When Odd Old World Artifacts are found in the New World...

originally posted by: toms54
a reply to: bloodymarvelous

I believe we have been teaching a theory that there has been a slow and steady progression of civilization culminating in what we see today. As if we are the crown of creation, the pinnacle of achievement of mankind.

Who is "we."
History itself hasn't been taught that way since what we think of as history has been taught.

originally posted by: toms54I personally believe we have grown in fits and starts with plenty of mass murder and dark ages to reverse the course of history.

Absolutely, and this is what is taught in any history class.
The problem is the learners, not the teachers.

originally posted by: toms54Add in natural disasters and we have started over who knows how many times? I'm thinking world wide trading in antiquity then wars. A hundred years later, the Earth is flat again and we are mired in superstition.

In antiquity, there was no "we." There were many "we's." And every "we" was outnumbered by the many different "thems."

Harte

originally posted by: toms54
a reply to: bloodymarvelous

I believe we have been teaching a theory that there has been a slow and steady progression of civilization culminating in what we see today. As if we are the crown of creation, the pinnacle of achievement of mankind.

And whenever an empire found it could not convincingly argue this, like the Qin Shi Huang in China, or the Spanish Conquistadores in Aztec Mexico, they just burned all the records.

And that is part of why I think pre-Columbian contact deserves more discussion. The pre-Columbian American Peoples have been given a very unfair representation in history, precisely because it is a frightening thought to consider that perhaps the Spanish wiped out a culture in some ways more advanced than their own.

A culture that may have had sailing technology for centuries already or millenia, but lacked metal working technology and were therefore unable to present a credible military threat to the old world.

So they might visit, and even trade, but they weren't going to come over and try to conquer or settle permanently.

I personally believe we have grown in fits and starts with plenty of mass murder and dark ages to reverse the course of history. Add in natural disasters and we have started over who knows how many times? I'm thinking world wide trading in antiquity then wars. A hundred years later, the Earth is flat again and we are mired in superstition.

The only technologies we don't lose are the military ones.

originally posted by: Harte

originally posted by: toms54

originally posted by: Harte

originally posted by: toms54

originally posted by: vinifalou

We should just burn our history books and start again.

Consider that every major library of antiquity has been burned down.

Not true.
And the fact that it's not true is what tells us we "lost" very little of substance (other than plays and other forms of drama, and many essays) when the Library at Alexandria was destroyed.

Harte

Maybe not every library but certainly a large number of them were destroyed. I spent just a short time on Google and found several articles that back me up.
11 Most Impressive Libraries from the Ancient World
List of destroyed libraries
Library of Ashurbanipal
8 Legendary Ancient Libraries

Not everything here was destroyed, most were. Some were hit by natural disaster or war. Most are no longer with us. Sure, they made copies but that was slow and laborious before the printing press. And what was copied? Probably only a fraction of the scrolls. I read once that the Library in Constantinople was supposed to hold some of the Alexandria collection but then that burned also. Mildew destroyed some of the stuff.

Time destroys many things, but we have a reasonable amount of material from that era (Ptolemaic Egypt) and before, and there's nothing earth-shattering in it.
Alexandria was a Greek city, the Library was a Greek library. And not particularly early in the Greek timeline either.

Harte

I think we all agree that books have a bad track history of surviving through antiquity, unless they are so popular that many copies are made (or unless they happened after the printing press, and many copies were made because it was easy to make them.)

It doesn't mean we don't know anything about anything, and should just give up on archaeology.

However it does mean that small events are unlikely to appear in the records

Events like a trader arriving in port wearing strange clothes and speaking a strange language, and saying he comes from an impossibly far distance across the sea.

Because literally, that would be the absolute sum total of all we could expect anyone at the time to have noticed about it.

originally posted by: Fools
One reason is there is no historical record of ocean going ships or boats in the America's. I think there is one exception off the coast of Peru. That does not mean they did not exist, but I don't think any have been found.

Another reason is that it doesn't seem that there is any sagas that mention travels from the America's to the "old world". I could be wrong, but I have never read of any. If any exist they would be very interesting to study.

13000 years ago the sea levels were around 350 feet lower then today because of the Ice sheets.
gotbooks.miracosta.edu...
now most of the ships, boats, and villages would be deep underwater.

originally posted by: JDmOKI
a reply to: bloodymarvelous

I found my old blockbuster card today which is an ancient modern artifact

Now You'll be hounded to death by 'debt collectors' and w/interest compounded each time the debt is sold to another debt collection service, that unreturned copy of "Teenage Hot Tub Party II" is sitting at $1,739.89 and it keeps going up...

Don't say anything as both SIRI™ and Alexa™ are working for "Them" as the world is now run by a single entity, Zhang's Chinese Laundry/Restaurant/Debts, so basically Mr. Zhang (kiss the ring) now runs things... Great ain't it?

Who is "we."?


Kind of a personal question but if You must know, I have a turd in My pocket...


The Natives of America (Indigenous peoples) reflect those who came before them. The Peoples in the West have Asiatic features as these folks walked over; across the ice... The Ones in the East? they are from Europe (See: Cherokee People...)

originally posted by: ANNED

originally posted by: Fools
One reason is there is no historical record of ocean going ships or boats in the America's. I think there is one exception off the coast of Peru. That does not mean they did not exist, but I don't think any have been found.

Another reason is that it doesn't seem that there is any sagas that mention travels from the America's to the "old world". I could be wrong, but I have never read of any. If any exist they would be very interesting to study.

13000 years ago the sea levels were around 350 feet lower then today because of the Ice sheets.
gotbooks.miracosta.edu...
now most of the ships, boats, and villages would be deep underwater.

Actual science indicates a rise of around 60 meters (200 feet) since that time period. www.giss.nasa.gov...

Harte

originally posted by: JimNasium

Who is "we."?


Kind of a personal question but if You must know, I have a turd in My pocket...


The Natives of America (Indigenous peoples) reflect those who came before them. The Peoples in the West have Asiatic features as these folks walked over; across the ice... The Ones in the East? they are from Europe (See: Cherokee People...)

I can then assume that you have been teaching history incorrectly?
Well, stop that.

Harte

a reply to: bloodymarvelous

I've been interested in pre-Columbian contact for a long time now. The might not be much written history but there is plenty of evidence. I think the ancient peoples tried to keep their trade routes secret but maybe the records were just lost.

Most of the contact was probably one way. Some seems to have been two way trade that would last for some length of time then cease, only to be resumed hundreds of years later by someone else. Even though ancient cultural diffusion theories were rejected by mainstream academia, some of them are becoming more accepted now.

There probably are many threads at ATS on just this subject.

a reply to: Harte

Really? I didn't know they were offering tours of the Library, not to mention the fact that you had been there! That's great what's it like? have you got pictures or a video, because I would sure like to see it. Oh wait they didn't let you take picture or video?... well dam.

originally posted by: looneylupinsrevenge
a reply to: Harte

Really? I didn't know they were offering tours of the Library, not to mention the fact that you had been there! That's great what's it like? have you got pictures or a video, because I would sure like to see it. Oh wait they didn't let you take picture or video?... well dam.

I didn't.
And it's blaringly obvious that you haven't bothered to educate yourself on the subject in even the smallest way, if you think one would have to have visited the Library to know the things I know about it.

Harte

Just a small point, although I know it is not the main focus of your OP.

When any artifact is found anywhere, it is not the artifact itself only that is important, but the context it is found in.
Now context, from an archaeological point of view, is mainly a product of stratigraphical considerations, in order to fix it (if you will) somewhere in the timeline of a series of deposits.

This is mainly used for relative dating in archaeology.

What is very important to remember is that the age of the context is more important than the age of the object itself.

So while an object can be dated (with a lot of caveats and limitations) from it's own properties (like radiocarbon dating) this will give us the age of the object itself, not necessarily the age of the context - meaning that it might have been deposited there no earlier than it's own supposed age for obvious reasons.

But it also means that it might have been deposited there at any time after it was made, including a week ago.
This is why a single find in a context is very difficult to use to prove anything without collaborating evidence.

As to our assumption that it is always the more civilized (ha!) cultures that discover the more primitive(ha again!) this is somewhat (in my opinion) unfortuate relic of colonial times where anthropology and archaeology had it's infancy.

While there may be fairly well documented examples of a more complex society seeking out (or "discovering") a less complex one, there are certainly well documented cases of less complex societies seeking out more complex ones as well. Often with very disruptive results. One could argue that both the Mongols and the Huns, as well as a lot of what happened to the Late Roman Western Empire is a prime example of a less complex society invading and transforming, or at least disrupting, a more complex one.

It is mostly a question of technology and motive when it comes to human mobility. To get to the Americas one would need boats, which could stand the voyage for a ocean crossing. Or one would have to make the voyage in a manner that the technology could support, if one could be found.

And motivation to go in the first place.

But most importantly, one would need to show it in the archaeological record in order to convince anyone that this is how it happened. And single artifacts, for the reasons I have stated above, won't be enough withouth some collaborating evidence.

I think the assumption that humans "progress" from less complex hunter-gatherer societies into more complex societies like, say, the roman empire in a sort of ladder from "mud to marble" as a universal law is badly flawed. What seems to be the case, in my opinion, is that humans adapt to the requirement of the environment (including other humans) and adopt a social structure that best enable the group to survive and prosper. That includes scaling back complexity if required, as argueably happened with the so-called collapse of the Roman Empire. There is nothing to support that people living in less complex societies are more "primitive" and thus unable to e.g. go on expeditions or seek out other cultures.

Another point to bear in mind is that most contact between groups go in both directions, as long as both groups have the abililty to travel to the other. This didn't happen much with the Americas in the 14th and 15th century, because the disparity in naval technology was so great, but it certainly happened a mere few hundred years later when the gap had been closed through conquest and subsequent revolution of the previous colonies.

The existence of an artifact from one culture in the posession of another culture does not in it self say how the artifact got there, only that it did and nothing about who brought it. If one can demonstrate that the culture that has it had the technology to go and get it themselves, that is just as plausible an explanation of how it got there as the other way around. But you need to have some proof of this technology being present.

Automatically crediting the most complex society of doing the travelling is at best shoddy science, and at worst a bit of residual colonialism.

But if one culture had ocean going ships, and the other did not, and you need to cross an ocean to get the artifact, well then the situation is different. So again a question of means, as well as motive.

Ach, this was a long winded tirade, but in short.. We shouldn't assume any such thing.

Cheers,
BT

a reply to: beetee

One example might be how they found tobacco and coc aine residue in Egyptian mummies. At first no one believed saying it had to be contamination. Now it is confirmed enough to be accepted. Cocaine was found in other mummies too. This demonstrates that someone was trading with the new world at that time.

originally posted by: toms54
a reply to: beetee

One example might be how they found tobacco and coc aine residue in Egyptian mummies. At first no one believed saying it had to be contamination. Now it is confirmed enough to be accepted. Cocaine was found in other mummies too. This demonstrates that someone was trading with the new world at that time.

They found compounds that could be the daughter compounds of coc aine, not coc aine. There are other explanations for this.
Tobacco byproducts found were at a level that would have been deadly.
Nicotine was an ingredient in a common insecticide used by museums to prevent insect infestations in mummies (and other things.)
Because every mummy that contained either the coc aine and/or tobacco byproducts had been stored in Europe for decades, and none was found in other mummies tested that were not stored in Europe, the hypothesis about trade has certainly not been accepted.

Harte

a reply to: Harte

That's different than everything I have read about this. If you would post some links, it would help me understand what is the truth here.

a reply to: toms54

Wild tobacco native to Africa.link
Dr. Svetlana Balabanova, one of the scientists that reported the discovery;

SB: It is known that coc aine is the principal alkaloid of the leaves of Erythroxylum coca. Cocaine is present also in other Erythroxylum species native to South Africa, Madagascar and Mauritius in amounts less than those found in Erythroxylum coca. However, it is possible that in antiquity a way to concentrate coc aine was known. Professor Michael Montagne reported that South American shamans concentrated nicotine routinely into a thick black syrup. Moreover, it is also possible, that in ancient Egypt, plants containing coc aine were present.

Hall of Maat Archive

Here's a list of plants in the same family that are native to Africa and could produce similar, and in some cases the same, daughter compounds"
E. brownianum_, Southern Africa
E. caffrum_, Southern Africa
E. delagoense_, Mozambique through South Africa
E. emarginatum_, Guinea to Kenya, Central and Southern Africa
E. gerrardi_, Madagascar and Mozambique
E. monogynum_, India
E. pictum_, Southern Africa
E. platycladum_, Kenya to Mozambique and Madagascar
E. pulchellum_, Southern Africa
E. zambesiacum_, Central Africa

Harte

The pesticides sound like a likely story, unless they can exclude it by testing tissues that would not have been exposed (if any exist.)

The use of other plants from Africa sounds a bit less likely. If people of the time knew how to get coc aine and/or nicotine from those plants, then probably the practice would have continued into the present.


However, we know for certain that Polynesian people did, in fact, have the technology to sail to Egypt and to the New World. And they were good enough at navigation to reach island targets (by comparison to which reaching a whole continent would be like hitting the broad side of a barn).

The only question is if they would have wanted to, and if they ever actually did so.

a reply to: Harte

Thank you for this post. So far, I have only read about about 2 dozen paragraphs and I believe they are worth a thorough review. To oversimplify, these articles maintain that both nicotine and coc aine are native to Africa and could have been used by the Egyptians. Also there is the possibility neither of these were used but some related compounds were. It's the traces of that we are seeing in these mummy tests as your previous posts asserted.

This Hall of Maat Archive article is dated 2003 (15 years ago) and appears to represent the criticism of the first coc aine mummy papers. I'll have to examine more modern stuff to see if these objections have been overcome. It seems unlikely that with today's technology we are unable to accurately identify coc aine in a lab test.

It is incredible to me that coc aine grows native to South Africa and no one seems to know about this. Until today I've never heard about it. I'm sure I have a lot to learn.

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous
The pesticides sound like a likely story, unless they can exclude it by testing tissues that would not have been exposed (if any exist.)

The use of other plants from Africa sounds a bit less likely. If people of the time knew how to get coc aine and/or nicotine from those plants, then probably the practice would have continued into the present.


However, we know for certain that Polynesian people did, in fact, have the technology to sail to Egypt and to the New World. And they were good enough at navigation to reach island targets (by comparison to which reaching a whole continent would be like hitting the broad side of a barn).

The only question is if they would have wanted to, and if they ever actually did so.

Original tests tried to eliminate the possibility of pesticide contamination by testing the hair, which (it is claimed) can only contain things ingested ante mortem. I don't know exactly how valid that claim is, testing hair was fairly new then.
I do know the tests were repeated once with the same results, but two later tests revealed no traces of either drug.
I quoted that old article so I could quote what Balabanova said about the conclusions you can reach from this. If you read further in the article, she says herself that you cannot conclude any trans-Atlantic contact based on these results.

People that ought to know about similar plants in Africa DO know. The fringe only tells people things that tend to support their usually invalid hypotheses, leaving out other pertinent info that would undermine their claims.

Since fringe writers/speakers are the only ones still talking about this, it's not surprising that us ordinary people don't know all the facts.
In other words, it's on US to dig into these (and other) claims, which I've been doing for several decades now.
Obviously, none of this precludes possible transatlantic contact. What I have said simply helps explain what has been found without resorting to such contact.

I think genetic analyses HAVE precluded such contact though. People rarely go months on a voyage and then remain celibate when they arrive.


Harte

If it came from other plants, that would require that somebody at the time knew how to cultivate those plants, and extract the cool chemicals from them. Otherwise it would be unlikely for the Egyptian aristocrats to have ingested any.

I would think an industry like that wouldn't die out, and people would still be using those plants to get high today.

However, Coca plants provide their effect even if you just eat them straight out of the ground. Concentrating it certainly makes it stronger, but just chewing the plant itself does something.



But the most important supporting concern here is: STATUS.

Egyptian dignitaries loved to endulge in anything the proved they were important. Any luxury the common people couldn't possibly get.

If small amounts of Coca and Tobacco were being imported from time to time at great expense from the Americas, you know the royals would just have to have some of that.