How Unknown Was America To The Old World?

By James Donahue

(This is not a new subject on this site. But we have uncovered so much more information that it requires another look at the history of America that we learned in grade school.)

Most historians now agree that Christopher Columbus wasn’t the first European to “discover” the so-called New World. It is well documented that Norse explorer Leif Ericson was on North American soil in the year 1,000, nearly 500 years before Columbus made his historic voyage.

Among the Sagas of Icelanders, historical stories told by the people of Iceland during the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries, Ericson not only sailed to North America, he established a Norse settlement at Vinland on the northern tip of the island of Newfoundland, Canada. Remains of that settlement were located in the 1950s and 1960s by explorer Helge Ingstad and his wife, archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad, thus confirming the story.

But were the Norse explorers the first to arrive? Other discoveries of artifacts that should not be on North American soil, and Northern Michigan copper found in archaeological digs all over the world, suggest that ancient cultures existing in North and South America, Europe, Egypt, Persia and China had established trade routes with ships large enough to traverse both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Indeed, the Chinese have clearly established links between rock carvings found in Central America and ancient Chinese writings. Carvings in the Americas so closely resemble the 3,000-year-old Shang Dynasty characters the carvings match pre-221 BC Chinese script.

Divers off the coast of California have found round stones with holes cut through their centers in areas where ship’s captains might have anchored off shore. The Chinese have used such stones as anchors for their junks and other sailing craft as long as anyone can remember.

The Mongolians, under the rule of Kublai Khan’s Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), were said to have built great ships and sent them on exploratory missions throughout the world. When Marco Polo made his journey to Mongolia he described four-masted junks with 60 individual cabins for merchants, watertight bulkheads and crews of up to 300.

It was said this great armada of Mongolian ships crossed the seas of the world, exploring Ceylon, Arabia, East Africa and going as far west as North and South America. This fleet included massive junks with up to nine masts escorted by dozens of supply ships, water tankers, transports for cavalry horses and patrol boats. There were as many as 27,000 sailors and soldiers involved.

The Celts also are believed to have established links to North America long before Columbus. Inscriptions described as ogamic have been found in various places on the continent, including the site of the great Keweenaw copper deposits in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. English explorers to came to that area in the 1400s came upon a tribe of blond-haired, blue-eyed Mandan Indians that spoke a form of ancient Gaelic.

No one knows just how it happened, or which culture was involved, but archaeologists in Ohio and other parts of the United States have uncovered ancient fire pits used for smelting iron. The technology of this type of smelting is ancient, dating back 2,000 years in Europe. Some 130 such fire pits have been uncovered in Ohio, 16 of them in Virginia, and pits have been found in Georgia, Kentucky and New Mexico.

Yet another mystery shared among archaeologists working in ruins throughout the world has been the unexpected discovery of statues, inscriptions and artifacts that appear to have originated in ancient Egypt. In 1914 archaeologists M. A. Gonzales uncovered Egyptian statuettes of Isis and Osiris in Mayan ruins at Acajutia, Mexico.

Pathologist Svetlana Balabanova recently tested samples of hair, bone and soft tissue from nine Egyptian mummies in the museum at Munich, Germany, and was surprised to find traces of cocaine and nicotine. This strongly implied that the ancient Egyptians had access to tobacco and coca plants, both found only in the Americas.

Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs were discovered on a rock cliff in New South Wales, Australia. They tell the story of shipwrecked explorers in a strange land and the death of their leader. Scholars estimate the date of the voyage somewhere between 1770 and 2748 BC.

The Israelis seem to have gotten to North America at some very ancient date as well. It was in 1889 that the Smithsonian’s Mount Survey team found a stone in a Tennessee burial mount with ancient Hebrew lettering inscribed on it. The artifact, known as The Bat Creek Stone, was determined to contain Paleo-Hebrew letters dating from the first or second century A.D. Some of the letters spelled “for Judea.”

Then there is The Los Lunas Inscription, Old Hebrew letters carved on the flat face of a large boulder in Los Lunas, New Mexico, that present what has been described as “an abridged version” of the Ten Commandments.” Similar Hebrew inscriptions have been found on stones in Ohio.

And finally Roman coins, pottery, statues, inscriptions and even the remains of a sunken Roman ship have been dug up or discovered all over both North and South America. The wreck of a ship with typical Roman construction was found in Galveston Bay, Texas. All of these artifacts are believed to pre-date Ericson’s arrival.

Then there is the question that few think to ask. When the Europeans and Asians came, the land was already inhabited. Where did the so-called “Native Americans” come from and when did they arrive?