Ancient Visitors to the Americas

Has anyone heard about the possibility of ancient civilizations like the Egyptians and Greeks visiting the Americas thousands of years ago?

Yeah the egyptian supposedly made some cave like structures that they mysteriously built into the side of the grand canyon and then abandoned. The only souce pertaining to this story is and article in some arizona newspaper from 1920. It is wideley believed to be a hoax. I tend to agree. The other native americans in the southwest US haven't got any stories relating to egyptians either.

That being said, I am totally open to egyptians or greeks or romans, getting lost at sea cought in some curretn and then ending up stranded on the central or southern american coastline. Maybe even some basic and modest trade between the old world and new. But I don't think that by and large the civilizations didn't mix, and if they did which I feel could be a possibility would be on a small and intermitant rate.

The Olmecs are intruiging. They left huge monolithic boulders carved in the faces of their leaders. Most initial reactions to the discovery of these boulders back in the 19th, and 20th century were that the faces depicted Negroid people most likely from the west coast of africa. However, the theory was later dropped by the mainsteam archeaologists, and social anthropologists. Some still hold to the older belief that they are in fact african faces being depicted, becuase the locals still don't have facial features like the ones depicted.

The aztecs and others depicted their gods of being fair in skin color (white) and with beards. In rituals, and religious ceremonies they would impersonate the gods by wearing beards. Now this is interesting because native americans can't grow facial hair and supposedly never were in contact until much later with the spanish and portugues that had facial hair. Where did they get the idea, who did they meet that grew facial hair way before they were "discovered" by the europeans? Why did they greet the Spanish as gods until they figured out later thatthese were not the same people that were their gods from earlier.

Leaves a lot open for pondering.

I also heard rumors that there was a sunken trade/ small cargo ship of roman or greek origen found in some lagoon or river opening in the south americas.

Hey BASSPLYR

I was listening to C2C last night and there was a fellow by the name of Glenn Kimball and he was talking about these mounds that are being found from Canada all the way to South America. In these mounds they are finding artifacts which depict ancient Egyptian and Greek pictures carved on clay and rocks. I will give the link to that site tell me what you think....

www.coasttocoastam.com...

I believe it's the Bay of Jars. Where apparently a bunch of Roman artifacts have turned up on the bed of the bay. Use google.

Harte

Thanks Harte. It was near Belem or something right? Near the amazon river opening? Maybe it was somewhere in central america. But yeah thats the one I was talking about.

It could have been a lost cargo ship from roman times that ended up stranded on the American shorelines. Or it could have been a sunken trade ship on a routien trip to the americas. I don't know if there are tales in the mediterainians about the new land, but maybe that is what they were talking about when they referenced a group of men they traded with from a foriegn land far far away for tin. The group of peoples had a name given to them by the people of the mediterainian but I forgot. It had to do with the trade of Tin.

I will check out the link about the mound and get back to you guys soon.

Wasnt there also some thought that vikings may have visited the Americas. Not sure of the timing or where i read it, i'll try to find a link.


edit to add link. link to smithsonian This was about 1000 yrs ago, probably not what your looking for, but i wasnt aware of it.

[edit on 8/2/07 by mojo4sale]

I think they found some Viking artifacts on the east coast of Canada which I heard are from the 1000's to 1200's. I am not sure on the exact date though.
They were with some Indian artifacts as well. It could suggest there was some trading going on or pillaging...

could the native americans in the usa once been the egyptians that were here 1000s of years ago..

the native americans were in america for well over 10,000 years
the Egyptians didn't exist then
so the answer to your question
NO

Besides which ancient Egyptians show DNA from two sources
africa and the levant
and Native Americans show DNA from Asia
so once again
the answer to your question is
NO
bit of a non starter really Mij

I don't want to be unoriginal, but I posted this on a similar thread:

First of all, with sailing methods before the last century, if a ship was at sea during rough weather, during a bad season, etc, they could end up ANYWHERE.
So, personally, I think that it would be almost impossible to say who was here first, because, chances are that there were tons of instances, throughout history, all the way back when man first traveled by sea, that people from other continents and cultures have ended up in the Americas.

Even beside the artifact findings listed above, there are all kinds of unexplained structures all over North America that have vague similarities to structures from overseas.

A great book that discusses this kind of material is "Fingerprints of the Gods" by Graham Hancock. He sticks mostly to South America, but it s great nonetheless.

Remember, the Olmecs were in South America, established as a culture as early as 1500 BC. (Olmec Heads) And that culture is unmistakably African.
www.meta-religion.com...

you're actual knowledge of these subjects is a bit horrificus if you ask me buddy

first of all if a ship was at sea during rough weather during a bad season they could end up anywhere
but expecting them to end up in a straight line at least 3000 miles from where they started is a bit if a stretch to say the least

now you may think that there are all kinds of structures that have vague similarities with things overseas and you'd be right
but a vague similarity is not proof of anything except a vague similarity

Graham Hancocks Fingerpaints of the Gods is one of the biggest collections of trash and fabrication to be found anywhere
in many cases he gets facts completely wrong and in many others either omits data that disproves his theory or completely fabricates evidence to fit it
the BBC Horizon program did a special on the work of graham hancock
it wasn't complimentary
Graham Immediately complained about it to the BSC and an adjudication panel from the Broadcasting Standards Commission rendered the following verdict

The programme had created the impression that he was an intellectual fraudster who had put forward half baked theories and ideas in bad faith, and that he was incompetent to defend his own arguments.
Adjudication: [The Commission] finds no unfairness to Mr Hancock in these matters.

so he is an intellectual fraudster who is incompetant to comment on the facts that he writes down in his books which is then marketed to gullible people who if anything know less about the subjects contained theirein than he does

and finally
the Olmec culture has been dna typed
no african dna was present

Yeah The olmecs are still an inigma, and modern archaeologists and social anthropologists still have nothing more than a vauge idea of what they were all about.

I tend to doubt egyptian towns or establishments in the americas, but potentially a modest trade system was possible. They wouldn't have had maps of the earth back then, and would be limited to where the current takes them in oceanic knowledge. So realistically they would only know that the place they are trading with is far away and in this sorta direction. So if they had been in contact with the americas, than it's very possible that the description of where the location is should be pretty vauge, they themselves didn't haved that much data to know, let alone us decipher from their ancient writtings. So the egyptians may have mentioned the trade but it gets dismissed cause it's too vauge of a description to base anything off of.

I also don't know the extent of the egyptian ship contruction. Could they have built boats seaworthy enough to have crossed the atlantic? I don't know. But it is possible for a small raft to get knocked around all the way across the ocean, it happens from time to time. So I definantly agree with the poster who figures plenty of old worlders visited the new world through out the ages if even inadvertantly. A small party of men stranded in the new world, coming in contact with the natives and thus influencing the natives a bit.

Yeah The olmecs are still an inigma, and modern archaeologists and social anthropologists still have nothing more than a vauge idea of what they were all about.

they are still an enigma
you mean apart from having their dna on file from recovered skeletons
apart from excavating their cities
apart from having their artifacts in hundreds of museums
apart from having pretty much every aspect of their daily life known and recorded
yeah
apart from that they're an enigma



and fyi
the egyptians were without a doubt the very worst sailors in the ancient world
One queen (Hatsheput) went on a river boat cruise down the nile to the land of punt and was so impressed by her ability that she had her tomb decorated with pictures of her greatest achievement
on the one occaison that the egyptians did actually go out to sea they had to hire the phoenecians to sail them around africa
The egyptians you can be sure if they had been in trade with anywhere that we don't know about can only have been doing it with the help of aliens from the planet vulcan
otherwise
wheres the evidence
without any evidence you have no facts
and without any facts you have just your imagination
so you might as well just make it up as you go along
oh silly me
thats what you were doing
please carry on

I think marduks having a bad day.

now you're thinking

anything else while its turned on ?

Oh, my funny little friend, Marduk.

Not sure exactly what you aiming to do, besides be annoying and insulting. Bt, at least you are doing a great job at those 2 things. Congrats!

You started by banging my statement of ships being lost at sea, and ending up in the Americas.
You really didn't state anything that disproves that this can happen. And, to say that it can't happen is just ludicrous. Man has always gotten lost at sea. Sometimes they lived to tell about it, sometimes they didn't. But, to say it did happen is just kind of silly.
Your sentence:
[Quote]first of all if a ship was at sea during rough weather during a bad season they could end up anywhere
but expecting them to end up in a straight line at least 3000 miles from where they started is a bit if a stretch to say the least
...also goes nowhere. Did I miss a part of my post where I said anything about a storm pulling a ship from it's dock in it's home country, all the way to the Americas? No, I didn't.
I was talking about craft that were already at sea, trying to get somewhere, I don't know. Probably just lost,and bouncing from landmass to landmass, ending up in the Americas.
If you don't think that this happened all the time during our history, you are wrong.

You stated:

now you may think that there are all kinds of structures that have vague similarities with things overseas and you'd be right
but a vague similarity is not proof of anything except a vague similarity

... which also damages nothing I posted. I did not say there were any definite discoveries or identifications of structures found here. I said they were "unexplained" and "similarities". And, that is what they are.

As far as Graham Hancock's book goes, to just point at it, and say it is all trash is just clowny! First of all, I am not one of those people that believes everything they read. Second of all, of course there is a ton of stuff in that book that IS fact. AND, there is information in there that is not. Did I enjoy the book? Yes! Did I research things that interested me, to find if they were true? Yes again. And this is what anybody should do, when reading material like this, and getting an interest in the subject.

As far as the Olmecs go, again, you didn't disprove anything I stated. We all know where they were, and what is left behind.
Great.
The point is, the features of their statues are all african in appearance. Some of the characters they used in their "writing" were african. Skeletons that have been unearthed have had similarities with Mende African skeletons. There are also religious similarities to the Mende.

I am not going to say it is definite. For the sake of keeping my post honest. But, I will say that it is, again, silly to say that it is definite that they are not.

In the future, maybe you should refrain from "bullying" and "insulting" other forum members. You would get more credibility that way.

Please note that my mood is currently "Disembowely".

[edit on 2/9/2007 by Horrificus]

[edit on 2/9/2007 by Horrificus]

Originally posted by Marduk
and fyi
the egyptians were without a doubt the very worst sailors in the ancient world
One queen (Hatsheput) went on a river boat cruise down the nile to the land of punt and was so impressed by her ability that she had her tomb decorated with pictures of her greatest achievement
on the one occaison that the egyptians did actually go out to sea they had to hire the phoenecians to sail them around africa
The egyptians you can be sure if they had been in trade with anywhere that we don't know about can only have been doing it with the help of aliens from the planet vulcan
otherwise



wheres the evidence
without any evidence you have no facts
and without any facts you have just your imagination
so you might as well just make it up as you go along
oh silly me
thats what you were doing
please carry on

Yes, and where is your evidence? You are talking science fiction based on your own assumptions which you thought is the most valid way today, you have no facts at all. All you can do is linking some internet links after some google-ing job which 5 years old kid can do.
All you did some were just reading from internet, 3rd, 4th, 1001th un-reliable un-credible resources.

People talked, he listened, he spoken, she heard, she wrote, people read, re-talk, re-write, and re-tell by other people, people re-wrote it in his/her own words to suit his/her own words, ....and carry on for thousand years....
People read, listen, write, and put it on internet, and you find the link, you call that PROVE and reliable?

IMHO you are just wasting people time, and certainly you are wasting ATS server space.

Ancient Egyptian: Do you live at that time? Do you have pictures, video or anything that proves ancient Egyptian were worst sailor? Who was 2nd worst? And who was best?
Did you actually see them or you just talk based on people talks, listenings, reading and writings?

Don't force your imagination to others.

The Vikings were the first real European explorers. From their Scandinavian homeland, they explored the rivers of western Russia and Europe and sailed as far south as the Mediterranean Sea, north Africa and on to what is now Israel. They were also the first Europeans to travel westward beyond the horizon and onto North America. Since they were very practical people, the Vikings based their navigation skills on knowledge gained from many years of sailing. They knew about prevailing winds and where these steady winds would take them. They could identify where they were by the type of seaweed floating on the ocean, the types of seabirds flying overhead and the presence of whales and other sea animals. During expeditions that took them out of sight of land, the Vikings released captured seabirds and ravens and watched the directions in which they flew to find land and then followed them. If the seabirds returned to the ship, it was a sign that land was still far off. There are also accounts of the Vikings using the colour of seafloor mud samples raised on sinkers to help them determine where they were.

link
I know you talking about the Egyptians here but i think its worth noting that if the vikings were able to make these kinds of journeys over 1000yrs ago, then i dont think it would be a huge stretch to imagine perhaps the phoenicians being able to make similar journeys around 1200bc.

a Phoenician expedition sent down the Red Sea by pharaoh Necho II of Egypt (c. 600 BC) even circumnavigated Africa and returned through the Pillars of Hercules in three years.

wikipedia link
A culture that was as skilled seafarers as the phoenicians, well i wouldnt put it past them to have made some contact with the new world. There are claims at the bottom of the wikipedia link that the phoenicians had visited brazil and that coins had been found in Nth America however these claims have no accompanying proof.
Though you wouldnt expect many artifacts to remain in these places after such long periods if they were only expeditions and not settlements.

It is an interesting subject to research even if certain posters seem determined to ridicule anyone who dares to think outside the box. Interesting topic canadianguy, thanks.

In that region the phonecians were probably the best seamen. Their entire economy was base an trade. most of their territiory was the mediterainian, and adgean sea. Adriatic too. Relatively calm water but can still get hairy at times.

THey also sailed around the horn of africa a few times for trade. They went out side the mediterainian to accomplish that. Right past the canary islands. THere is a commonly known current there that takes anybody stuck in it and patient enough strait to central america. How do you think columbus landed where he did. Blind luck, cause thats where the current goes. Just like the jet stream takes a predictable route. It fluctuates a little but is generally consistant enough to predict where something will land once it gets blown up into the jet stream.

THe phonecians were involved in trade. Maybe enough that a few freak discoveries of the new world (americas) let them set up a small intermitant trade between various cultures.

Still the perplexing problem of why the aztecs worshiped white people as gods, and wore fake beards to imitate those gods, and then treat the next white man they saw as a long away god returning home to the aztecs.

Like I said. Native americans can't grow facial hair. And supposedly they never met anybody else who had facial hair, so where did they get the idea?

Also these white "gods" must have been superior to them technologically to impress the aztec (accomplished architecs themselves) into believing they were gods. An advance phonecian, middle eastern culture making contact with the new world? WHo knows.

Originally posted by Marduk
the native americans were in america for well over 10,000 years
the Egyptians didn't exist then
so the answer to your question
NO

Besides which ancient Egyptians show DNA from two sources
africa and the levant
and Native Americans show DNA from Asia
so once again
the answer to your question is
NO
bit of a non starter really Mij

didn't all life begin in africa? and then the africans moved into asia/europe, and eventually crossed an alaskan landbrige into the americas? so technically, he's right, there were people in present day egypt before america.