Cannonman wrote,Hello-
I see what you're t"rying to say... maybe hit and miss with the technologies that were transfered. Possible... It does seem to me though that in some cases you make good points that would lead me to believe that there was sustained or at least repeated contact giving credence to the idea that goods/ideas/technologies could have been exchanged. Then in other posts you almost seem to argue only accidental discovery of the new world (even if on more than one occasion) with extremely limited interaction. (leaving the goods on a beach and going back to the ship to send smoke signals) Maybe this is why we don't find more concrete proof here in the Americas (as well as the wheel, metallurgy, and olive trees ) Of course this way of looking at it would mean that the pyramids were most likely independent inventions also. Now if you're going to go argue with the pros or even somebody who knows there stuff unlike me then you're going to have to argue it one way or the other, can't have the cake and eat it too. Anyways- I could go on at this point but.... I have work to do. I am VERY much looking forward to seeing what you come up with for those dates on the things discussed above. Thanks for the mental stimulation- have a good one. "
Greetings Cannonman and everyone,
I think I have not been clear (though I sure know how to take the long way round to get there – egads didn’t realize I wrote so much here!) on just what sort of ancient contact I am proposing did happen. According to Diodorus and Aristotle, Carthaginians and Phoenicians found what can only be America by accident, during a deliberate mission of exploration and colonization. Thus they were in fact out exploring in the Atlantic and several expeditions at that, but the first discovery of America was done by merchant ships accompanying the expedition, not the warships and commander Hanno nor Himilco. Hanno made more than one voyage of exploration too – the first voyage did not circumnavigate Africa, but a later trip did. Pliny states that Hanno was four years on his last voyage, which period is long enough to reach very distant destinations. (A side note is in order here, but Pliny the Elder, a former Roman admiral, lamented that the art of seagoing navigation had greatly declined since former times by his own era, which is the first century AD. This statement implies that in former times, voyages were greater, and by his time voyages did not equal those of times past, like when Carthage ruled the waves.)
Once this discovery was made, Punic ships sailed there for the express purpose of fishing – the fish caught were preserved and brought to Carthage, where according to Aristotle again, they refused to export or sell the catch, “…these alone they do not export, but keep for themselves, and consider the fish a great delicacy.” (from On Marvelous Things Heard) The great fishing appears to have been the primary purpose for Punic sailors to visit America, but the land was also a source of a considerable amount of gold and timber (again check sources Aristotle and Diodorus) though their interaction with native inhabitants was
–limited- for the area where they planted the abortive colony was first discovered to be virtually un-inhabited; later they found peoples who were living in cities and had impressive gardens as well as villas or manors. (See Diodorus Library of History, books II and III specifically) There is nothing to indicate that their interaction with the native peoples were anything but on friendly terms; the items offered in trade by Punic traders would very likely include salt (they owned and operated a number of salt mines in the Sahara, see Ptolemy, Geography and Strabo, the mines were later taken over by Romans who used them as penal labor camps) as this was their favorite commodity to trade with more primitive peoples; if they made contact with the more advanced Mayans, then they may have had little to offer in the way of any superior technology – and we are not claiming here that the Carthaginians nor any other civilization actually –taught- the Amerindians HOW to build their pyramids, but as has been the case throughout history, sailors love to tell stories of the strange and wondrous lands they have visited; these tales of impressive man-made mountains, the pyramids, could (and I will propose would) have been the source of inspiration for Amerindian cultures to build their own pyramids. After all, they are built of different materials and using different methods from the pyramids of Egypt, just as those in Rome, China or Korea are, but there is a strong likelihood that the idea or inspiration to build their own pyramids came from reports of the original models in Egypt. It is a bit illogical to take the position that people just naturally start building pyramids, without any evidence of independent invention to support that contention.
The contact would never have been on any kind of regular schedule, though the voyages of king Solomon’s “navy” were on a three-year timetable and Punic merchants may have done the same; the amount of goods exchanged would be limited to what would fit in a handful of ships. This explains why we find only what amounts to “traces” of contact rather than vast and incontrovertible evidence, and why there ARE traces when, if the Isolationist theory is correct, there cannot be ANY. A single bit of evidence of a single visit by a ship from the Old World cannot exist, for the Isolation theory to hold true.
The contact would almost certainly have stopped altogether on the fall of Carthage 146 BC, though there is a pattern in the evidence that suggests what contact existed also fell off at the end of the first Punic war, in which Carthage suffered tremendous losses of warships; and though the Romans left us little record of the naval battles which took place in the second Punic war, we can be sure there were large engagements in which still more loss of ships and experienced sailors occurred. Because of the habit of Carthage (like her mother city Tyre) of hiring mercenaries as soldiers and marines, some of the men from other nations appear to have gained knowledge of the secret land – check Plutarch’s book the Life of Sertorius. Sertorius, at one point in his career, is informed of the “blessed isles” across the Atlantic, from which some Iberians (quite possibly Punic, or Iberians who had sailed on Punic ships) had recently returned, and is tempted to flee there and live a life in exile and peace. He chose not to, or perhaps we would have more evidence of Roman visitors.
Yes, I am caught up in the anomalies – for it is among these most frequently dismissed and ignored anomalies that any evidence of contact will most likely be found. Only when we can find a pattern in the anomalies can we begin to form a case for some level of contact, and there are patterns of particular visitors, within a particular time frame. There are numerous other anomalies that could suggest cross-oceanic contacts even early in the Bronze age, such as the two incidences of cuneiform-covered clay tablets discovered in America, one discovered among the possessions of famous Nez Perce chief Joseph, the other found on a beach in Georgia (if memory serves) but there is little in the way of supporting evidence to suggest Sumerian or Babylonian visitors, of which one of the clay tablets were – one Sumerian and one Babylonian. So it is a matter of sifting through the anomalies to find those that will fit in the pattern that points to contact between cultures, and can fit with one party being renowned for their seafaring abilities or at least capable of such a voyage. This pretty well excludes Sumerians as potential visitors as they are not known for being particularly great sailors, but in the case of a few like the Carthaginians, we find they were certainly capable of making such crossings.
There could not be large scale contact or we would have masses of evidence, nor can there have been NO contact or we would have no evidence, so in a sense I am claiming to be able to “have the cake and eat it too” (though it must be a cupcake and not a whole layer cake
) because that view, saying it MUST be either large-scale contact, or NONE, will not fit with the evidence and neither is the case. I am sure that I will run into skeptics who will take that position, but I hope I can present the case to them that it was neither large scale nor utter isolation.
We do not find olive trees growing in Mexico on the arrival of the first Spanish explorers, and this should come as no surprise. Greeks and Romans habitually introduced these most profitable and long-lived of orchard trees to most (if not all) of their new colonies, or at least those with a suitable climate. In the case of the Phoenicians, not so much – though they do appear to have introduced date palms and pomegranates in many of the places they planted some colonists, and again only where the climate would support them. On the other hand, of the goods Carthaginians were likely to have traded, we must wonder why then are no Punic amphorae found in the ruins of Palenque? Again, for one good reason which is almost so modern-sounding it makes me smile – Punic traders frequently requested the return of their amphorae, transferring the contents to local containers, almost like the old returnable pop bottles! (Greeks did this too, to a lesser extent but check on Ptolemaic dynasties habit of gathering as many “empties” as they could for use as water storage containers in their desert outposts!) Then again, there ARE Punic and Iberian-punic amphorae found in the Americas; for instance several recovered from the Punic wreck off of Honduras and at this moment sit on display in a museum there (I am including photos of these in the book) as well as two Iberian-punic amphorae found by divers off the coast of Maine, not to mention the dozens and dozens lying in the Plain of Jars (Brazil) which are classed as “North African” by the experts who have examined them – so they could have been trading even those delicious olives in America too, as well as their famous Tyrian purple dye!
It is also very likely they would have been buying and selling relatively local trade goods, possibly a greater proportion of these than of their Mediterranean commodities. There is an ancient Greek text dating to the first century BC, titled the Periplus Erythraeum, which describes how to sail in the Indian ocean, what ports of call sell what types of merchandise, the short route across the Indian ocean via the deep water route and taking advantage of the monsoon winds, and specifically recommends what particular goods to buy in specific ports, that can be traded at ports both further and closer along the routes! So it is not likely a case of hauling a load of Punic raisin wine to sell for Mayan gold and heading for home, but of multiple (small) exchanges along a coast, exchanging goods along the way that the locals could have done themselves if they only were to sail a relatively short distance up or down the shore, in order to maximize the potential profits of the traders. For this reason , by the time Phoenician ships reached their home ports and nearby cities in the Mediterranean, were known to be selling a tremendous variety of spices, incense, jewelry, wines and so on.
I also have not covered a considerable amount of other (admittedly “anomalous”) evidence, like the Canaanite* dogs (considered by some to be the oldest pure-breed dog in the world, virtually identical to Carolina wild dogs and remarkably similar to wild dogs in India and the Dingoes of Australia) or the incident reported by Columbus in his very first voyage of encountering an old Amerindian who had a gold coin hanging from his nose, “…the size of a castellano bean”, which had some kind of lettering on it – he could not induce the old Indio to part with his intriguing nasal-appendage for anything offered, so we are left with an inexplicable mystery; since by the Isolation theory, and we know of no Amerindian culture which made and used coins much less have lettering on them, there cannot be ANY such gold coin found there by the very first European to visit the islands in the Caribbean. Does the finding of a single coin indicate contact on a massive scale, with fleets of ships carrying cargoes across the Atlantic in the Classical age? Of course not, but by the Isolation theory, this coin cannot exist! As you can tell, I am also shooting for your title of king of the run-on sentences here too! (heh heh) I already have the title of the World’s Slowest Writer, (first runner-up for Beating The Dead Horse Award) with more than eight years on ONE book project – but I wish to get it right. We all know one can at least reply in some fashion to critical comment on your writing when it is an article in some periodical, but in a book there is little way of answering the skeptics when points are raised short of writing ANOTHER book. So I do appreciate the many valid points you have raised, allows me to address them in the book instead of spending another eight years to reply to the skeptics.
Naturally some of the skeptics have dismissed the coin-on-a-nose incident as a case of Columbus being unable to differentiate between “letters” and Mayan symbolism, but recall that Columbus, while misguided in his discovery of Caribbean islands, was a fairly well-educated man and could certainly tell the difference between “letters” and odd symbols.
*Canaanite is what Phoenician people called themselves, whether he lived in Tyre or Sidon or Carthage or in the hinterlands of Africa or Spain, or to be correct they pronounced it more like “Ki-na-an-i”; we call them Phoenician and Punic and Carthaginian today because this is from our Greek and Latin roots in our language. In fact you find that the Greeks and Roman writers in ancient times did not greatly differentiate between Phoenicians of Tyre or Poeni of Carthage, referring to ALL as Phoenician as it comes through in an English translation.
I have only begun the process of investigating the Mound builder mass graves, introduction of bow and arrow etc but wanted to try to clarify the claims I am making in “short” (I have a LOT of trouble trying to present the theory in a short manner, as you can tell!) so as not to confuse the readers; and clearly I have not done so successfully in previous posts – for the evidence of contact does not support either large-scale trade NOR total non-contact (the old Isolation theory held in such high esteem) but contact on what (to most) would be considered a small scale, with different levels of contact taking place in the case of different local tribes (remember there were over 300 tribes in North America alone) with each case resulting in different exchanges. There were obviously many tribes which never made contact with any Old World cultures (prior to Columbus), while in other cases we see traces of
some kind of contact taking place. Some of the contacts were doubtless like the smoke-signal type, with little actual interaction between the parties, in other cases the contact was almost certainly more intimate resulting (arguably, of course) in the exchange of some
ideas (like sailors telling tales of man-made mountains they had seen in the land of the Pharaohs, as well as sea monsters, a habit Punic sailors had when visiting foreign ports in order to frighten other potential seafarers from venturing beyond the Pillars of Herakles/Hercules/Melqart/Briarus we call today the Straits of Gibraltar, into their private lake, the Atlantic ocean) and (arguably, again) perhaps the borrowing of some “loan words” which can be traced in Amerindian languages today.
The Carthaginians kept the Straits of Gibraltar as a closed gate to virtually ALL other ships. As soon as the state had grown enough in power, they attacked and destroyed the Phoenician-founded city state of Tartessus in Spain, which had held the Straits and the Atlantic trade as well, prior to Carthage. A full squadron of Punic warships was kept on permanent station near the Strait, and any ship found beyond the passage which did not have the permission of the government of Carthage was ordered to be sunk on sight. The Greek explorer Pytheas managed to slip past the warships during a war between Carthage and Syracuse, and explored the British Isles, even reaching Iceland, though the result of his discoveries was that he was left destitute in his home city of Massalia (today Marseilles, France) and a subject of ridicule because his own countrymen could not believe his reports. (Permission from Carthage included that an agent of their government must be present on any foreign ship allowed to pass.) Punic control of the straits prevented much exploration or trade beyond that point by Greek or Roman merchants until after the fall of Carthage. They kept their distant trading ports secret from Greek and Roman competitors as much as possible, even from close allies! According to Diodorus, not long after Carthaginians returned from America, their ally the Etruscans (also known as Tyrrhenians) learned of the discovery from Punic seamen, and proposed to dispatch a colony there - but were prevented by Carthage from doing so! Even when their Tyrian relatives, fleeing the destruction of Tyre by Alexander, wished to pass the straits and on to the secret land, Carthage refused to allow passage. Perhaps if they had not made such strenuous efforts to keep the distant land a trade secret, we would have far more evidence to be arguing over, but they were largely successful in keeping all competitors out.
The possibility of diseases being introduced is a fascinating one, and a point sure to be raised by the skeptics so I need to research this matter more fully. I recall something I read a couple of years ago about an outbreak of a disease in the time of Socrates (a plague) which some have proposed originated not in the Old world but in the New, for one example; as well as sexually-transmitted disease like syphilis, believed by the experts to have originated in the New World so no trace of it –should- be found in the Old world prior to the time of Columbus. Rats are another objection to ancient contact that I have already been made aware of by skeptics, as they claim that Old World rats would surely have been introduced by any ancient visitor, yet from my own research there is good reason to believe that Phoenician and Punic seafarers were markedly better at keeping their vessels free of rodent infestations than their Greek and Roman counterparts – read the Greek historian Thucydides description of Phoenician ships in his history of the wars between Athens and Sparta to see what I am referring to. He is quite generous in his praise of how well laid out all of the equipment is, the cleanliness of the vessel, and how well the deck hands are trained in the storage, the strict order and use of the ship’s equipment, especially compared to equivalent Greek ships.
I have drifted pretty far from the base subject of this thread, so will try to tie it back in here. Am I saying that what Joseph Smith found was absolutely not what he believed them to be, no – I think it is highly possible though. Does this mean that the great treasury of Carthage, which Rome failed to capture in destroying their greatest rival, must be hidden on the Susquehanna river? No, but it is a possibility. Without more clues as to where the desperate Carthaginians secreted their mass of silver and gold, it is not possible to say where they hid it. I do say what better place to take their treasure, knowing the city was lost (as when the Romans were building the mole to close the harbor) than to a secret land that they knew the Romans were unaware of? The Susquehanna has had a number of Punic artifacts turn up there, and may be the actual site where Carthage once attempted to plant her colony. The grave markers support this idea. Could the gold plates found by Smith have been left by lost tribes of Israel? They could, and no less illustrious persons than William Penn and Thomas Jefferson were convinced that some of the Amerindian tribes were indeed lost tribes of Israel. In either case, I am willing to bet a dollar to a doughnut that some great finds are just waiting for someone to dig them up along that untamed river valley, finds which may well result in history books having to be revised.
Anyway I hope I have at least not muddied the water even more, and my apologies for the long-winded monologue again. I have plenty of research to do, thanks to you Cannonman, new leads that I had not thought of before. I owe you one!
Your friend,
Roy - Oroblanco
"We must find a way, or we will make one." --Hannibal Barca
About the pyramids: you give a lot of good examples of idea exchange through trade. Egypt seeing the mud brick pryamids of the Sumerian's... I buy that. Only logical. The Romans seeing the great pyramids- for sure. So on and so forth... okay. The problem I have is that all of your examples in the old world involve cultures who were previously unexposed to pyramid building going somewhere, seeing them, and taking the tale/idea back to their native land. This leads me to believe that it would have been necessarily the case that a Mayan or other native at some point traveled somewhere to see pyramids. Now I know you're going to say No, the idea was transferred not the native. Two things about that: if this Carthaginian contact was accidental/sporadic at best how many cultural traits are going to be transferred? If you have a Carthaginian trade vessel that accidentally blows across the ocean (which by the way is one of the ideas that I find most plausible vs. intentional exploration) and they come on shore to re-supply and end up doing a little trading with the natives then is pyramid building going to be transferred also? Take any culture steeped in their religious beliefs for hundreds or even thousands of years and let them have contact with a new culture, however brief it may be and I think you will see both of the cultures walking away with something new but more likely than not it won't be a whole new belief system. Although then I think of the cocoa and tobacco in the Egyption mummies and have to wonder if the contact was more than sporadic...I guess that when I'm standing in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin, deep in the woods looking at a burial mound/effigy mound that is four feet tall and circular in shape it just makes the ancients and the birth of western civilization seem quite distant indeed. 
