''toki'' (stone axes and adzes), hands clubs similar to the Maori ''wahaika'', the sewn-plank canoe as used on Chiloe island, the ''curanto'' earth oven (Polynesian ''umu'') common in southern Chile, fishing techniques such as stone wall enclosures, a hockey-like game, and other potential parallels. Some strong westerlies and El Niño wind blow directly from central-east Polynesia to the Mapuche region, between Concepcion and Chiloe. A direct connection from New Zealand is possible, sailing with the "roaring forties". In 1834, some escapees from Tasmania arrived at Chiloe Island after sailing for 43 days.3 Recently, linguist Kathryn A. Klar of UC Berkeley and Archaeologist Terry L. Jones of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo have proposed contacts between Polynesians and the Chumash and Gabrielino of southern California , between 500 and 700 . Their chief evidence is the advanced sewn-plank canoe design, which is used throughout the Polynesian Islands, but is unknown in North America — except for those two tribes. Moreover, the Chumash word for "sewn-plank canoe," '' Tomolo'o '', may have been derived from ''kumulaa'au'', the Polynesian word for the Redwood logs used in that construction. Over the last 20 years, the dates and anatomical features of human remains found in Mexico and South America have led some archaeologists to propose that those regions were first populated by people who crossed the Pacific several millennia before the Ice Age migrations; according to this theory, these Pre-Siberian American Aborigines would have been either eliminated or absorbed by the Siberian immigrants. However, current archaeological evidence for human migration to and settlement of remote Oceania (i.e., the Pacific Ocean eastwards of the Solomon Islands ) is dated to no earlier than approximately 3,500 BP ;Kirch, Patrick V. ''Background to Pacific Archaeology and Prehistory'' , Oceanic Archaeology Laboratory, Univ. California, Berkeley. trans-Pacific contact with the Americas coinciding with or pre-dating the Beringia migrations of at least 11,500 BP is highly problematic, except for movement along intercoastal routes. Aboriginals The ). Africans See Also: Pre-Columbian Africa-Americas contact theories See Also: Pre-Columbian Islamic contact theories Evidence for an African presence in Mesoamerica point to Olmec culture, the presence of African crops, certain Islamic sources, and European accounts of early sightings of blacks in the New World. The Olmec culture extended from roughly 1200 BC to 400 BC. Cited evidence for an African presence include statues, stone carvings, religious beliefs, crops and figurines showing African influence. Some facial features of the ancient ''. ISBN 1-56584-100-X. propose that the statues depict visitors from Africa; which could have been either permanent (i.e. settlers), or temporary (explorers, military, traders, etc.) The origin of those visitors has been conjectured to be the Phoenician colonies in northern Africa, or the ancient peoples who lived in the Sahara before it became a desert. Some observers have noted stone imagery carved on Olmec and Mayan Stelae seem to depict interactions between Africans and Native Americans. The presence of one African native plant species, the bottle gourd, in ships discovered a land across the ocean to the West after being swept off course by ocean currents. Only one ship returned, and the captain reported the discovery of a western current to Prince Abubakari II ; the off-course Mali fleet of 400 ships is said to have conducted both trade and warfare with peoples of the "western lands." Prince Abubakari II then abdicated his throne and set off to explore these western lands. In 1324, the Mali king Mansa Musa is said to have told the Islamic historian, Al-Umari that "his predecessors had launched two expeditions from West Africa to discover the limits of the Atlantic Ocean." According to Ivan van Sertima, ’ own impression of the Carib peoples was that they were "Mohemmedans" (it should be noted that early European explorers often described New World peoples in terms of familiar Old World cultures and religions). In , Columbus writes about West African traders found in present-day Panama . BBC's The Story of Africa: The Kingdoms of Mali and Songhay , are almost black...". {Link without Title} African contact shows links to the West African also described the Mandinga as having "black skin" and the Tule as having "red skin". The Dominican Friar Gregorio Garcia, author of early speculative works on Native Americans, reported on "black-skinned people" sighted in present-day Colombia near where Cartagena now lies. Spanish historian López De Gomara described certain peoples as identical to Africans seen in Guinea. Ivan Van Sertima , They Came before Columbus, p. 23-24. Although an associate of Hernan Cortes, López de Gomara never traveled to the Americas, and his account of Cortes' exploits was criticized as a hagiography full of error and exaggeration {Link without Title} . Some accounts are unclear as to when or how the reported Africans or Blacks may have arrived in the New World. Author Michael Coe reports that Father Alonzo Ponce spoke of a boatload of " Moors " who landed off near present-day Campeche , Mexico and terrorized the natives. The French naturalist Armand De Quatrefages , author of "The Human Species", writes of distinct Black tribes among Native Americans like the Yamasee of Florida, the Charrúa of southern South America , and a people in St. Vincent . The latter may refer to the Garifuna , a people descended from Carib Indians and escaped African slaves, who came to the New World well after Columbus. The Melungeon s, whose presence was first noted by European explorers in Appalachia in the mid- 1600s , are conjectured to be partial descendants of Mediterranean and/or North African peoples in North America . Kolhoff, Michael (2001). "Fugitive Communities in Colonial America" . ''The Early America Review'', III (4). Egyptians and Mesopotamians The similarity between the Egyptian Pyramids and the temples of some New World civilizations — such as the Mayas , Aztecs , and Incas — has fueled speculations that either the Egyptians had traveled to the Americas, or that the civilizations on both sides of the ocean had sprung from a common source (such as the mythical lost continent of Atlantis ). Sometimes the comparison was made between the Pyramid s of the New World and the Ziggurat s of Mesopotamia , which would imply contact with the Sumerians or other people of the region. The typical American pyramid was built as a platform for a Temple , and was periodically enlarged with new layers; the design apparently evolved from an artificial earth mound, which was later covered with plaster and stone. In contrast, the Egyptian pyramid was just a tomb for one Pharaoh and his immediate family, with no temple proper; it was never enlarged after its completion; and its design evolved from smaller stone tomb structures. Other claims of contacts with Egypt were based on reports that some chemical tests run on Egyptian Mummies had found traces of plant products native to the Americas, such as Tobacco and Coca , which some have proposed were brought to them by Carthaginian merchants. These results may have resulted from modern contamination or some other experimental error in the absence of verification by other scientists. Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans Evidence of contacts with the civilizations of Classical Antiquity — chiefly the Roman Empire , but sometimes also with Greece , Carthage and other Phoenician cities, and other cultures of the age — have been based on isolated archaeological finds in American sites that were supposedly manufactured in the Old World. None of the finds have been sufficiently well-documented to dispel the possibility of the objects having been misidentified, misdated, or placed at the site at a more recent date — either accidentally, or as a fraud. In 1933, at , the fieldwork documentation is so poor that it is not clear whether this object was indeed excavated at Calixtlahuaca or not. In s Claudius Gothicus and Maximinus . More recently, what appear to be Roman coins from the same period have been found on the other side of the Ohio River . The coins were found buried in what might have been a disintegrated leather pouch. In 1982 , Brazilian newspapers reported that fragments of Amphorae had been recovered by treasure hunter and underwater archaeologist Robert Frank Marx , from the bottom of Guanabara Bay , in Rio De Janeiro , Brazil . Elizabeth Lyding Mill of the University of Massachusetts identified the finds as being Roman, manufactured at Kouass (Dehar Jedid) in Morocco, and dated them to the 3rd Century . A bottom survey by Harold E. Edgerton , an MIT researcher, located what seemed to be remains of two disintegrating ships. This potential find aggravated Brazilian and Spanish government officials as Spain was in the process of planning the 500th anniversary celebration of Columbus' arrival in the New World. These claims were also disputed when Américo (Amerigo) Santarelli , an Italian diver living in Rio de Janeiro, revealed in a book that he had 18 such amphors made by a local potter, and had placed 16 of them himself at various places in the bay. He said that his intent was to recover the encrusted amphors later, to decorate his house at Angra Dos Reis . It should be noted, however, that the Brazilian government prevented any additional research and dumped sand over the site in the bay to ensure no further artifacts would ever be recovered. Robert Marx, incidentally, was prohibited to work in Brazil due to his insistence on trying to locate the alleged Roman wrecks. Claims of contact have often been based on occurrences of similar motifs in art and decoration, or on depictions in one World of species or objects that are thought to be characteristic of the other World. Famous examples include a Maya statuette depicting a bearded man rowing, a cross in Bas-relief at the Temple Of The Cross in Palenque , or a Pineapple in a Mosaic on the wall of a house at Pompeii . Nevertheless, most of these finds can be explained as the result of mis-interpretation. The Palenque "cross", for instance, is almost certainly a stylized Maize plant; and the Pompeii "pineapple" is more likely to be a pine Cone . Some contact claimants note that the Aztec word for "god", ''teotl'', is similar to Greek ''theos'' and Latin ''deus''. Linguists generally ascribe such similar words to coincidence and identify them as False Cognates , a common linguistic fallacy. The established presence of Romans and probably Phoenicians in the Canary Islands has led some researchers to suggest that the islands may have been used as a stepping-off point for such journeys, as the islands lie along the same favorable sea route undertaken by Columbus on his first voyages to the Americas. Additionally, the dubious Bat Creek Inscription has led to possibility of Jew ish seafarers may have come to America after fleeing the Roman Empire at the time of the Jewish Revolt .Biblical Archaeology Review, July-August, 1993. Chinese See Also: 1421 hypothesis According to some Chinese reports, that these plants, in their New world versions, became significant in Chinese agriculture. Others have pointed out stylistic similarities between the decorative motifs of ancient China and of the ancient Maya, and the great value that both placed on Jade . Stylistic similarities also exist between Shang Dynasty bronzes and Totem Pole carvings of the Pacific Northwest coast of North America. {Link without Title} Japanese Pottery associated with the unique Valdivia Culture of coastal Ecuador dated to 3000 BC - 1500 BC is said to exhibit similarities to pottery produced during the Jomon Period of Japan. Alaskan anthropologist Nancy Yaw Davis claims that the Zuni people of New Mexico exhibit linguistic and cultural similarities to the Japanese. The Zuni Language is an Isolate , and the culture appears to differ more from any other surrounding natives through blood type, endemic Disease and religion. Davis speculates that Buddhist priests or restless peasants from Japan may have crossed the Pacific by the 13th Century and influenced Zuni society. Indians An image in a temple in Southern India is said to depict a goddess holding maize, a crop native to the Americas; the image is more usually taken to be of a native grass like Sorghum or Pearl Millet , which bear some resemblance to maize. . There is also a purported reference to Mayan Civilization in the Indian Epic '' Mahabharata ''. 'Mayudu' (a king known for his architectural skills) is asked by the Pandavas to build a palace for them. 'Mayadu' and his culture are said to resemble the Maya Civilization, also known for palaces and other buildings built with relatively advanced architecture. Some perceive similarity between Mayan carvings and designs to those of early Hindu temples, including depictions of the postures of lions. Andalusians, Arabs, and Moors See Also: Pre-Columbian Islamic contact theories Several medieval Arabic sources suggest that Muslim explorers from Islamic Spain and Northwest Africa may have travelled in expeditions across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas between the 9th and 14th centuries. The earliest of these was the navigator Khashkhash Ibn Saeed Ibn Aswad, from Cordoba , Islamic Spain , who in 889, sailed from Delba ( Palos ), crossed the Atlantic, reached the Americas, and returned with fabulous treasures.Tabish Khair (2006). ''Other Routes: 1500 Years of African and Asian Travel Writing'', p. 12. Signal Books. ISBN 1904955118.Dr. Youssef Mroueh (2003). Pre-Columbian Muslims in the Americas . Media Monitors Network. Ali Al-Masudi (940). ''Muruj Adh-Dhahab'' (''The Book of Golden Meadows''), Vol. 1, p. 138. Another Muslim navigator, Ibn Farrukh, from Granada , sailed into the Atlantic on February 999, landed in Gando ( Canary Islands ) visiting King Guanariga, and continued westward where he saw and named two islands, Capraria and Pluitana. He arrived back in Spain in May 999.Abu Bakr Ibn Umar Al-Gutiyya. Culdee monks
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| The Presence Of | "http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/information/entry/Basque_people" class="copylinks">Basque cod fishermen and Whalers in North America , just a few years after Columbus, has also been cited A Basque whaling station in Red Bay, Newfoundland And Labrador operated from 1530 to 1600 {{cite weburl=http://wwwheritagenfca/exploration/basquehtmltitle=Basque whalers in Labrador in 1530publisher=Newfoundlnd and Labrador Heritage last=O'Leary first=Jaime date=1997 |
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