Europeans Reaching the Americas before Columbus?

[lpetrich]

Before Christopher Columbus's voyages made these continents widely-known in Europe, there are some known predecessors:

Leif Ericsson ~ 1000 CE, whose settlement at "Vinland" was actually found. His voyages did not inspire the sort of follow-ups that Columbus's did, however, and that's why the "Indians" are not called "Skraelings".

Going back further, we find the semilegendary voyages of St. Brendan around 500 CE. He described a lot of Arctic sights in a rather mangled way, like

"mountains in the sea spouting fire" -- Iceland's volcanoes
"floating crystal palaces" -- icebergs
"monsters with catlike heads and horns growing from their mouths" -- walrus
"little furry men" -- Inuit in their form-fitting fur clothing

At one point they stop on a small island, celebrate Easter Mass, light a fire - and then discover that the island is an enormous whale!

They were "raised up on the back of sea monsters" -- surfacing whales
They "passed by crystals that rose up to the sky" -- icebergs
They were "pelted with flaming, foul-smelling rocks by the inhabitants of a large island on their route" -- Iceland's volcanoes

In Saint Brendan's Wake (http://www.ics.villanova.edu/in_saint_brendan.htm)
St. Brendan, The Navigator (http://www.irishcultureandcustoms.com/ASaints/BrendanNav.html)

Going back further, to a Greek explorer named Pytheas (~300 BCE), who reached northern Europe and an island he called "Thule" that was shrouded in a thick fog that made him return.

He reported that the people of northern Scotland lived in bog-peat and log houses, stored their grain underground, and threshed it in barns rather than outdoors. They told him of places to the north where summer nights were only a few hours long, and places even further north where summer daytime was continuous.

He also described boat-sized fish that swam lazily and that would spray noisily -- whales.

Looking back even further, Homer's Odyssey describes the Laestrygonians as living in a land with continuous daylight, a land with a harbor with a narrow entrance and steep cliffs at each side. A landscape which resembles a Scandinavian fjord.

The Odyssey, Chapter 10 (http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.10.x.html)

Columbus, Leif Ericsson and St. Brendan made it to the Americas, though Pytheas and Homer's Laestrygonian source only made it to northern Europe. And the long daytimes described by Pytheas and Homer fit the northern latitudes very well.


But do any pre-Columbian European sources describe:

Vipers with rattles on their tails
Huge herds of wild oxen with the manes of lions
Black badgers with white stripes on their backs that make a strong stink
Big mice that faint when startled
Big hedgehogs with long spines
Little foxes with scaly skin
White-headed eagles
Desert plants that are nothing but thick, prickly leaves or prickly green tree trunks
A grain with hard kernels that pop open when heated, making bread

It should be easy to guess what I'm describing.

[David B]

I'd have thought that the Europeans you mention would have made little progress exploring inland of the East Coast of America.

However there seems to be a lot of evidence that earlier Europeans made deeper inroads into the continent. Much earlier, in fact.

"[Stone Age] people crossing the Atlantic would be perfectly normal from my [Eskimo] perspective" Ronald Brower, Inupiat Heritage Center, Barrow, Alaska

David

[Lisa0315]

Uhm, I think Asians were first. Hasn't that pretty much been established? Or is this not about first, but rather, more information about European exploration? :dunno: :D

[nygreenguy]

I remember hearing about Africans making it here quite some time ago. I remember many artifacts and sculptures of african people being found in south america.

[Brother Daniel]

The Olmec sculptures in Central America, and some figures in South American artwork, are said to be somewhat African in their features, but that's not conclusive. I don't know of anything else to support the idea of a (pre-Columbian) African visit to America.

But it's possible, of course.

[Brother Daniel]

However there seems to be a lot of evidence that earlier Europeans made deeper inroads into the continent. Much earlier, in fact.
I haven't heard of this.

[SteveF]

I'd have thought that the Europeans you mention would have made little progress exploring inland of the East Coast of America.

However there seems to be a lot of evidence that earlier Europeans made deeper inroads into the continent. Much earlier, in fact.

David

There's the Solutrean hypothesis, which a small number of archaeologists hold to but has little wider support:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solutrean_hypothesis

[David B]

There's the Solutrean hypothesis, which a small number of archaeologists hold to but has little wider support:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solutrean_hypothesis

Yes, that's what I was referring to.

Whether the idea fails for some reason or another, or whether it becomes the new orthodoxy after further research seems to me unclear at the moment.

The 'no evidence for Solutrean seafaring' argument seems weak to me though, given the limited survivability of skin covered boats, and, I presume, a rise in sea level that would now have covered Solutrean coastal sites.

David

[Hex]

Solutrean culture was dominant in present-day France and Spain from roughly 21,000 to 17,000 years ago. It was known for its distinctive toolmaking characterized by bifacial, pressure-flaked points. Traces of the Solutrean tool-making industry disappear completely from Europe around 15,000 years ago, when it was replaced by the less complex stone tools of the Magdalenian culture.

Clovis tools are typified by a distinctive rock spear point, known as the Clovis point. Solutrean and Clovis points share common characteristics: points are thin and bifacial, and they share the intentional use of the overshot flaking technique, which quickly reduces the thickness of a biface.

The Clovis blade differs from its predecessor in that it has bi-facial fluting (a long depression that occurs on a point, which is caused by knapping at the basal end of the point; the purpose was to fit the point onto a spear foreshaft). Clovis tool-making technology seems to appear in the archaeological record in North America roughly 13,500 years ago, and similar predecessors in Asia or Alaska, if they exist, have not been discovered.

And the Mayan/Aztec step pyramids look like early Egyptian step pyramids. It doesn't mean the Egyptians who made those pyramids came across the Atlantic to settle Mesoamerica. :bang:

There are some bigger issues here than the similarity of the flaking methodology and the thin aspect of the diagnostic lithics. There is a massive functional difference in the fluting aspect. Solutrean points (and indeed their scrapers and the like) are thin and functional, but would not stand up to the bifacial fluting seen on Clovis points, rather, they'd snap in half and if you could flute them, they'd be even more likely to break.

Then, we'd have to actually find them somewhere on the east coast of North America, because they would have to figure out how to flute the points, and for that they'd have to know/figure out why they'd flute them in the first place. It's not like they'd step off the boats and find the "How to Flute Your Points In Ten Easy Steps" book. Anyhow, the diagnostic features of a Clovis blade share little in common with a Solutrean blade. I can go into more detail on that when I've time if people really want, but it probably isn't enough, because you need more similarities to build a good case, right?

So getting away from that we can look to the 'seafaring' aspect, and for that the Magdalenian is when we really see European human populations getting away from the slowly disappearing megafauna and starting to go after marine resources. These guys get into making harpoons and lots of fish-hooks and nets. In examining the faunal materials from Solutrean there's very little marine bone in there, whereas for the Magdalenian it becomes a more significant part of the diet.

Which one of these cultures is likely to have boats capable of moving on the ocean?

[Steviepinhead]

Ther are some indicia of the impact of epidemics wjocj suggest that parts of the east coast of North America may have been affected by contact before the "officially" recorded landfalls of explorers in the region.

Of course, generations of offshore fishing preceded the recorded expeditions of the colonizers, pilgrims, and explorers, and very minimal contacts might have been sufficient to spark an epidemic (of flu, measles, smallpox, etc.) -- small parties of sailors or fishermen landing for fresh food, water, vegetables, or medicinal plants. Or conceivably something slightly more dramatic, like seriously ill seamen being "quarantined" by being put off of a vessel in a small boat.

I don't see anything in the Brendan legends that conclusively indicate specific North American contacts (as opposed to the kind of information that would have been outlandish to southern Europeans but commonplace to those living in the northern regions of Scandanavia and other northerly countries and islands off of Europe).

Other than this, and the Icelandic party in Vinland (and possible Inuit-Greenlander contacts), I'm not aware of anything very definite for this region that hasn't already been mentioned above. Most of the various claims of weird etchings or strange languages and symbols have been debunked over the years.

The Olmec heads and the like are more parsimoniously explained by local stylization than by transatlantic transplantation of entire civilizations.

As with New England, this does not necessarily rule out the occasional survival of isolated sailors on storm-driven rafts, wrecks, or other flotsam, who might have been absorbed (or quickly eliminated) by local cultures without any lasting evidence... or without any evidence that can easily be distinguished from "convergent" developments ("Jomon"-like pottery on the west coast of the americas; writing systems, claimed resemblance of some precolumbian artistic and artifactual practices with those of SE Asia, Polynesia, and so forth).

Though, of course, the truly enlightened among some of the woo-full "friends" we have (so far) left behind on other boards would be happy to explain how the present dispersal of cultural resemblances around the world all goes back to the post-cataclysmic dispersal of the Atlanteans, or the Lemurians, or the Lost Tribes, or ...

[BWE]

lemmings

[Berthold]

So far I heard that the Basques fished there but kept it a trade secret.

Also some speculations about the Picts (who were they, anyway?) and their similarity in culture to some Native Americans.

[Ray Moscow]

How about the ancient celts in Colorado (http://www.archaeoastronomy.com/clips1.pdf)?

[Anne]

Though, of course, the truly enlightened among some of the woo-full "friends" we have (so far) left behind on other boards would be happy to explain how the present dispersal of cultural resemblances around the world all goes back to the post-cataclysmic dispersal of the Atlanteans, or the Lemurians, or the Lost Tribes, or ...

Hey! We're right here!

[Steviepinhead]

Ah, good to know!

It's not always easy knowing who's on the bus and who's been left behind in the slipstream.

[dancer_rnb]

How about the ancient celts in Colorado (http://www.archaeoastronomy.com/clips1.pdf)?

Leaving aside the possible inscriptions, sounds like they are making assumptions that the locals didn't have knowledge enough to build astronomical structures. Like the ones found at Cahokia.:evil:

[anthrosciguy]

I remember hearing about Africans making it here quite some time ago. I remember many artifacts and sculptures of african people being found in south america.


That's nonsense. Going on a trip in an hour so can't look up the link, but Hall of Maat has articles on it -- do a search.


BTW, on the "wild ox with manes like lions", bison existed in Europe until a hundred years ago or so. Poland was a major habitat.

[Ray Moscow]

I remember hearing about Africans making it here quite some time ago. I remember many artifacts and sculptures of african people being found in south america.


That's nonsense. Going on a trip in an hour so can't look up the link, but Hall of Maat has articles on it -- do a search.


BTW, on the "wild ox with manes like lions", bison existed in Europe until a hundred years ago or so. Poland was a major habitat.

European Bison (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisent) are still around, in Belarus for example.

[Berthold]

European Bison (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisent) are still around, in Belarus for example.
Successfully reintroduced a few decades ago. The species had been extinct in the wild for quite some time.

[Hex]

So far I heard that the Basques fished there but kept it a trade secret.

Also some speculations about the Picts (who were they, anyway?) and their similarity in culture to some Native Americans.

The Iroquois come from ancient stock, but we would never have known them by that name were it not for the equally ancient Basques. Normans and Basques were among the now mostly anonymous fishermen who found and harvested the riches of the Great Banks in the sixteenth century. ... Archaeological evidence is just as scanty: a few European artifacts in an Indian site here, the remains of a tiny Basque fishing station there.

... A simple trading jargon that was a mixture of Basque and Algonquian grew up between these transatlantic trading partners, a pidgin language that was recorded in fragmentary form by later travelers and missionaries. Among the words that survived from this simple vocabulary was one that referred to a feared nation of Indians that lived far to the interior. These warriors sometimes came down the St. Lawrence to trade and their dreaded visits increased when they discovered that European traders were likely to stop by during the warm months. The local Algonquins and Basques called them by the pidgin Basque name Hilokoa, "the killer people." thus, like several other American Indian societies, the Iroquois became known first to Europeans through unflattering second-hand descriptions provided by rivals.

The Iroquois, Dean R. Snow, Published by Wiley-Blackwell, 1996

These are the first known 'modern' Europeans in contact. There are some viking sites like L'Anse aux Meadows (http://www.pc.gc.ca/apprendre-learn/prof/sub/meadows/le-meadows/chap-2-3-2-2_e.asp) in Newfoundland, CA. Here, carbon 14 dates from the hearth in the smithy ranged between 890 +/- 70 AD to 1090 +/- 90 AD (http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/vikings/Newfoundland.html), and this encompasses the dates for other hearths on the site.

Such sites give us the best hard evidence for Europeans making it to the New World, but for the Vikings, they didn't stay. They also didn't seem to travel too far inland, which isn't so surprising seeing how their maritime technology was one of the things they really relied on.

[Berthold]

Such sites give us the best hard evidence for Europeans making it to the New World, but for the Vikings, they didn't stay. They also didn't seem to travel too far inland, which isn't so surprising seeing how their maritime technology was one of the things they really relied on.
According to Jared Diamond, the Vikings just went there to fetch timber for their Greenland settlement, which, although it flourished in its heyday, was, after all, just a small outpost, and not populous enough to start and sustain a proper colonizing campaign.

ETA: Considering how the Vikings went into European inland waters, the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes would have been a paradise for them, had they taken a go at it.