Ancient Writing on Rocks: Did others get here before Columbus?

An excerpt from "Ancient Writing on Rocks." 

[This book, and others by Nyerges, are available from Kindle, Amazon, or the Store at www.SchoolofSelf-Reliance.com.]

HOW’D THEY GET HERE, REVISITED:  BOATS

 Remember, there was a challenge when news of this discovery  first appeared in the local newspaper. I was asked, “How did (they) get all the way over here?” ["They" being whomever inscribed these rocks in a Western European language]

Of course, my answer was “boats.” (How else?!!)

Trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic travel almost certainly occurred, bringing various travelers to North and South America in the pre-Columbian days.

Even one of the biggest skeptics of diffusionism, Eric Lurio, author of “A Fractured History of the Discovery of America,” admits that oceanic voyages to North America occurred.  Lurio did his research, and seems to know of every theory of contact with the Old and New World, and generally only discusses the aspects of these theories which help to debunk each one. For example, although the average 3^rd grader will look at the giant Olmec heads from Mexico and tell you they look African, Lurio will tell you that certain features we regard as “African” aren’t actually that rare south of the Rio Grande.  Really?  Should we wonder why?  Most of Lurio’s arguments are not objectively scientific, but rather involved lots of fun and ridicule.

To be fair, Lurio’s premise is that just getting to America doesn’t constitute a “discovery” – he lists his 3 “rules” which he regards as the basis for a discovery by his definition, and based on those rules, Columbus wins.

Nevertheless, he admits that folks sailed all the way across the Atlantic to the L’Anse Aux Meadow in Newfoundland around 986 A.D., but he dismisses any evidence that folks may have sailed further south.  The Kensington Stone, the Newport Tower, Saint Brendan, and Madoc are all regarded as hoaxes, frauds, or fairy tales.

But when it comes  to sweet potatoes, he recognizes that they are native to North America and somehow became popular with Polynesians before 1492.  “Just how the Polynesians got them is a mystery,” writes Lurio.  “Either an Amerindian must have gotten to Polynesia, or a Polynesian must have gotten to America,” he admits.

On page 49 of his book, he describes artifacts that were found in 1975 at the tip of the Olympic Peninsula in  Washington  which have continued to perplex archaeologists.  At the site, called Ozette, there was apparently a massive landslide around 1495 to 1500 which buried everything, and even such perishable things as baskets were preserved.

Archaeologists found a few dozen smelted iron knives blades and pieces of bamboo in the excavation.  According to Lurio, the current theory is that “some poor Japanese sailors got caught in a storm and were blown out to sea.  They drifted along the Kirusiro, or Japanese current, for six months or so before being shipwrecked on the American west coast.  It’s been estimated that there were two or three such shipwrecks per century…

“Transpacific contact happened.  But it was nothing like what its advocates say.  The plain fact is that except for the Arctic – where the Pacific is only 56 miles across and there was plenty of contact, trans-Pacific contact was limited to tiny incidents that, with the exception of the Polynesian discovery of the sweet potato and maybe some 5,000-year-old pottery designs, left absolutely no impact on either the Asians or the Amerindians.  So this cannot qualify as a ‘discovery’ of America.”

Indeed!  I was never arguing about “discovery” here, just that ancient people could and did travel the oceans, and that ample evidence shows that they could, and did, get here to the west coast of the U.S.

That’s what Thor Heyerdahl spent his life trying to prove, and he did it with little reed boats.

Back in the days of Julius Caesar, battles were fought on the Mediterranean using huge ships, not small reed boats like Heyerdahl.  Two Roman era ships recovered in Lake Nemi were about 230 and 240 feet long, with 37-foot-long oars, putting to rest the debate whether or not the Romans actually could have built ships as big as they described in their writings. Clearly, these were vessels capable of sailing the open sea.  [See also Julius Caesar’s descriptions of Celtic boats in Book 3 of his De Bello Gallico (Gallic Wars), written in 56 B.C.E.]

[Continued in the book]