The expression pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact refers to interactions between Native American peoples and peoples of other continents — Europe, Africa, Asia, or Oceania — before the age of European exploration, which culminated with the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492.
Many such events have been proposed at various times, based on historical reports, archaeological finds, and cultural comparisons. Some of those claims are listed in this article. However, evidence for those claims is generally scant and circumstantial, and only a few of them are taken seriously by researchers.
Overview
The 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, apology of colonialism, and the backing of priority claims. Proponents of such contacts often stated or implied the ethnocentric premise that Native Americans — generally portrayed as savages — could not have developed the sophisticated technical and scientific knowledge of some New World civilizations without outside help. These theories were also helped by certain religious beliefs, and of course by the scarcity of data about the origins and history of the American native peoples, which until the 1970s did not have a coherent scientific model.
The isolationist view
Popular views began to change by the 1830s, as the history and character of the pre-Columbian American civilizations became better known through traveler reports (such as the books by Stephens on Mesoamerica), documentary research (such as Prescott's accounts of the Spanish conquests of Mexico and Peru), and extensive archaeological research. These data eventually led most historians to embrace an isolationist view: namely, that the pre-Columbian civilizations had evolved gradually over several millenia, and that most (if not all) of their culture and knowledge had in fact been developed by the ancestors of the current Native Americans.
The Bering Land Bridge model
Another strong argument for the isolationist view was provided in the late 20th century, as carbon dating and molecular genetics began to shed light on the origins of native populations. It turned out that, while the human presence all over Eurasia is attested by fossil finds spanning several hundred thousand years, no human remains could be found in the Americas that were older than about 13,000 years.
This date roughly coincides with the last Ice Age, a time when the sea level was substantially lower than it is today. This coincidence, and the great genetic similarity between the indigenous peoples of the Americas and certain Siberian 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 data indicated two or three distinct migration waves. On the other hand, if it was the Ice Age that made the migrations possible, the route must have been closed again when that cold spell ended and the sea level rose again to its present level, some 9,000 years ago.
The isolationist dogma
Between the 1950s and the 1980s, this Bering Land Bridge theory came to be viewed as proved beyond any doubt. At the time, it was also widely believed that trans-oceanic travel became possible only in the 15th century, after key advances in European shipbuilding and navigation technology. Thus, most archeologists came to believe that the native cultures of the Americas had been completely cut off from the Old World after the closing of the Bering routes, when they were still in the Neolithic hunter-gatherer stage; and had developed without any outside influences for the next 9,000 years, until the time of Columbus.
This belief was reinforced by the lack of any solid evidence of Old World influences on the American civilization. By the 1980s, this theory had largely become a dogma; and claims of pre-Columbian contacts were often automatically dismissed, or even ridiculed, by most mainstream scholars.
Lessening of the dogma
Nevertheless, the isolationist view — that there were no trans-oceaic contacts after the initial migrations — has not yet been definitely proved; and, due to its nature, it is unlikely that it will ever be. In fact, a minority of scholars still find that historical records and/or cultural similarities provide convincing evidence for various pre-Columbian contacts.
The mainstream view has also softened somewhat over the last few decades. Some of the aforementioned contact claims are no longer lightly dismissed by scientists. In particular, the actuality of the pre-Columbian Viking landings at Newfoundland are now widely accepted, and may already be considered "mainstream". (However, they apparently did not have any lasting effect on the native cultures.)
There is also growing consensus that ancestors of the Inuit, Yupik, and other related North American peoples entered the continent well after the last Ice Age. This theory implies that a high-latitude route between the Old and the New Worlds, of which the ___location and nature is stil uncertain, probably existed at sometime or throughout the historical past.
Bering Land Bridge model in question
In fact, the standard model for the population of the Americas has been increasingly challenged in recent years, by claims of human remains that are dated between 20,000 and 50,000 years. The remains have anatomical features that differ greatly from those of Siberian populations. While those claims are still highly disputed, they raise the possibility that the Bering Land Bridge model may be too simplistic, to say the least. For instance, short-range navigation along the Pacific coasts of Siberia and Alaska may have provided an alternate route, independent of sea level. These doubts obviously weaken the earlier conclusion that the original migration routes were blocked 9,000 years ago.
Feasibilty of trans-oceanic travels
The isolationist "dogma" was particularly weakened by the realization that pre-Columbian trans-oceanic voyages were technically quite possible.
After all, the only essential requirements for a successful trans-oceanic trip are a boat that can withstand the open ocean weather for a few months, and means to store or obtain enough food and water to keep the crew alive for that duration. The historical and experimental evidence gathered over the last few decades shows that these requirements could have been met even in remote antiquity, millenia before Columbus's time.
This evidence includes reliable records of several maritime trips of comparable distance, and modern attempts to retrace possible contact routes with reproductions of ancient boats. While these reports and experiments are only circumstantial and sometimes questionable, they do remove one of main arguments against those contacts.
Historical long-range travels
Madagascar. Linguistic evidence has demonstrated that Madagascar, for example, was settled by Austronesian peoples from Indonesia. Their navigators were able to cross the Indian Ocean and large sections of the Pacific before the year 1000.
Arab sea trading. Centuries before Columbus, Arab 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).
Asian castaways. In the 19th century, a Japanese 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. Similar events may have happened to other Chinese and Japanese sailors in previous centuries. A legend from Hawai'i suggests that a Japanese trading vessel got stranded at Maui around 1260.
Modern experiments
The Kon-Tiki. In 1947, Norwegian writer Thor Heyerdahl sailed for over 6,900 km across the Pacific — from Callao in Peru to the Raroia atoll in Tuamotu Islands — on the Kon-Tiki, a balsawood raft built after ancient Peruvian designs.
The Ra II. In 1969, Heyerdahl turned to the Atlantic, and sailed 6,400 km — from Safi in Morocco to Barbados — in the Ra II, a reed boat of ancient Egyptian design. The Frenchman Alain Bombard had already done a similar trip in 1952 — starting from the Canaries and in a modern inflatable boat, but alone and without taking any food or water reserves.
Severin's Currach. In 1977, Irish writer Tim Severin sailed from Brandon Creek on Ireland's Dingle Peninsula to Newfoundland in a currach made with 6th century Irish designs and materials — namely, oxhides stretched over a wooden frame. (See the section on Saint Brendan below).
The Vikings in Newfoundland
The case of the Viking trips to North America stands out as being fairly well supported by both historical and archaeological evidence.
The so-called Vinland sagas of Icelandic and Norse literature tell of travels by Leif Ericson and other Vikings, around the year 1000, to a land called Vinland to the west of Greenland. The speculation that Vinland may have been North America has been fairly popular since the 19th century, and was even accepted as fact in some countries. The shipbuilding and navigational skills of the Viking were well-known, and the trip from Greenland to Newfoundland would have been a relatively short one.
Nevertheless, this claim was strongly resisted by many scholars. Nationalistic biases definitely played a role in the controversy, which was further muddled by disputes about the authenticity of the Vinland map and of other finds attributed to the Vikings, such as the Kensington Runestone, the Newport Tower, and many "runic" inscriptions scattered all over the continent, from Oklahoma to Paraguay.
This controversy was largely settled in 1961, when archeologists Helge and Anne Ingstad uncovered remains of a Viking settlement at the L'Anse aux Meadows site in Newfoundland. Of course, while those finds confirmed the reality of the Vinland sagas, they did not have much effect on the disputes about the earlier finds.
Claims based on cultural and biological similarities
Polynesians
The realization that Polynesians had been able to spread as far as Easter Island by boat led to theories of trans-Pacific contacts with Oceania. The presence in Polynesia of the kumara (sweet potato), a plant native to the Americas, has been cited as possible evidence of contacts.
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 Proto-Polynesians, several millennia before the Ice Age migrations. According to this theorey, 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[1]; any trans-Pacific contact with the Americas coinciding with or pre-dating the Beringia migrations of at least 11,500 BP is highly problematic.
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 AD. 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.
Africans
Some sources claim that the facial features of the ancient Olmecs, as seen on their statues, are more similar to those of native Africans than to other native peoples of the Americas. These observations have led some authors, such as I. van Sertima and James W. Loewen[2], to propose that the statues depict visitors from Africa; which could be either permanent (i.e. settlers), or temporary (explorers, military, traders, etc.) The origin of those hypothetical visitors has been conjectured to be the Phoenician colonies in nothern Africa, or the ancient peoples who lived in the Sahara before it became a desert.
However, critics argue that the faces seen in Olmec imagery resemble those of African natives only superficially, and that they are not as different from those of American natives as the proponents assume. In any case, this African connection has not been demonstrated by genetic studies. Finally, the fact that the Olmecs produced "African-like" imagery throughout the duration of their culture argues against the hypothesis that the subjects of those statues were short-term visitors who did not intermarry with natives.
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 many speculations that either the ancient 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 lost continent of Atlantis). Sometimes the comparison was made with the ziggurats of Mesopotamia, which would imply contact with the Sumerians or other people of the region.
However, the similarities between Old and New Word pyramids are not very strong, and get weaker as one recedes further into the past. The typical American pyramid was only 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. However, most Egyptologists would rather ascribe those results, which have not been reproduced by other scientists, to modern contamination or some other experimental error.
Phoenicians, Greek and Romans
Many claims 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. However, none of these finds have been sufficiently well-documented to dispell the possibility of the objects having been mis-identified, mis-dated, or placed at the site at a more recent date — either accidentally, or as a fraud.
The Calixtlahuaca Head. In 1933, at Toluca Valley (72 kilometres west of Mexico City), a small ceramic head, showing a beard and European-like features, was found embedded in the pavement of a building that had been abandoned in 1510, nine years before the Spaniards arrived. In 1961, Austrian anthropologist Robert Heine-Geldern studied the head, declaring that it fit Roman schools of art from the 2nd century CE. In 1999, the head was dated by thermoluminescence to 870 BC--1270 AD. However, as pointed out by archaeologist Michael E. Smith, the fieldwork documentation is so poor that it is not clear whether this object was indeed excavated at Calixtlahuaca or not.
Roman coins in the Midwest. In 1963, what appeared to be Roman coins were discovered in New Albany, Indiana, across from Louisville, Kentucky [3]. All but two of the coins have vanished; the remaining ones appear to depict Roman Emperors Claudius II and Maximinus. More recently, what appear to be Roman coins from the same period have been found on the other side of the Ohio River. The coins were found buried in what might have been a disintegrated leather pouch.
Amphorae in Guanabara Bay. In 1982, Brazilian newspapers reported that fragments of amphorae had been recovered by professional treasure hunter Robert Frank Marx, from the bottom of Guanabara Bay, offshore from the present city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Elizabeth Lyding Mill of the University of Massachusetts has reportedly identified the finds as being Roman, manufactured at Kouass (Dehar Jedid) inf Morocco, and dated them to 3rd century. A bottom survey by Harold E. Edgerton of MIT located what seemed to be remains of two disintegrating ships.
These claims however collapsed when Américo (Amerigo) Santarelli, an Italian professional 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. To prove his story, Santarelli recovered 8 of the amphors. The story pretty much died there. Robert Marx, incidentally, was prohibited to work in Brazil (as in several other countries) by alleged ethical misconduct in an unrelated find.
Language. It has been oft noted that the Aztec word for "god", teo, is very similar to the Greek theos. This and other similarities have been advanced as proofs of contact. However, linguists generally prefer to ascribe such shared words to chance coincidences.
Ornamentation. 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. However, most of this "evidence" can be explained away 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.
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. However, the stylistic similarities are mainly subjective, and jade may have been valued simply for its intrinsic beauty and for its qualities as a sculptural material.
Chinese
Peanuts, native to the New World, have reportedly been discovered in ruins in China dating back to the 1st century.
Indians
In southern India, there is a temple that has an image of goddesses holding what appear to be maize, a crop native to the Americas.
Claims based on legends and documents
Carthaginians
According to the 16th century Spanish historian Oviedo, who relies on Brother Theophilus of Cremona, who in turn cites Aristotle, the ancient Carthaginians had discovered an abundant land beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and guarded their secret so that no other nation could conquer that land. Oviedo goes on to argue that the Hesperides of ancient myth were not the Canary Islands, as was the contemporary interpretation, but actually the West Indies.
Saint Brendan
Several Medieval documents claim that Irish monk Saint Brendan (c. 478–578) and seventeen fellow monks crossed the Atlantic in a leather boat to a "Land of the Promise of the Saints" (which had been previously visited by another monk, Father Barinthus). This land of wonders has often been conjectured to be some part of the New World.
The earliest surviving record of the tale dates from the 9th century, some 300 years after the time of St. Brendan. The document describes Brendan's boat as "a light vessel, with wicker sides and ribs ...covered it with cow-hide, tanned in oak-bark" — i.e., a currach — with tarred joints. The trip is said to have lasted seven years. The report contains many descriptions that are obviously fantasies, and some that are hard to understand — such as an immense "crystal column" with a "silver canopy" rising from the sea (an iceberg?); an island covered with slag, with no trees but full of smiths' forges, inhabited by giants who threw masses of "burning slag" at the ship (volcanos in Iceland?), and huge fishes spouting foam, which they mistook for an island (whales?). These details, as well as geographical constraints, would suggest a route across the North Atlantic; but the fantastic description of the "blessed land" hardly matches the reality of Greenland or of the American Northeast. Thus, while the feasibility of the trip was confirmed in 1977 by Tim Severin, the actual destination and even the reality of St. Brendan's trip are still uncertain.
Culdee Monks
It is known that Culdee Monks were persecuted by the vikings in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. The Culdee originated in Ireland and Scotland; however, some of them were known to have sailed to Iceland and Greenland, thence to Labrador and Nova Scotia to flee the vikings. The most convincing facts that the Culdee arrived in the Maine and New Hampshire areas are approximately 275 beehive stone huts. These stone structures are similar to those found in Ireland and Scotland, which were built in the Early Middle Ages or earlier. The structures are unlike any other prehistorical buildings found in North America, and do not fit any of the living use patterns of Native Americans. (Olsen, 2003).
Prince Madoc of Wales
Another Medieval legend says that the Welsh prince Madoc (Madawg ab Owain Gwynedd) sailed to the west in 1170, fleeing from a succession war, and found an unknown, fertile land. He left 120 men there, and returned to Wales to get more people. In 1174 he had collected more ships and people, including women, and sailed to the unknown land again. No one ever heard of him again.
The story first appeared in writing in 1583. It has been claimed that the Mandans and many other Native American tribes are descendants of Madoc's settlers. However, this claim has not been supported by any realiable evidence, and it is quite possible that Madoc's legend is just a myth. [4]
Zichmni, aka Robert Sinclair
A 1558 book published in Venice by a Nicolò Zeno claimed that his ancestors, the brothers Nicolò and Antonio Zeno, had crossed the North Atlantic in 1398. The expedition was allegedly commanded by a certain Prince Zichmni, and went as far as the coast of North America.
In the 19th century, some historians have speculated that Zichmni was the Scottish nobleman Henry Sinclair, 1st Earl of Orkney. The identification was based on the coat of arms and the inscription on the Westford Knight, an allegedly pre-Columbian rock carving in Massachusetts. However, most historians consider Zeno's book (or the letters on which it puports to be based) to be a hoax; and analysis of the Westford Knight have concluded that most of the "drawing" consists of natural scratches, while the inscription and some details were added in fairly recent times.
Late contacts
There are many historically-based claims of trans-oceanic contacts in the 15th century — before Columbus, but too late to have had any influence on the development of the New World civilizations.
Zheng He
The achievements of Chinese navigation have been widely known in the West at least since the work of Joseph Needham and John King Fairbank in the 1950s. Gavin Menzies, in his book 1421: The Year China Discovered The World, popularized the further and highly controversial thesis that the fleet of Zheng He arrived at America in 1421. Menzies' presentation of this idea has been found unconvincing by most historians, but it is intriguing enough that it has led to proposals of other Chinese-American contacts, e.g. by off-course Ming Dynasty ships. The possibility of Muslim trips from Asia (see Sung Document) has also been discussed.
Spanish
Even in Columbus' time there was much speculation that other Old Worlders had made the trip in ancient or contemporary times; Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés records several in his General y natural historia de las Indias of 1526, which includes biographical information on Columbus. He discusses the 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 ship's pilot, a man from somewhere in the Iberian peninsula (Oviedo says different versions have him as Portuguese, Basque, or Andalusian), and very few others finally made it to Portugal, but all were very ill. Columbus was a good friend of the pilot, 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, but Oviedo disregarded it as myth.
Portuguese
In 1472, the Portuguese navigator João Vaz Corte-Real was granted the title "discoverer of the Land of the Codfish". It is conjectured that he visited Newfoundland. The presence of Basque cod fishermen and whalers in North America, just a few years after Columbus, has also been cited.
Others have conjectured that Columbus was able to convince the Catholic Monarchs of Castile to support his planned voyage only because they were aware of some earlier voyage. Some suggest that Columbus himself visited Canada or Greenland before 1492, because he wrote he had visited Thule once.
In the first half of the 16th century, the Tupinambá people in the Rio de Janeiro region cut their hair in a monk-like fashion. According to Hans Staden, a 16th century German sailor who was their prisoner for several years, they attributed the style to an European monk who had visited them some time before the official Portuguese discovery of Brazil (1500).
Dutch
Didrik Pining, with John of Kolno as his navigator, is said to have landed on the coast of Labrador in 1473.
English
From at latest the reign of King Henry VII (1457-1509), English fishermen were catching cod off of the coast of New England. King Henry was recorded as having threatened the captain of the fishermen with imprisonment if he would not reveal the ___location of this great cashe of cod.
Reverse contacts
While most claims of trans-oceanic contact are about non-Americans traveling to the Americas, there are a few reports of trips in the other direction
Caecilius Metellus
Pomponius Mela (Lib.III,Chap.5) writes, and is copied by Pliny the Elder, that Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer, proconsul in Gaul received 'several Indians' (Indi) as a present from a Germanic king. The Indians were driven by a storm to the coasts of Germania (in tempestatem ex Indicis aequoribus).
- "Metellum Celerem adjicit, eumque ita retulisse commemorat: Cum Galliae proconsule praeesset, Indos quosdam a rege [Suevorum] dono sibi datos; unde in eas terras devenissent requirendo, cognôsse, vi tempestatum ex Indicis aequoribus abreptos, emensosque quae intererant, tandem in Germaniae litora exiise. Restat ergo pelagus; sed reliqua lateris ejusdem assiduo gelu durantur, et ideo deserta sunt." (Pomponius Mela (Book III,Chap.5)).
- "Metellus Celer recalls the following: when he was Proconsul in Gaul, he was given people from India by the king of the Sueves; upon requesting why they were in this land, he learnt that they were caught in a storm away from India, that they became castaways, and finally landed on the coast of Germany. They thus resisted the sea, but suffered from the cold for the rest of their travel, and that is the reason why they left."
It is unclear whether these castaways may have been people from India or Eastern Asia, or possibly Native Americans. Edward Herbert Bunbury suggested they were Finns. This account is open to some question, since Metellus Celer died just after his consulship, before he ever got to Gaul.
Antonio Galvano
According to the Portuguese seafarer Antonio Galvano 'certain Indians' (certos Indios) were picked out of sea in 1153 and sent to Lübeck. Galvado said they were probably from Bacalao, a mythical island.
Bartolomé de las Casas
According to Bartolomé de las Casas there were two dead bodies that looked like Indians found on Flores (Azores). He said he found that fact in Columbus' notes, and it was one of the reasons for Columbus to assume India was on the other side of the ocean.
Lost continents, flying saucers, and La Merika
The 19th century saw the spread of several "lost continent" theories such as the Atlantis of Rosicrucians and Theosophists, and James Churchward's proposals of Mu and Lemuria.
In the 20th century, extra-terrestrial civilizations have been added to the long list of conjectural visitors to the Americas. According to popular writers like Erich von Däniken, these celestial visitors were the real builders of the ancient monuments of the Americas, or at least the masters who taught the natives how to build them.
The La Merika theory claims that some old graveyards in Nova Scotia use an ancient measuring system of Rods and which contain grave stones which incorporate Masonic devices such as Crusader Crosses and Pentagrams.
None of these 'theories' enjoy any support from serious historians or achaeologists.
Religious accounts
A number of diffusionist theories involving ancient visitors are mandated by or inspired on religious beliefs. The Book of Mormon, for instance, holds that a number of Israelites migrated from the Middle East to ancient America around 600 to 700 BC.
Others have speculated that one of the lost tribes of Israel may have ended up in America.
References
- ^ Kirch, Patrick V. Background to Pacific Archaeology and Prehistory, Oceanic Archaeology Laboratory, Univ. California, Berkeley.
- ^ Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your History Textbook Got Wrong. ISBN 156584100X.
Bibliography
- Barry Fell, America B.C. : Ancient Settlers in the New World (New York: Simon & Schuster , 1984);
- Gavin Menzies, 1421 : The year China discovered America ( ? , 2003);
- Geoffrey Ashe, The Quest for America (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971);
- Fagan, Brian M. The Great Journey. Thames and Hudson. 1987);
- E. Harry Gerol, Dioses, Templos y Ruinas;
- William Howgaard, The Voyages of the Norsemen to America (New York: The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1914, Kraus Reprint Co., 1971);
- Patrick Huyghe, Columbus was Last: A Heretical History of who was First (New York: Hyperion, 1992)
- Helge Ingstad, Westward to Vinland (New York: St. Martins, 1969);
- R.A. Jairazbhoy, Ancient Egyptians and Chinese in America (Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1974);
- Adrian Johnson, America Explored (New York: The Viking Press, 1974);
- Arlington Mallery and Mary Roberts Harrison, The Rediscovery of Lost America (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1979);
- Farley Mowat, The Farfarers (Toronto, Key Porter Books, 1998) ISBN 1550139894;
- Kenneth L. Feder, "Frauds, myths, and mysteries : science and pseudoscience in archaeology" (3rd ed., Mountain View, Calif. : Mayfield Pub. Co., 1999)
- Brad Olsen, Sacred Places North America, CCC Publishing, Santa Cruz, California (2003)
- Frederick J. Pohl, The Lost Discovery (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1952);
- Frederick J. Pohl, The Viking Explorers (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1966);
- Zoltan A. Simon, Atlantis: The Seven Seals (Vancouver, 1984);
- Michael E. Smith, The 'Roman Figurine' Supposedly Excavated at Calixtlahuaca. http://www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9/tval/RomanFigurine.html
- John L. Sorenson & Martin H. Raish, Pre-Columbian Contact with the Americas Across the Oceans: An Annotated Bibliography. 2v. 2d ed., rev. (Provo, Utah: Research Press, 1996) ISBN 0934893217;
- Robert Wauchope, Lost Tribes & Sunken Continents. (University of Chicago Press. 1962);
- Man across the sea: Problems of Pre-Columbian contacts (Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1971).
- Hey, J. (2005). On the number of New World founders: A population genetic portrait of the peopling of the Americas. Public Library of Science Biology, 3, e193.
- Brazilian newspaper O Globo, september 23, 1982.
- Article on Robert Marx in the online agazine Naufrágios (in Portuguese).
- . ISBN B0007HV7US.
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- Report of Severin's trip in the National Geographic Magazine, Volume 152, Number 6 (December 1977).
See also
External links
- Paper given at the 66th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (2001) on The Calixtlahuaca Head
- Interpreting the Clovis Artifacts from the Gault Site by Michael B. Collins and Thomas R. Hester, at the University of Texas.
- African Presence in the Americas Before Columbus
- The Mystery of the Cocaine Mummies (Transcript of television broadcast)
- Olmec head photo at Michigan State University.
