Which Ethnic Groups Claimed to Have Discovered the New World - Essay Example

Which ethnic groups claimed to have discovered the "new world" Introduction The ongoing debate about who were the first ethnic groups to enter thenew world is not new. Due to all the interest and controversial opinions the subject has aroused, more and more historical and archaeological quests have been undertaken. Today there is more than enough evidence to support the claim that Christopher Columbus was not the first non-native North American to land in the New World. People as diverse as the Phoenicians, the Scandinavians, the Irish, the Welsh, the Chinese, the Romans, the Greeks, the Celts, the Basques, the Ainu, the Egyptians, the Norse, the Arabs, the ancient powers of India, the Polynesians, and every other sea-faring culture before that most certainly got to North and South America were actually in the New World, in some cases, way before 1492. Although a lot of associated myths and support claims are yet to be conclusively proved or accepted, discounting all of them to be untrue would be unjust. Columbus is given credit probably because it was a well-communicated, planned and documented voyage. These may not have been possible for the earlier explorers. There are not enough records that add substance to their claim and except the Phoenicians who documented their travels in useful inscriptions; very few left any written records for their efforts. THE PHOENICIANS In 1872, on a plantation in Brazil, a stone, covered with strange carvings, was found in a field. The carvings were later identified as Phoenician writing, telling of a ship blown off course and landing in a strange, new land, some 2500 years earlier, after returning from a trip to the Middle East. The Phoenicians were well known as enthusiastic sailors and were one of the foremost to document their travels. They have been known to travel around the coast of Africa to the Arab lands. Also, historians agree that, in 1872, of Phoenician writing was not of a state to which the stone could have been a fake. The term Phoenician refers to the inhabitants of the ancient cities of Tyre and Sidon and also included the Israelite tribes of Dan, Asher and Zebulon who resided near these cities along the east Mediterranean shore. These people also traded frequently along the northern African and Spanish coasts as well as the British Isles and navigated the Straits of Gibraltar called the "Pillars of Hercules". Diodorus of Sicily wrote, in the first century BCE, that the Phoenicians, while sailing along the west coast of Africa, were blown off course into the ocean by a "furious storm" and after many days being blown about, "arrived at the island and so they were the first to discover it." The only places, west of Europe that has navigable rivers are Cuba, Haiti and North and South America. (Pohl, 21). Also the early explorers tended to call even extremely large landmasses islands. (Boland, 28). As long ago as 1913, author T. C. Johnston in his book "Did The Phoenicians Discover America" claimed that the American continent was discovered and settled by Phoenicians and Hebrews who kept in contact with the Middle East for some three hundred years. He claimed that North America was the Biblical Ophir, visited by the fleets of King Solomon, and he outlined some twenty-six points of comparison between the civilization of the Eastern Mediterranean homelands of the Phoenicians and Hebrews and the Mayan, Inca and Aztec civilizations in the New World. More research by Professor Barry Fells points to Punic or Phoenician inscriptions found in New England, Ohio and West Virginia, and also the discovery of coinage and trade goods in the United States which had come from the Phoenician city of Carthage in North Africa. Numerous archaeological vestiges of Phoenician settlement have been found all the way down the Atlantic coast of Morocco dating back 3,000 years. A tablet found in New Mexico is inscribed in what appears to be early Hebrew in a Phoenician alphabet of a form used about 1000 B.C.E. in the eastern Mediterranean. The stone was discovered in an offbeat trail that resulted in its authenticity to be questioned. If it is a fake, it has been well orchestrated. If genuine, it means a Phoenician was exploring the Rio Grande some three thousand years ago. THE SCANDNAVIANS The Kensington stone is a 200-pound, tombstone-shaped slab of greywacke. A nearly illiterate immigrant Swedish farmer, Olof Ohman, discovered it when he was clearing land near Kensington, Minn., one November afternoon in 1898. The stone was tightly clasped in the roots of a poplar tree at least 40 years old. Medieval characters called runes and pentadic numbers that are carved on one side of the stone can be translated to tell the story of Swedish and Norwegian explorers who returned to camp from a fishing expedition to find their 10 companions slain. The stone is dated 1362. Long considered a hoax, this chiseled stone in Minnesota really does date to 1362 and is conclusive proof that Scandinavians reached the New World at least 130 years before Columbus, a Cornell University linguist asserts in a new book about the notorious "Kensington rune-stone." "There is no further reason for anyone to refuse to admit that the Kensington stone furnishes valid and convincing evidence of the presence of Scandinavians in the upper Mississippi valley in the mid-fourteenth century," according to Robert A. Hall Jr., professor emeritus of linguistics and author of "The Kensington Rune-Stone: Authentic and Important. A Critical Edition (Jupiter Press, 1995)." Hall began to study the controversial stone and associated issues in 1950 and intensified his researches in the late 1970s and 1980s. He said he hopes his latest publication "will close the book, so to speak" on the authenticity question. This has ignited controversy from the day it was found. Ohman who found it is said to have used it as a stepping-stone. He used it inscription-side down and this allowed Hall and other scholars to investigate it further. One theory is that the Swedish-Norwegian king Magnus Eriksson in 1354 sent a team of explorers to find out what had happened to an expedition he had sent to Greenland. It would be this team that ultimately ended up in Minnesota. At least one U.S. expert, Scott Walter, has concluded that the stone was exposed to weather and winds for several centuries, boosting the claim that it is authentic. THE IRISH A prevalent tale of the Irish monk Brendan and his journey to America in a hide-covered boat known as a coracle has often been regarded with skepticism and sometimes ridicule. An experiment to reconstruct the voyage in the recent times has demonstrated that the route proclaimed in the legend is indeed probable and not a fantasy. The path from Ireland to Newfoundland and on to Florida by way of the Bahamas is indeed accurate. The Irish have supposed to set foot in the new world long before the Scandinavians. THE WELSH There is also a story that a Welsh Prince named Madog escaping the bloodshed in Wales, escaped by ship and, using ancient Celtic maps and charts, crossed the Atlantic and landed on American soil at Mobile Bay in 1170 A.D and continued to move inland towards Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee. Welsh Indians are said to have existed between the mid 1500's and early 1800's. This account comes from Sir Thomas Herbert's Relation of Some Years Traivaile, published in 1626. Upon reaching the distant shores to the west, Madoc established a settlement and fortified it. When he returned to his settlement in 1190, leading a second wave of followers in seven ships, he found that most of the men were gone. He never returned to Wales. (Pohl, 172). THE CELTS Celts were a group of people migrated across Europe to settle in the British Isles and the coasts of France and Spain. They have supposed to exist during the reign of Julius Caesar. Ancient structures at Mystery Hill, New Hampshire appear to be a type of temple observatory dedicated to the ancient Celtic sun god Bel. Other sites dedicated to this same deity and to other Celtic gods and goddesses have been located in Vermont, together with Celtic burial urns and other artifacts. It also seems likely that Culdees from the ancient Celtic Church in Ireland followed Brendan's route, seeking refuge first in Iceland, then Greenland, Newfoundland and then onto North America. THE CHINESE The story of the Chinese monk named Hoei-Shin who returned from a long voyage to tell about a new land that he had discovered is quite prevalent in the historical circles. His purpose was to spread Buddhism. (Boland, 70). His descriptions of the location of this new land put it right where Mexico is today, in North America. Artifacts found along the coast from Mexico to Peru, in South America, show influences of Chinese and Japanese culture, and are a clue that supports this theory. Recently, remains of a Chinese ship were found along the coast of California which dated back to 600 A.D., with further evidence that the Chinese may have earlier explored along the Mexican and California coast. At a March meeting of the Royal Geographic Society, a retired British naval officer and historian named Gavin Menzies presented dramatic evidence that Zheng and his Chinese fleet not only discovered America 72 years before Columbus, but also circumnavigated the world much earlier than Portugal's Ferdinand Magellan. Menzies' book "1421: The Year China Discovered the World" is based on 14 years of research in more than 100 countries Zheng appears to have visited. Menzies uses maps from pre-Columbian times and astronomical maps dating from Zheng's era to build his case. The Official Ming History (6 volumes 4,128 pages and a 317-page index) mentions visits to Java, Sumatra, Vietnam, Siam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Ceylon (where the Chinese made an apparent "regime change"), Yemen, India, Bangladesh, Arabia, Somalia, and mention of "Franca" -- the Chinese name for France and Portugal -- and Holland. According to Menzies' research, Admiral Zheng's fleet split up into several groups and various ships went to Arabia, the Cape of Good Hope, the Caribbean, South America, the South Pacific, Australia and the west coast of North America. During the time period in question China was one of the most developed civilizations of the world. Menzies offers numerous evidences to his claim in the appendices of his book. Among that the notable being, the entire world map was accurately charted by 1428 and the Europeans set sail for their destinations with maps for navigation. China had a large fleet with huge ships and consisted of more than 300 ships manned by over 28,000 people. In the seven major expeditions Admiral Zheng made over three decades, he built a total of 1,622 ships. Voyages were undertaken with a strong exploratory spirit. A stone inscription at the Palace of the Celestial Spouse at Chiang-su and Liu Shia-Chang -- dated 1431, has information about the various voyages undertaken and landforms seen. Menzies on his own admission in his book claims that when he took on the research on the subject he was both horrified and astounded by the revelations that would challenge the existing basic assumptions about the exploration of the world. At the least, Menzies' work will prompt new research of his findings, whether they're accepted or discarded. THE ROMANS Several artifacts found scattered all over the Americas seem to point to the presence of Romans in the new world long before Columbus. Roman coins were found in Texas at the bottom of an Indian mound at Round Roc. The mound is dated at approximately 800 AD. In 1957 by a small boy found a coin in a field near Phoenix City, Alabama, from Syracuse, on the island of Sicily, and dating from 490 B.C. In the town of Heavener, Oklahoma, another out-of-place coin was found in 1976. In 1882, a farmer in Cass County, Illinois picked up bronze coin later identified as a coin of Antiochus IV, one of the kings of Syria who reined from 175 B.C. to 164 B.C., and who is mentioned in the Bible. Roman pottery was unearthed in Mexico and has been dated to the second century A.D. Roman Hristov, an anthropologist formerly at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, investigated a black terracotta head that was first unearthed in 1933 in the Toluca Valley, approximately 65 kilometers west of Mexico City .The head, which is just a few centimeters tall, represents a bearded man and is different in style from any other known pre-Columbian artwork. David Grove, an archaeologist at the University of Illinois in Urbana, Champaign agrees the head is Roman, but questions its significance. It could, for example, have been taken off a Roman shipwreck on the Mexican coast, which would not require significant interaction between ancient Americans and Romans, he says. Much more research is needed but it is supportive of the claim that Romans may have arrived in the New World long before the Spanish. Conclusion Columbus landed in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492, but it is now clearer than ever that he certainly wasn't the first European or even the first non-Native American to do so. The ancient sailors and explorers under the influence of the currents and prevailing winds, and at the mercy of the mighty seas in the long voyages, could have had the same circumstantial probability of reaching the New World just as these forces charted Columbus's destiny. In the future, conclusive evidence will undoubtedly solve the intriguing mystery of the new world explorers. Sources Pohl, Frederick J. "Atlantic Crossings before Columbus" W. W. Norton &Company, Inc. New York, 1961 Hagen, Robert W "Laying the Foundations: Pre-Columbian Exploration and Colonization Of the New World" Millersville.edu 2nd Nov 2005 Fell, Barry "America B.C.: Ancient Settlers in the New World" New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984 Boland, Charles Michael. "They All Discovered America." Doubleday and Company, Garden City, New York, 1961 "Did Scandinavians Beat Columbus to America Twice" Dicovery.com Discovery News Channel 2nd Nov 2005 Menzies, Gavin "1421, The Year China Discovered The World" Bantam Press 2002 "Phoenician Sailors and the Yellow Cats" Chapter 4 Exploration in Texas Texancultures.UTSA 2nd Nov 2005 "America" Cybernet America Kcnet.com 2nd Nov 2005 Vinh, Alphonse "Chinese Columbus" Npr.org 2nd Nov 2005 "History Mystery- Ancients in America" Paranormal Phenomena About.com 2nd Nov 2005 Campbell, Alan Pastor "The Israelites were in America before Columbus" Ensignmessage.com 2nd Nov 2005 Read More