"Who Actually Discovered The New World?"
By Ralph F. Graves
February 2002 Guadalajara-Lakeside Volume 18, Number 6

     Each year around Columbus Day the controversy begins anew. Was Columbus the legitimate discoverer of America? No, Leif Ericson was here 500 years prior to Columbus. Wait a minute. There is evidence that Polynesian people arrived in South America before either. And so it goes.
     It has become obvious that Columbus was not the first outsider to visit the New World. But what it all boils down to is not so much who was here first, but how many different tribes, clans, civilizations or other groups from abroad came to the Americas before Columbus.
     It is generally accepted that the earliest Americans arrived from Asia in successive waves, traversing the frozen land bridge across the Bering Strait. Datings of their artifacts indicate this happened over 16,000 years ago. These people were the ancestors of the indigenous Americans "discovered" by Columbus. Over the centuries, they established distinct cultures and civilizations. But how often did subsequent visitors reach the shores of the New World and how much did they influence the people already here?
     Numerous artifacts, relics and inscriptions have suggested the ancient presence of visitors from as diverse areas as Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Polynesia. One of the most ardent pursuers of evidence of ancient mariners was the late Alexander von Wuthenau, German-born professor of Mexican art history at Mexico's University of the Americas. Over a period of 40 years he documented thousands of archeological specimens from numerous museums and collections in Mexico and abroad which he showed reflected multiple racial strains. He offered these as proof of outside contacts many centuries before Columbus. His book, Unexpected Faces in Ancient America, contains numerous photos as evidence of this: a Mayan statue wearing the star of David; a stone head of a bearded man with Aryan features; colossal Olmec stone heads with Negroid features; primitive figurines from the state of Guerrero linked to similar sculptures in Japan.
     Another champion of the theory of pre-Columbian visitors is Harvard professor Barry Fell whose book America B. C. documents in great detail inscriptions, artifacts and bronze weapons uncovered in New England. Monoliths found in Vermont, for instance, bear a striking resemblance to Celtic markers in Brittany. Inscriptions and stone carvings found in New Hampshire have the same characteristics as those of the ancient Druids. And stone constructions in other parts of New England, thought to be 3,000 year old astronomical observatories are inscribed with Celtic letters.
     Hundreds of years before the Spanish imported African slaves to New Spain, navigators from the Dark Continent visited the Americas, according to Pathe Diagne, a professor at Cornell University. He bases his theory in part on chronicles of voyages by Senegalese expeditions dating back to 800 B.C. Another expert in African history, Shawky el Gamal of the African Studies Institute in Cairo, also refers to Egyptian and Greek chronicles and maps describing West African voyages to an unknown land.
     Rutgers professor Ivan Van Sertima believes Mandingo traders from Africa were visitors to the New World during the early 1300s. He bases his evidence not only on sculptures, pottery, inscriptions and codices, but on cultural analogies such as idioms, rituals and cults found in both Mexico and Africa.
     The British writer and researcher, James Bailey, also draws analogies to link ancient Phoenicians with the Americas. He cites similarities of stepped pyramids, religious symbols and rites, games, even methods of punishment as proof of early Mid-Eastern and Mediterranean contacts.
     Scientists have made a convincing case for transatlantic and transpacific crossings in ancient times. Studies as recent as 1999 have indicated that Europeans, Africans and Mid-Easterners could have followed ice sheets as the ice age waned. These once stretched from the British Isles to Nova Scotia, as well as spanning the northern Pacific. Some theorize that as the Ice Age receded, game was scarce, so hunters in the Eastern hemisphere were forced to turn to the sea for food, gradually becoming adept at boat building and navigation. Other explanations credit favorable currents and winds with the ease with which early navigators could cross oceans. And indeed the experiments by Thor Hyerdahl have shown these crossings to be feasible in boats made of reeds and other primitive materials.
     Still, the idea of pre-Columbian visits to the Americas has its skeptics and detractors. Most dismiss the analogies as pure chance, others doubt the ability of the ancient seafarers to cross large bodies of water. And some simply refuse to entertain a theory that goes against centuries-old accepted beliefs.
So who really "discovered" America? The sheer number and diversity of unexplained artifacts, inscriptions and representations seem to indicate a pre-Columbian acquaintance with nearly every race in the world , so your guess is as good as anyone else's.