In armed conflicts, the civilian casualty ratio (also civilian death ratio, civilian-combatant ratio, etc.) is the ratio of civilian casualties to combatantcasualties, or total casualties. The measurement can apply either to casualties inflicted by or to a particular belligerent,
casualties inflicted in one aspect or arena of a conflict or to
casualties in the conflict as a whole. Casualties usually refer to both
dead and injured. In some calculations, deaths resulting from famine and epidemics are included.
Starting in the 1980s, it was often claimed that 90 percent of the victims of modern wars were civilians, repeated in academic publications as recently as 2014.
These claims, though widely believed, are not supported by detailed
examination of the evidence, particularly that relating to wars (such as
those in former Yugoslavia and in Afghanistan) that are central to the claims. Some of the citations can be traced back to a 1991 monograph from Uppsala University which includes refugees and internally displaced persons as casualties. Other authors cite Ruth Leger Sivard's
1991 monograph in which the author states "In the decade of the 1980s,
the proportion of civilian deaths jumped to 74 percent of the total and
in 1990 it appears to have been close to 90 percent."
The most comprehensive examination of civilian war deaths throughout history is by William Eckhardt, in which Eckhardt states:
On the average, half of the deaths caused by war happened
to civilians, only some of whom were killed by famine associated with
war...The civilian percentage share of war-related deaths remained at
about 50% from century to century. (p. 97)
Mexican Revolution (1910–20)
Although it is estimated that over 1 million people died in the Mexican Revolution,
most died from disease and hunger as an indirect result of the war.
Combat deaths are generally agreed to have totaled about 250,000.
According to Eckhardt, these included 125,000 civilian deaths and
125,000 combatant deaths, creating a civilian-combatant death ratio of
1:1 among combat deaths.
Some 7 million combatants on both sides are estimated to have died during World War I, along with an estimated 10 million non-combatants, including 6.6 million civilians. The civilian casualty ratio in this estimate would be about 59%. Boris Urlanis notes a lack of data on civilian losses in the Ottoman Empire, but estimates 8.6 million military killed and dead and 6 million civilians killed and dead in the other warring countries. The civilian casualty ratio in this estimate would be about 42%. Most of the civilian fatalities were due to famine, typhus, or Spanish flu
rather than combat action. The relatively low ratio of civilian
casualties in this war is due to the fact that the front lines on the
main battlefront, the Western Front, were static for most of the war, so that civilians were able to avoid the combat zones.
Chemical weapons were widely used by all sides during the conflict and wind frequently carried poison gas into nearby towns where civilians did not have access to gas masks
or warning systems. An estimated 100,000-260,000 civilian casualties
were affected by the use of chemical weapons during the conflict and
tens of thousands more died from the effects of such weapons in the
years after the conflict ended.
Germany suffered 750,000 civilian dead during and after the war due to famine caused by the Allied blockade. Russia and Turkey suffered civilian casualties in the millions in the Russian Civil War and invasion of Anatolia respectively. Armenia suffered up to 1.5 million civilians dead in the Armenian genocide.
According to most sources, World War II
was the most lethal war in world history, with some 70 million killed
in six years. The civilian to combatant fatality ratio in World War II
lies somewhere between 3:2 and 2:1, or from 60% to 67%.
The high ratio of civilian casualties in this war was due in part to
the increasing effectiveness and lethality of strategic weapons which
were used to target enemy industrial or population centers, and famines caused by economic disruption. An estimated 2.1–3 million Indians died in the Bengal famine of 1943 in India during World War II. A substantial number of civilians in this war were also deliberately killed by Axis Powers as a result of genocide such as the Holocaust or other ethnic cleansing campaigns.
Korean War
The median total estimated Korean civilian deaths in the Korean War
is 2,730,000. The total estimated North Korean combatant deaths is
213,000 and the estimated Chinese combatant deaths is over 400,000. In
addition to this the Republic of Korea combatant deaths is around
134,000 dead and the combatant deaths for the United Nations
side is around 49,000 dead and missing (40,000 dead, 9,000 missing).
The estimated total Korean war military dead is around 793,000 deaths.
The civilian-combatant death ratio in the war is approximately 2:1 or
67%. One source estimates that 20% of the total population of North
Korea perished in the war.
Vietnam War
The Vietnamese government has estimated the number of Vietnamese civilians killed in the Vietnam War at two million, and the number of NVA and Viet Cong killed at 1.1 million—estimates which approximate those of a number of other sources.
This would give a civilian-combatant fatality ratio of approximately
2:1, or 67%. These figures do not include civilians killed in Cambodia and Laos. However, the lowest estimate of 411,000 civilians killed during the war (including civilians killed in Cambodia and Laos)
would give a civilian-combatant fatality ratio of approximately 1:3, or
25%. Using the lowest estimate of Vietnamese military deaths, 400,000,
the ratio is about 1:1.
Chechen wars
During the First Chechen War,
4,000 separatist fighters and 40,000 civilians are estimated to have
died, giving a civilian-combatant ratio of 10:1. The numbers for the Second Chechen War
are 3,000 fighters and 13,000 civilians, for a ratio of 43:10. The
combined ratio for both wars is 76:10. Casualty numbers for the conflict
are notoriously unreliable. The estimates of the civilian casualties
during the First Chechen war range from 20,000 to 100,000, with
remaining numbers being similarly unreliable.
The tactics employed by Russian forces in both wars were heavily
criticized by human rights groups, which accused them of indiscriminate
bombing and shelling of civilian areas and other crimes.
In 1999, NATO intervened in the Kosovo War with a bombing campaign against Yugoslav forces, who were alleged to be conducting a campaign of ethnic cleansing. The bombing lasted about 2½ months, until forcing the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army from Kosovo.
Estimates for the number of casualties caused by the bombing vary
widely depending on the source. NATO unofficially claimed a toll of
5,000 enemy combatants killed by the bombardment; the Yugoslav
government, on the other hand, gave a figure of 638 of its security
forces killed in Kosovo. Estimates for the civilian toll are similarly disparate. Human Rights Watch counted approximately 500 civilians killed by the bombing; the Yugoslav government estimated between 1,200 and 5,000.
If the NATO figures are to be believed, the bombings achieved a
civilian to combatant kill ratio of about 1:10, on the Yugoslav
government's figures, conversely, the ratio would be between 4:1 and
10:1. If the most conservative estimates from the sources cited above
are used, the ratio was around 1:1.
According to military historian and Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, for every Serbian soldier killed by NATO in 1999 (the period in which Operation Allied Force
took place), four civilians died, a civilian to combatant casualty
ratio of 4:1. Oren cites this figure as evidence that "even the most
moral army can make mistakes, especially in dense urban warfare".
According to a 2010 assessment by John Sloboda of Iraq Body Count,
a United Kingdom-based organization, American and Coalition forces had
killed at least 28,736 combatants as well as 13,807 civilians in the Iraq War, indicating a civilian to combatant casualty ratio inflicted by coalition forces of 1:2. However, overall, figures by the Iraq Body Count
from 20 March 2003 to 14 March 2013 indicate that of 174,000 casualties
only 39,900 were combatants, resulting in a civilian casualty rate of
77%.
The civilian casualty ratio for U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan
is notoriously difficult to quantify. The U.S. itself puts the number
of civilians killed from drone strikes in the last two years at no more
than 20 to 30, a total that is far too low according to a spokesman for
the NGOCIVIC. At the other extreme, Daniel L. Byman of the Brookings Institution
suggests that drone strikes may kill "10 or so civilians" for every
militant killed, which would represent a civilian to combatant casualty
ratio of 10:1. Byman argues that civilian killings constitute a
humanitarian tragedy and create dangerous political problems, including
damage to the legitimacy of the Pakistani government and alienation of
the Pakistani populace from America. An ongoing study by the New America Foundation
finds non-militant casualty rates started high but have declined
steeply over time, from about 60% (3 out of 5) in 2004–2007 to less than
2% (1 out of 50) in 2012. The study puts the overall non-militant
casualty rate since 2004 at 15–16%, or a 1:5 ratio, out of a total of
between 1,908 and 3,225 people killed in Pakistan by drone strikes since
2004.
Israeli–Palestinian conflict
Estimates of civilian casualties from the Israeli–Palestinian conflict differ. A 2007 report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
found that, from the beginning of the second intifada in September 2000
until the end of July 2007, at least 5,848 people were killed in the
conflict, over half of whom were civilians. Amongst those killed in that
period, 69% of Israelis were civilians, while the report estimated 59%
of Palestinian casualties were civilians.
In May 2012 B'Tselem
decided to stop addressing the question of participation in combat,
with respect to Palestinians killed in the West Bank, stating that,
"while in the past there were complicated incidents in the West Bank
that might have met the definition of "combat incidents," in recent
years the incidents meeting that definition have been almost nil."
B'Tselem does not address or count the number of Israelis killed or
maimed by Palestinians or Palestinian forces. B'Tselem has also
established a separate category for recording Palestinian police
officers killed by Israel; according to B'Tselem, Israel counts the Gaza
police force as a non-civilian when calculating the civilian casualty
ratio, and states that such a definition is not compatible with the ICRC
interpretation of international law. The International Committee of the Red Cross
regards persons as civilians if they do not fulfill a "continuous
combat function" (for example, many police officers) and do not
participate directly in hostilities.
Analysts state that in addition to their civilian roles such as
policing traffic, police in Gaza are active in counter-intelligence and
fighting dissent.
Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip
The head of the Shin Bet
reported to the Israeli Cabinet that of the 810 Palestinians killed in
Gaza in 2006 and 2007, 200 were civilians (a ratio of approximately
1:3). Haaretz assessed this to be an underestimation of civilian casualties. Using figures from Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem, they calculated that 816 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza during the two-year period, 360 of whom were civilians. Military journalist Amos Harel wrote in Haaretz
that the ratio between military targets and civilians was 1:1 in
2002–2003, when half the casualties in air assaults on the Gaza Strip
were civilians. He attributed this to an Israeli Air Force
(IAF) practice of attacking militants even when they had deliberately
located themselves in densely populated areas. The ratio improved to
1:28 ratio in late 2005, meaning one civilian killed for every 28
combatants. It lowered, however, to 1:10 in 2006. In 2007, the ratio was
at its lowest ever, more than 1:30. Figures showing an improvement from 1:1 in 2002 to 1:30 in 2008 were also cited by The Jerusalem Post journalist Yaakov Katz. However, in operations in Gaza since 2008, the ratio again dropped, as low as 5:2 during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict.
On its web blog, the IDF stated that the IDF's civilian-to-terrorist death ratio is the lowest in the world. It says that civilian deaths are caused by the use of human shields by Gazan militant groups, such as Hamas.
The IDF blog lists various counter-terrorism methods used by the IDF to
minimize civilian casualties and lower the civilian casualty ratio, including pinpoint targeting, aborting strikes due to risk of civilian casualties, and smartbombs with the ability to cancel a strike whilst in midair.
Several analysts have attempted to calculate the Israel Defense Forces's civilian casualty ratio in the 2008–09 Gaza War.
All have noted that the ratio differs significantly depending on which
figures are used regarding the total number of casualties and their
identity. The main sets of figures are those published by the IDF,
essentially corroborated by Hamas, the opposing belligerent in the conflict, on the one hand; and those published by B'Tselem on the other hand. The final IDF report identified 709 militants out of a total of 1,161
Gaza fatalities, with another 162 whose status could not be confirmed
(300 were ID'd as civilians).
B'Tselem say 1,391 Palestinians were killed, of whom 759 of them did
not take part in the hostilities while 350 did take part in the
hostilities, 248 were police officers who were killed inside police
stations, and it is not known if 32 who were killed did take part in the
hostilities.
The Goldstone Report
into the conflict concluded that while there were many individual Gaza
policemen who were members of militant groups, the Gaza police forces
were a civilian police force and "cannot be said to have been taking a
direct part in hostilities and thus did not lose their civilian immunity
from direct attack as civilians".
Journalist Yaakov Katz states in The Jerusalem Post
that the ratio is 1:3 according to the Israeli figures and 60%
civilians (3:2) according to B'Tselem's figures. Katz describes the
IDF's civilian casualty ratio in the Gaza War and in the year preceding
it as low.
Katz says that over 81 percent of the 5,000 missiles the IDF dropped in the Gaza Strip during the operation were smart bombs, a percentage which he states is unprecedented in modern warfare. Journalist and commentator Evelyn Gordon writes in Commentary
that the civilian casualty ratio in the 2008–09 Gaza War was 39 percent
(2:3), using however only the preliminary Israeli estimates, but that
56 or 74 percent were civilians according to B'Tselem's figures,
depending on whether 248 Hamas policemen are considered combatants or
civilians; and 65 or 83 percent according to the figures of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.
Gordon says that all of these ratios, even if the worse were correct,
are lower than the normal civilian-to-combatant wartime fatality ratio
in wars elsewhere, as given by the Red Cross, and states that the
comparison shows that the IDF was unusually successful at minimizing
civilian casualties.
13 Israelis were killed during the conflict, including 10 IDF soldiers (4 killed by friendly fire), giving a civilian casualty ratio for Palestinian forces of 24% or 3:10.
Reports of casualties in the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict
have been made available by a variety of sources. Most media accounts
have used figures provided by the government in Gaza or non-governmental
organizations. Differing methodologies have resulted in varied reports of both the overall death toll and the civilian casualty ratio.
According to the main estimates between 2,125 and 2,310 Gazans were killed and between 10,626 and 10,895 were wounded (including 3,374 children, of whom over 1,000 were left permanently disabled). 66 Israeli soldiers, 5 Israeli civilians (including one child) and one Thai civilian were killed and 469 IDF soldiers and 261 Israeli civilians were injured. The Gaza Health Ministry, UN and some human rights groups reported that 69–75% of the Palestinian casualties were civilians;Israeli officials estimated that around 50% of those killed were civilians, giving Israeli forces a ratio between 1:1 and 3:1 during the conflict.
In March 2015, OCHA reported that 2,220 Palestinians had been
killed in the conflict, of whom 1,492 were civilians (551 children and
299 women), 605 militants and 123 of unknown status, giving Israeli
forces a ratio of 5:2.
Uses its own intelligence reports as well as Palestinian sources and media reports to determine combatant deaths.
1982 Lebanon War
In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon with the stated aim of driving the PLO away from its northern borders. The war culminated in a seven-week-long Israeli naval, air and artillery bombardment of Lebanon's capital, Beirut,
where the PLO had retreated. The bombardment eventually came to an end
with an internationally brokered settlement in which the PLO forces were
given safe passage to evacuate the country.
According to the International Red Cross,
by the end of the first week of the war alone, some 10,000 people,
including 2,000 combatants, had been killed, and 16,000 wounded—a
civilian-combatant fatality ratio of 5:1.
Lebanese government sources later estimated that by the end of the
siege of Beirut, a total of about 18,000 had been killed, an estimated
85% of whom were civilians.This gives a civilian to military casualty ratio of about 6:1.
According to Richard A. Gabriel between 1,000 and 3,000 civilians were killed in the southern campaign. He states that an additional 4,000 to 5,000 civilians died from all actions of all sides during the siege of Beirut, and that some 2,000 Syrian soldiers were killed during the Lebanon campaign and a further 2,400 PLO guerillas were also killed. Of these, 1,000 PLO guerrillas were killed during the siege.
According to Gabriel the ratio of civilian deaths to combatants during
the siege was about 6 to 1 but this ratio includes civilian deaths from
all actions of all sides.
While aspartame’s classification as apossible carcinogengrabbed headlines, the classification of another ubiquitous chemical slid silently beneath the diet cola outrage. The Lyons, France based International Association for Research on Cancer, the IARC, classified the artificial sweetener aspartame as a group 2B “possible” carcinogen in last week’s published evaluation.
Social and traditional media erupted with calls for bans of its use, and freaked-out moms everywhere dumped bottles of soda down the drain and emptied their drawers of Trident Gum to protect their families. Decades of research, and the fact that you’d have to pound down about 14 two liters of diet soda a day to approach a risk threshold, be damned. The IARC rating sent environmental activists into high gear.
While distracted by Mountain Dews and don’ts, the same evaluation by the IARC classified an unrelated scary-sounding chemical —methyl eugenol — as a group 2A “probable carcinogen”: which means it poses even a greater cancer threat than aspartame.
Based on Twitter logic, since glyphosate is a dangerous Group 2A “probable carcinogen”, methyl eugenol must also be some deadly poison. After all, that’sthe same category as glyphosate, an herbicide lauded by farmers as effective and by an overwhelming number of scientists, including everyindependent chemical risk agencyin the world as safe, yet condemned in social media and trial lawyers as a toxic carcinogen of doom.
If the reaction to glyphosate’s classification is a guide, the companies that sell methyl eugenol will be sued into financial duress. Activists will clammer for products containing methyl eugenol to be labeled as ‘cancer causing’, especially in California. There will be calls for bans, and lawyers will hammer big checks with class action lawsuits against the crooked Merchants of Poison that produce… essential oils, aromatherapy candles and pesto sauce. According to theNational Institutes of Health, pesto-eaters could be exposed to some of the highest levels of methyl eugenol, because fresh pesto is prepared from a large quantity of fresh basil, reflected by basil amounts in pesto sauce products on the market.
That sound you just heard was the thud of aging hippies and Italian food-loving chemophobes hitting the floor. Patchouli oil and basil are loaded with the stuff.
Or maybe it is the sucking sound created from a vacuum of logic that will condemn one chemistry and let another slide by, when it fits their ideological proclivities or someone sees money in the corner of their eye.
Or maybe it is the hypocrisy of indulging in a Class 2A probable carcinogen as part of their identity at the same time fighting against a different Class 2A probable carcinogen is part of their identity.
Credit: Clean Cooking with Caitlin
The case of methyl eugenol is a stellar opportunity to underscore the hypocrisy in IARC-induced chemophobia. Methyl eugenol is a central component of essential oils, like tea tree oil and citronella. It is a dominant flavor note in nutmeg, lemon grass, cloves and allspice. Methyl eugenol or its metabolites may be detected in the urine of close to 100 percent of individuals that recently ate bananas or oranges. It is present in orders of magnitude higher levels than the parts per billion of glyphosate reportedly found in grocery products deemed deadly toxic by anti-glyphosate interests.
Yet ‘progressive’ dudes with man-buns will slather on methyl-eugenol-laden tinctures and creams. Naturopaths will sing the praises of aromatherapy, while inhaling a Class 2A carcinogen deep into the lungs. Skin creams will give you a healthy glow, as methyl eugenol’s magic combines with essential oils and carnauba wax — and better yet it’s organic!
And in the widespread application of a IARC Class 2A probable carcinogen you won’t see social media activists slammingAnnie’s Heirloom Seedsfor profiting off of seeds of death. You won’t see lawyers line up to sue Big Pesto. Irrelevant pseudo-journalists will not write books that reinterpret internal emails at McCormick spices, cherry-picking to denounce cherries.
The point is simple. The archaic IARC classification system has been mobilized by unscrupulous actors to malign chemistries used by industries targeted by activist groups — what they call Big Ag or Big Soda. An IARC classification and its attention-getting headlines are the first stinky step in lawsuits and manipulation of public opinion.
[Editor’s note: ReadGLP’s investigative reporton how IARC’s aspartame classification is providing gruel to anti-chemical environmentalists and tort lawyers.]
The differing media and advocacy group reactions to classification of aspartame and glyphosate, while ignoring methyl eugenol,ethanol(drinking wine or beer, Class 1 carcinogen) and lunch meat (Class 1 carcinogen) illustrates how pronouncements by IARC and a similar agency based in Italy,Ramazzini Institute, are selectively twisted to mislead, affect public perception, and recruit for a lawsuit class action.
It is clear that the weight and urgency of the IARC classification only matters on products that online quacks, consumer watchdogs, pseudoscience nutrition hawks — and a host of so-called mainstream environmental groups that raise money off of chemophobia with glyphosate tops on their list (e.g.,Environmental Working Group,Natural Resources Defense Council,Organic Consumers Association,Union of Concerned Scientists, don’t like. But to the scientific world where thedose makes the poison, the social outrage driven by these monographs breaks trust in science while it lines the pockets of attorneys that profit from misleading campaigns targeting select industries.
Kevin M. Folta is a professor, keynote speaker and podcast host. Follow Professor Folta on Twitter @kevinfolta
Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories are speculative theories which propose that possible visits to the Americas, possible interactions with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas—or both—were made by people from Africa, Asia, Europe, or Oceania prior to Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Caribbean in 1492 (i.e., during any part of the pre-Columbian era). Studies between 2004 and 2009 suggest the possibility that the earliest human migrations to the Americas
may have been made by boat from Beringia and travel down the Pacific
coast, contemporary with and possibly predating land migrations over the
Beringia land bridge, which during the glacial period joined what today are Siberia and Alaska.
Whether transoceanic travel occurred during the historic period,
resulting in pre-Columbian contact between the settled American peoples
and voyagers from other continents, is vigorously debated.
Only a few cases of pre-Columbian contact are widely accepted by mainstream scientists and scholars. Yup'ik and Aleut
peoples residing on both sides of the Bering Strait had frequent
contact with each other, and Eurasian trade goods have been discovered
in archaeological sites in Alaska. Maritime explorations by Norse peoples from Scandinavia during the late 10th century led to the Norse colonization of Greenland and a base camp L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland,
which preceded Columbus's arrival in the Americas by some 500 years.
Recent genetic studies have also suggested that some eastern Polynesian populations have admixture from coastal western South American peoples, with an estimated date of contact around 1200 CE.
Scientific and scholarly responses to other claims of
post-prehistory, pre-Columbian transoceanic contact have varied. Some of
these claims are examined in reputable peer-reviewed sources. Many
others are based only on circumstantial or ambiguous interpretations of
archaeological evidence, the discovery of alleged out-of-place artifacts, superficial cultural comparisons, comments in historical documents, or narrative accounts. They have been dismissed as fringe science, pseudoarchaeology, or pseudohistory.
Claims of Polynesian, Melanesian, and Austronesian contact
Genetic studies
Between 2007 and 2009, geneticist Erik Thorsby and colleagues published two studies in Tissue Antigens that there is evidence an Amerindian genetic contribution to human populations on Easter Island, determining that it was probably introduced before European discovery of the island. In 2014, geneticist Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas of the Center for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen published a study in Current Biology that found human genetic evidence of contact between the populations of Easter Island and South America, dating to approximately 600 years ago (i.e. 1400 CE ± 100 years). In 2017, a comprehensive genomes study found "no Native American admixture in pre- and post-European-contact individuals".
Two remains of "Botocudo" people (a term used to refer to Native Americans who live in the interior of Brazil that speak Macro-Jê languages), were found in research published in 2013 to have been members of mtDNA haplogroupB4a1a1, which is normally found only among Polynesians and other subgroups of Austronesians. This was based on an analysis of fourteen skulls. Two belonged to B4a1a1, while twelve belonged to subclades of mtDNA haplogroup C1
(common among Native Americans). The research team examined various
scenarios, none of which they could say for certain were correct. They
dismissed a scenario of direct contact in prehistory between Polynesia and Brazil as "too unlikely to be seriously entertained." While B4a1a1 is also found among the Malagasy people of Madagascar
(which experienced significant Austronesian settlement in prehistory),
the authors described as "fanciful" suggestions that B4a1a1 among the
Botocudo resulted from the African slave trade (which included
Madagascar). A 2020 study strongly questioned the premise of the paper as being based on outdated racial classifications.
In 2020, a study in Nature found that populations in the Mangareva, Marquesas, and Palliser islands and Easter Island had genetic admixture from indigenous populations of South America, with the DNA of contemporary populations of Zenú people from the Pacific coast of Colombia
being the closest match. The authors suggest that the genetic
signatures were probably the result of a single ancient contact. They
proposed that an initial admixture event between indigenous South
Americans and Polynesians occurred in eastern Polynesia between 1150 and
1230 CE, with later admixture in Easter Island around 1380 CE,[6]
but suggested other possible contact scenarios—for example, Polynesian
voyages to South America followed by Polynesian people's returning to
Polynesia with South American people, or carrying South American genetic
heritage. Several scholars uninvolved in the study suggested that a contact event in South America was more likely.
The spread of sweet potatoes. The red lines indicate the likely spread carried out by the Polynesians.
The sweet potato,
a food crop native to the Americas, was widespread in Polynesia by the
time European explorers first reached the Pacific. Sweet potato has been
radiocarbon-dated to 1000 CE in the Cook Islands. Current thinking is that it was brought to central Polynesia c. 700 CE and spread across Polynesia from there.
It has been suggested that it was brought by Polynesians who had
traveled across the Pacific to South America and back, or that South
Americans brought it to Polynesia. It is also possible that the plant floated across the ocean after being discarded from the cargo of a boat. According to the "tripartite hypothesis", phylogenetic
analysis supports at least two separate introductions of sweet potatoes
from South America into Polynesia, including one before and one after
European contact.
However most scholars assert that the sweet potato arrived in Polynesia
some 100,000 years ago, long before humans ventured to this part of the
world.
Sweet potatoes for sale, Thames, New Zealand. The name "kumara" has entered New Zealand English from Māori, and is in wide use.
Dutch linguists and specialists in Amerindian languagesWillem Adelaar
and Pieter Muysken have suggested that the word for sweet potato is
shared by Polynesian languages and languages of South America. Proto-Polynesian *kumala (compare Easter Islandkumara, Hawaiianʻuala, Māorikūmara; even though a proto-form is reconstructed above, apparent cognates outside Eastern Polynesian are either definitely borrowed
from Eastern Polynesian languages or irregular, calling
Proto-Polynesian status and age into question) may be connected with
dialectal Quechua and Aymarak'umar ~ k'umara; most Quechua dialects actually use apichu instead, but comal was attested at extinct Cañari language on the coast of what is now Ecuador in 1582.
Adelaar and Muysken assert that the similarity in the word for
sweet potato "constitutes near proof of incidental contact between
inhabitants of the Andean region and the South Pacific." The authors
argue that the presence of the word for sweet potato suggests sporadic
contact between Polynesia and South America, but not necessarily
migrations.
Ageratum conyzoides
Ageratum conyzoides,
also known as billygoat-weed, chick weed, goatweed, or whiteweed, is
native to the tropical Americas, and was found in Hawaii by William Hillebrand in 1888 who considered it to have grown there before Captain Cook's arrival in 1778. A legitimate native name (meie parari or mei rore) and established native medicinal usage and use as a scent and in leis have been offered as support for the pre-Cookian age.
Turmeric
Turmeric (Curcuma longa)
originated in Asia, and there is linguistic and circumstantial evidence
of the spread and use of turmeric by the Austronesian peoples into
Oceania and Madagascar. Günter Tessmann in 1930 (300 years after
European contact) reported that a species of Curcuma was grown by the Amahuaca tribe to the east of the Upper Ucayali River in Peru and was a dye-plant used for the painting of the body, with the nearby Witoto people using it as face paint in their ceremonial dances.David Sopher noted in 1950 that "the evidence for a pre-European,
transpacific introduction of the plant by man seems very strong indeed".
Rocker jaws have also been found at an excavation led José Miguel Ramírez in the coastal locality of Tunquén, Central Chile. The site of excavation corresponds to an area with pre-Hispanic tombs and shell middens (Spanish: conchal).
A global review of rocker jaws among different populations show that
while rocker jaws are not unique to Polynesians "[t]he rarity of rocker
jaw in South American natives supports" the view of "Polynesian voyagers
who ventured to the west coast of South America".
Disputed evidence
Araucanian chickens
In 2007, evidence emerged which suggested the possibility of pre-Columbian contact between the Mapuche people (Araucanians) of south-central Chile and Polynesians. Bones of Araucana chickens found at El Arenal site in the Arauco Peninsula, an area inhabited by Mapuche, support a pre-Columbian introduction of landraces from the South Pacific islands to South America.
The bones found in Chile were radiocarbon-dated to between 1304 and
1424, before the arrival of the Spanish. Chicken DNA sequences were
matched to those of chickens in American Samoa and Tonga, and found to be dissimilar to those of European chickens.
However, this finding was challenged by a 2008 study which
questioned its methodology and concluded that its conclusion is flawed,
although the theory it posits may still be possible.
Another study in 2014 reinforced that dismissal, and posited the
crucial flaw in the initial research: "The analysis of ancient and
modern specimens reveals a unique Polynesian genetic signature" and that
"a previously reported connection between pre-European South America
and Polynesian chickens most likely resulted from contamination with
modern DNA, and that this issue is likely to confound ancient DNA
studies involving haplogroup E chicken sequences."
However, in a 2013 study, the original authors extended and elaborated their findings, concluding:
This comprehensive approach
demonstrates that the examination of modern chicken DNA sequences does
not contribute to our understanding of the origins of Chile's earliest
chickens. Interpretations based on poorly sourced and documented modern
chicken populations, divorced from the archeological and historical
evidence, do not withstand scrutiny. Instead, this expanded account will
confirm the pre-Columbian age of the El Arenal remains and lend support
to our original hypothesis that their appearance in South America is
most likely due to Polynesian contact with the Americas in prehistory.
A 2019 study of South American chickens "revealed an unknown genetic
component that is mostly present in the Easter Island population that is
also present in local chicken populations from the South American
Pacific fringe".
The Easter Island chicken's "genetic proximity with the SA continental
gamefowl can be explained by the fact that both populations were not
crossed with cosmopolitan breeds and therefore remain closer to the
ancestral population that originated them. " The genetic proximity might also "be indicative of a common origin of these two populations".
Researchers including Kathryn Klar and Terry Jones have proposed a theory of contact between Hawaiians and the Chumash people of Southern California between 400 and 800 CE. The sewn-plank canoes crafted by the Chumash and neighboring Tongva
are unique among the indigenous peoples of North America, but similar
in design to larger canoes used by Polynesians and Melanesians for
deep-sea voyages. Tomolo'o, the Chumash word for such a craft, may derive from tumula'au/kumula'au, the Hawaiian term for the logs from which shipwrights carve planks to be sewn into canoes.The analogous Tongva term, tii'at,
is unrelated. If it occurred, this contact left no genetic legacy in
California or Hawaii. This theory has attracted limited media attention
within California, but most archaeologists of the Tongva and Chumash
cultures reject it on the grounds that the independent development of
the sewn-plank canoe over several centuries is well-represented in the
material record.
Clava hand-club and words for axes
Archaeological artefacts known as clava hand-clubs found in Araucanía and nearby areas of Argentina have a strong resemblance to the mere okewa found in New Zealand. The clava hand-clubs are also mentioned in the Spanish chronicles dating to the Conquest of Chile. According to Grete Mostny, clava hand-clubs "appear to have arrived to the west coast of South America from the Pacific". Polynesian clubs from Chatham Islands are reportedly the most similar to those of Chile. The clava hand-club is one of various Polynesian-like Mapuche artifacts known.
On Easter Island, the word for a stone axe is toki; among the New Zealand Maori, the word toki denotes an adze; in the Mapuche language of Chile and Argentina, the word for a stone axe is toki; and further afield in Colombia, the Yurumanguí word for an axe is totoki. The Mapuche word toki may also mean "chief" and thus may be related to the Quechua word toqe ("militia chief") and the Aymara word toqueni ("person of great judgement"). In the view of Moulian et al. (2015) the possible South American links complicate matters regarding the meaning of the word toki because they are suggestive of Polynesian contact.
Claims of East Asian contact
Claims of contact with Ecuador
A 2013 genetic study suggested the possibility of contact between Ecuador and East Asia,
that would have happened no earlier than 6,000 years ago (4000 BC) via
either a trans-oceanic or a late-stage coastal migration that did not
leave genetic imprints in North America. Further research did not support this but was rather "a case of a rare founding lineage that has been lost elsewhere by drift."
Some researchers have argued that the Olmec civilization came into existence with the help of Chinese refugees, particularly at the end of the Shang dynasty. In 1975, Betty Meggers of the Smithsonian Institution argued that the Olmec civilization originated around 1200 BCE due to Shang Chinese influences. In a 1996 book, Mike Xu, with the aid of Chen Hanping, claimed that celts from La Venta bear Chinese characters. These claims are unsupported by mainstream Mesoamerican researchers.
Other claims of early Chinese contact with North America have been made.
In 1882, approximately 30 brass coins, perhaps strung together, were
reportedly found in the area of the Cassiar Gold Rush, apparently near Dease Creek, an area which was dominated by Chinese gold miners. A contemporary account states:
In
the summer of 1882 a miner found on De Foe (Deorse?) creek, Cassiar
district, Br. Columbia, thirty Chinese coins in the auriferous sand,
twenty-five feet below the surface. They appeared to have been strung,
but on taking them up the miner let them drop apart. The earth above and
around them was as compact as any in the neighborhood. One of these
coins I examined at the store of Chu Chong in Victoria. Neither in metal
nor markings did it resemble the modern coins, but in its figures
looked more like an Aztec calendar. So far as I can make out the
markings, this is a Chinese chronological cycle of sixty years, invented
by Emperor Huungti, 2637 BCE, and circulated in this form to make his people remember it.
Grant Keddie, Curator of Archeology at the Royal B.C. Museum
identified these as good luck temple tokens which were minted in the
19th century. He believed that claims that these were very old made them
notorious and he wrote that "The temple coins were shown to many people
and different versions of stories pertaining to their discovery and age
spread around the province to be put into print and changed frequently
by many authors in the last 100 years."
A group of Chinese Buddhist missionaries led by Hui Shen before 500 CE claimed to have visited a location called Fusang. Although Chinese mapmakers placed this territory on the Asian coast, others have suggested as early as the 1800s
that Fusang might have been in North America, due to perceived
similarities between portions of the California coast and Fusang as
depicted by Asian sources.
In his book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, British author Gavin Menzies claimed that the treasure fleets of Ming admiral Zheng He arrived in America in 1421.
Professional historians contend that Zheng He reached the eastern coast
of Africa, and dismiss Menzies's hypothesis as entirely without proof.
In 1973 and 1975, doughnut-shaped
stones that resembled stone anchors which were used by Chinese
fishermen were discovered off the coast of California. These stones
(sometimes called the Palos Verdes stones) were initially thought
to be up to 1,500 years old and therefore, they were thought to be
proof of pre-Columbian contact by Chinese sailors. Later geological
investigations showed that they were made of a local rock which is known
as Monterey shale, and it is currently believed that they were used by Chinese settlers who fished off the coast during the 19th century.
Claims of Japanese contact
Otokichi, a Japanese castaway in America in 1834, depicted here in 1849
Archaeologist Emilio Estrada and co-workers wrote that pottery which was associated with the Valdivia culture of coastal Ecuador and dated to 3000–1500 BCE exhibited similarities to pottery which was produced during the Jōmon period in Japan, arguing that contact between the two cultures might explain the similarities. Chronological and other problems have led most archaeologists to dismiss this idea as implausible.
The suggestion has been made that the resemblances (which are not
complete) are simply due to the limited number of designs possible when
incising clay.
Alaskan anthropologist Nancy Yaw Davis claims that the Zuni people of New Mexico exhibit linguistic and cultural similarities to the Japanese. The Zuni language is a linguistic isolate, and Davis contends that the culture appears to differ from that of the surrounding natives in terms of blood type, endemic disease, and religion. Davis speculates that Buddhist priests or restless peasants from Japan may have crossed the Pacific in the 13th century, traveled to the American Southwest, and influenced Zuni society.
In the 1890s, lawyer and politician James Wickersham
argued that pre-Columbian contact between Japanese sailors and Native
Americans was highly probable, given that from the early 17th century to
the mid-19th century several dozen Japanese ships are known to have
been carried from Asia to North America along the powerful Kuroshio Currents. Japanese ships landed at places between the Aleutian Islands
in the north and Mexico in the south, carrying a total of 293 people in
the 23 cases where head-counts were given in historical records. In
most cases, the Japanese sailors gradually made their way home on
merchant vessels. In 1834, a dismasted, rudderless Japanese ship was
wrecked near Cape Flattery in the Pacific Northwest. Three survivors of the ship were enslaved by Makahs for a period before being rescued by members of the Hudson's Bay Company.Another Japanese ship went ashore in about 1850 near the mouth of the Columbia River,
Wickersham writes, and the sailors were assimilated into the local
Native American population. While admitting there is no definitive proof
of pre-Columbian contact between Japanese and North Americans,
Wickersham thought it implausible that such contacts as outlined above
would have started only after Europeans arrived in North America and
began documenting them.
Claims of Indian contact
The Somnathpur figures at the sides hold maize-like objects in their left hands
In 1879, Alexander Cunningham wrote a description of the carvings on the Stupa of Bharhut in central India, dating from c. 200 BCE, among which he noted what appeared to be a depiction of a custard-apple (Annona squamosa). Cunningham was not initially aware that this plant, indigenous to the New World tropics, was introduced to India after Vasco da Gama's
discovery of the sea route in 1498, and the problem was pointed out to
him. A 2009 study claimed to have found carbonized remains that date to
2000 BCE and appear to be those of custard-apple seeds.
Copán stela B was claimed by Smith as representing elephants
Grafton Elliot Smith claimed that certain motifs present in the carvings on the Mayan stelae at Copán represented the Asian elephant, and wrote a book on the topic entitled Elephants and Ethnologists in 1924. Contemporary archaeologists suggested that the depictions were almost certainly based on the (indigenous) tapir, with the result that Smith's suggestions have generally been dismissed by subsequent research.
Some objects depicted in carvings from Karnataka, dating from the 12th century, that resemble ears of maize (Zea mays—a crop native to the New World), were interpreted by Carl Johannessen in 1989 as evidence of pre-Columbian contact.
These suggestions were dismissed by multiple Indian researchers based
on several lines of evidence. The object has been claimed by some to
instead represent a "Muktaphala", an imaginary fruit bedecked with
pearls.
Several Olmec colossal heads have features that some diffusionists link to African contact
Proposed claims for an African presence in Mesoamerica stem from attributes of the Olmec culture, the claimed transfer of African plants to the Americas, and interpretations of European and Arabic historical accounts.
The Olmec culture existed in what is now southern Mexico from
roughly 1200 BCE to 400 BCE. The idea that the Olmecs are related to
Africans was first suggested by José Melgar, who discovered the first colossal head at Hueyapan (now Tres Zapotes) in 1862. More recently, Ivan Van Sertima speculated an African influence on Mesoamerican culture in his book They Came Before Columbus (1976). His claims included the attribution of Mesoamerican pyramids, calendar technology, mummification, and mythology to the arrival of Africans by boat on currents running from Western Africa to the Americas. Heavily inspired by Leo Wiener (see below), Van Sertima suggested that the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl represented an African visitor. His conclusions have been severely criticized by mainstream academics and considered pseudoarchaeology.
Leo Wiener's Africa and the Discovery of America suggests similarities between the Mandinka people of West Africa and native Mesoamerican religious symbols such as the winged serpent and the sun disk, or Quetzalcoatl, and words that have Mandé
roots and share similar meanings across both cultures, such as "kore",
"gadwal", and "qubila" (in Arabic) or "kofila" (in Mandinka).
Malian sources describe what some consider to be visits to the New World by a fleet from the Mali Empire in 1311, led by Abu Bakr II. According to the only known primary-source-based copy of Christopher Columbus's journal (transcribed by Bartolomé de las Casas), the purpose of Columbus's third voyage was to test both (1) the claims of King John II of Portugal
that "canoes had been found which set out from the coast of Guinea
[West Africa] and sailed to the west with merchandise" and (2) the
claims of the native inhabitants of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola
that "there had come to Española from the south and south-east, a black
people who have the tops of their spears made of a metal which they call
guanin, of which he had sent samples to the Sovereigns to have
them assayed, when it was found that of 32 parts, 18 were of gold, 6 of
silver and 8 of copper".
Brazilian researcher Niede Guidon, who led the excavations of the Pedra Furada
sites, "said she believed that humans...might have come not overland
from Asia but by boat from Africa", with the journey taking place
100,000 years ago, well before the accepted dates for the earliest human
migrations that led to the prehistoric settlement of the Americas. Michael R. Waters, a geoarchaeologist at Texas A&M University, noted the absence of genetic evidence in modern populations to support Guidon's claim.
Claims of Arab contact
Early Chinese accounts of Muslim expeditions state that Muslim sailors reached a region called Mulan Pi ("magnolia skin") (Chinese: 木蘭皮; pinyin: Mùlán Pí; Wade–Giles: Mu-lan-p'i). Mulan Pi is mentioned in Lingwai Daida (1178) by Zhou Qufei and Zhufan Zhi (1225) by Chao Jukua, together referred to as the "Sung Document". Mulan Pi is normally identified as Spain and Morocco of the Almoravid dynasty (Al-Murabitun), though some fringe theories hold that it is instead some part of the Americas.
One supporter of the interpretation of Mulan Pi as part of the Americas was historian Hui-lin Li in 1961, and while Joseph Needham
was also open to the possibility, he doubted that Arab ships at the
time would have been able to withstand a return journey over such a long
distance across the Atlantic Ocean, pointing out that a return journey
would have been impossible without knowledge of prevailing winds and
currents.
Al-Mas'udi's atlas of the world includes a continent west (or south) of the Old World
According to Muslim historian Abu al-Hasan Ali al-Mas'udi (871–957), Khashkhash Ibn Saeed Ibn Aswad sailed over the Atlantic Ocean and discovered a previously unknown land (Arḍ Majhūlah, Arabic: أرض مجهولة) in 889 and returned with a shipload of valuable treasures.
The passage has been alternatively interpreted to imply that Ali
al-Masudi regarded the story of Khashkhash to be a fanciful tale.
In 1996, Mark McMenamin proposed that Phoenician sailors discovered the New World c. 350 BC. The Phoenician state of Carthage minted gold staters
in 350 BC bearing a pattern in the reverse exergue of the coins, which
McMenamin initially interpreted as a map of the Mediterranean with the
Americas shown to the west across the Atlantic. McMenamin later demonstrated that these coins found in America were modern forgeries.
However, American archaeologists Robert C. Mainfort Jr. and Mary L. Kwas argued in American Antiquity (2004) that the Bat Creek inscription was copied from an illustration in an 1870 Masonic reference book and introduced by the Smithsonian field assistant who found it during excavation activities.
As for the Decalogue Stone, there are mistakes which suggest that
it was carved by one or more novices who either overlooked or
misunderstood some details on a source Decalogue from which they copied
it. Since there is no other evidence or archaeological context in the
vicinity, it is most likely that the legend at the nearby university is
true—that the stone was carved by two anthropology students whose
signatures can be seen inscribed in the rock below the Decalogue, "Eva
and Hobe 3-13-30."
Scholar Cyrus H. Gordon believed that Phoenicians and other Semitic groups had crossed the Atlantic in antiquity, ultimately arriving in both North and South America. This opinion was based on his own work on the Bat Creek inscription. Similar ideas were also held by John Philip Cohane; Cohane even claimed that many geographical placenames in the United States have a Semitic origin.
Examples of Clovis and other Paleoindian point forms, markers of archaeological cultures in northeastern North America
The Solutrean hypothesis argues that Europeans migrated to the New World during the Paleolithic
era, circa 16,000 to 13,000 BCE. This hypothesis proposes contact
partly on the basis of perceived similarities between the flint tools of
the Solutrean culture in modern-day France, Spain and Portugal (which thrived circa 20,000 to 15,000 BCE), and the Clovis culture of North America, which developed circa 9000 BCE.
The Solutrean hypothesis was proposed in the mid-1990s. It has little support amongst the scientific community, and genetic markers are inconsistent with the idea.
Claims of ancient Roman contact
Evidence of contacts with the civilizations of Classical Antiquity—primarily with the Roman Empire,
but sometimes also with other contemporaneous cultures—have been based
on isolated archaeological finds in American sites that originated in
the Old World. For example, the Bay of Jars in Brazil has been yielding
ancient clay storage jars that resemble Roman amphorae
for over 150 years. It has been proposed that the origin of these jars
is a Roman shipwreck, although it has also been suggested that they
could be 15th- or 16th-century Spanish olive oil jars.
Archaeologist Romeo Hristov argues that a Roman ship, or the
drifting of such a shipwreck to American shores, is a possible
explanation for the alleged discovery of artifacts that are apparently
ancient Roman in origin (such as the Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca bearded head)
in America. Hristov claims that the possibility of such an event has
been made more likely by the discovery of evidence of travels by Romans
to Tenerife and Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, and of a Roman settlement (from the 1st century BCE to the 4th century CE) on Lanzarote.
Floor mosaic depicting a fruit which looks like a pineapple. Opus vermiculatum, Roman artwork of the end of the 1st century BCE/beginning of the 1st century CE.
In 1950, an Italian botanist, Domenico Casella, suggested that a depiction of a pineapple (a fruit native to the New World tropics) was represented among wall paintings of Mediterranean fruits at Pompeii. According to Wilhelmina Feemster Jashemski, this interpretation has been challenged by other botanists, who identify it as a pine cone from the umbrella pine tree, which is native to the Mediterranean area.
A small terracotta sculpture of a head, with a beard and European-like features, was found in 1933 in the Toluca Valley, 72 kilometres (45 mi) southwest of Mexico City, in a burial offering under three intact floors of a pre-colonial
building dated to between 1476 and 1510. The artifact has been studied
by Roman art authority Bernard Andreae, director emeritus of the German
Institute of Archaeology in Rome, Italy, and Austrian anthropologist Robert von Heine-Geldern,
both of whom stated that the style of the artifact was compatible with
small Roman sculptures of the 2nd century. If genuine and if not placed
there after 1492 (the pottery found with it dates to between 1476 and
1510), the find provides evidence for at least a one-time contact between the Old and New Worlds.
According to Arizona State University's
Michael E. Smith, a leading Mesoamerican scholar named John Paddock
used to tell his classes in the years before he died that the artifact
was planted as a joke by Hugo Moedano, a student who originally worked
on the site. Despite speaking with individuals who knew the original
discoverer (García Payón), and Moedano, Smith says he has been unable to
confirm or reject this claim. Though he remains skeptical, Smith
concedes he cannot rule out the possibility that the head was a
genuinely buried post-Classic offering at Calixtlahuaca.
Henry I Sinclair, Earl of Orkney and feudal baron of Roslin (c. 1345 – c. 1400), was a Scottish nobleman who is best known today from a modern legend which claims that he took part in explorations of Greenland and North America almost 100 years before Christopher Columbus's voyages to the Americas. In 1784, he was identified by Johann Reinhold Forster as possibly being the Prince Zichmni who is described in letters which were allegedly written around 1400 by the Zeno brothers of Venice, in which they describe a voyage which they made throughout the North Atlantic under the command of Zichmni. According to The Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online,
"the Zeno affair remains one of the most preposterous and at the same
time one of the most successful fabrications in the history of
exploration."
Henry was the grandfather of William Sinclair, 1st Earl of Caithness, the builder of Rosslyn Chapel near Edinburgh, Scotland. The authors Robert Lomas and Christopher Knight believe some carvings in the chapel were intended to represent ears of New World corn or maize,
a crop unknown in Europe at the time of the chapel's construction,.
Knight and Lomas view these carvings as evidence supporting the idea
that Henry Sinclair traveled to the Americas well before Columbus. In
their book they discuss meeting with the wife of the botanist Adrian
Dyer and explain that Dyer's wife told them that Dyer agreed that the
image thought to be maize was accurate.
In fact Dyer found only one identifiable plant among the botanical
carvings and instead suggested that the "maize" and "aloe" were stylized
wooden patterns, only coincidentally looking like real plants.
Specialists in medieval architecture have variously interpreted the
carvings as stylised depictions of wheat, strawberries, or lilies.
A 1547 edition of Oviedo's La historia general de las Indias
Some have conjectured that Columbus was able to persuade the Catholic Monarchs of Castile and Aragon
to support his planned voyage only because they were aware of some
recent earlier voyage across the Atlantic. Some suggest that Columbus
himself visited Canada or Greenland before 1492, because according to Bartolomé de las Casas he wrote he had sailed 100 leagues past an island he called Thule
in 1477. Whether Columbus actually did this and what island he visited,
if any, is uncertain. Columbus is thought to have visited Bristol in 1476. Bristol was also the port from which John Cabot
sailed in 1497, crewed mostly by Bristol sailors. In a letter of late
1497 or early 1498, the English merchant John Day wrote to Columbus
about Cabot's discoveries, saying that land found by Cabot was
"discovered in the past by the men from Bristol who found 'Brasil' as
your lordship knows". There may be records of expeditions from Bristol to find the "isle of Brazil" in 1480 and 1481. Trade between Bristol and Iceland is well documented from the mid-15th century.
Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés records several such legends in his Historia general de las Indias
of 1526, which includes biographical information on Columbus. He
discusses the then-current story of a Spanish caravel that was swept off
its course while on its way to England, and wound up in a foreign land
populated by naked tribesmen. The crew gathered supplies and made its
way back to Europe, but the trip took several months and the captain and
most of the men died before reaching land. The caravel's ship pilot, a man called Alonso Sánchez,
and a few others made it to Portugal, but all were very ill. Columbus
was a good friend of the pilot, and took him to be treated in his own
house, and the pilot described the land they had seen and marked it on a
map before dying. People in Oviedo's time knew this story in several
versions, though Oviedo himself regarded it as a myth.
In 1925, Soren Larsen wrote a book claiming that a joint
Danish-Portuguese expedition landed in Newfoundland or Labrador in 1473
and again in 1476. Larsen claimed that Didrik Pining and Hans Pothorst served as captains, while João Vaz Corte-Real and the possibly mythical John Scolvus served as navigators, accompanied by Álvaro Martins. Nothing beyond circumstantial evidence has been found to support Larsen's claims.
The historical record shows that Basque fishermen were present in Newfoundland and Labrador
from at least 1517 onward (therefore predating all recorded European
settlements in the region except those of the Norse). The Basques'
fishing expeditions led to significant trade and cultural exchanges with
Native Americans. A fringe theory suggests that Basque sailors first
arrived in North America prior to Columbus' voyages to the New World
(some sources suggest the late 14th century as a tentative date) but
kept the destination a secret in order to avoid competition over the
fishing resources of the North American coasts. There is no historical
or archaeological evidence to support this claim.
Irish and Welsh legends
Saint Brendan and the whale, from a 15th-century manuscript
The legend of Saint Brendan, an Irish monk from what is now County Kerry,
involves a fantastical journey into the Atlantic Ocean in search of
Paradise in the 6th century. Since the discovery of the New World,
various authors have tried to link the Brendan legend with an early
discovery of America. In 1977, the voyage was successfully recreated by Tim Severin using a replica of an ancient Irish currach.
According to a British myth, Madoc was a prince from Wales
who explored the Americas as early as 1170. While most scholars
consider this legend to be untrue, it was used to bolster British claims
in the Americas vis-à-vis those of Spain.
The "Madoc story" remained popular in later centuries, and a later
development asserted that Madoc's voyagers had intermarried with local
Native Americans, and that their Welsh-speaking descendants still live
somewhere in the United States. These "Welsh Indians" were credited with
the construction of a number of landmarks throughout the Midwestern United States,
and a number of white travelers were inspired to go look for them. The
"Madoc story" has been the subject of much speculation in the context of
possible pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact. No conclusive
archaeological proof of such a man or his voyages has been found in the
New or Old World; however, speculation abounds connecting him with
certain sites, such as Devil's Backbone, located on the Ohio River at Fourteen Mile Creek near Louisville, Kentucky.
At Fort Mountain State Park
in Georgia, a plaque formerly mentioned a 19th-century interpretation
of the ancient stone wall that gives the site its name. The plaque
repeated a claim by Tennessee governor John Sevier that Cherokees
believed "a people called Welsh" had built a fort on the mountain long
ago to repel Indian attacks. The plaque has been changed, leaving no reference to Madoc or the Welsh.
Biologist and controversial amateur epigrapher Barry Fell claims that Irish Ogham writing has been found carved into stones in the Virginias. Linguist David H. Kelley
has criticized some of Fell's work but nonetheless argued that genuine
Celtic Ogham inscriptions have in fact been discovered in America. However, others have raised serious doubts about these claims.
Claims of transoceanic travel from the New World to the Old World
Traces of coca and nicotine which are found in some Egyptian mummies have led to speculation that Ancient Egyptians may have had contact with the New World. The initial discovery was made by a German toxicologist Svetlana Balabanova after examining the mummy of a priestess named Henut Taui.
Follow-up tests on the hair shaft, which were performed in order to
rule out the possibility of contamination, revealed the same results.
A television show reported that examinations of numerous Sudanese mummies which were also undertaken by Balabanova mirrored what was found in the mummy of Henut Taui.
Balabanova suggested that the tobacco may be accounted for since it may
have also been known in China and Europe, as indicated by analyses run
on human remains from those respective regions. Balabanova proposed that
such plants native to the general area may have developed
independently, but have since gone extinct. Other explanations include fraud, though curator Alfred Grimm of the Egyptian Museum in Munich disputes this. Skeptical of Balabanova's findings, Rosalie David, Keeper of Egyptology at the Manchester Museum,
had similar tests performed on samples which were taken from the
Manchester mummy collection and she reported that two of the tissue
samples and one hair sample tested positive for the presence of
nicotine.
However, mainstream scholars remain skeptical, and they do not
see the results of these tests as proof of ancient contact between
Africa and the Americas, especially because there may be possible Old
World sources of cocaine and nicotine.
Two attempts to replicate Balabanova's findings of cocaine failed,
suggesting "that either Balabanova and her associates are
misinterpreting their results or that the samples of mummies tested by
them have been mysteriously exposed to cocaine".
A re-examination of the mummy of Ramesses II
in the 1970s revealed the presence of fragments of tobacco leaves in
its abdomen. This finding became a popular topic in fringe literature
and the media and it was seen as proof of contact between Ancient Egypt
and the New World. The investigator Maurice Bucaille
noted that when the mummy was unwrapped in 1886 the abdomen was left
open and "it was no longer possible to attach any importance to the
presence inside the abdominal cavity of whatever material was found
there, since the material could have come from the surrounding
environment."
Following the renewed discussion of tobacco sparked by Balabanova's
research and its mention in a 2000 publication by Rosalie David, a study
in the journal Antiquity
suggested that reports of both tobacco and cocaine in mummies "ignored
their post-excavation histories" and pointed out that the mummy of
Ramesses II had been moved five times between 1883 and 1975.
Metellum Celerem adjicit, eumque ita retulisse commemorat: Cum
Galliae proconsule praeesset, Indos quosdam a rege [Suevorum] dono sibi
datos; unde in eas terras devenissent requirendo, cognôsse, vi
tempestatum ex Indicis aequoribus abreptos, emensosque quae intererant,
tandem in Germaniae litora exiise. Restat ergo pelagus; sed reliqua
lateris ejusdem assiduo gelu durantur, et ideo deserta sunt.
Metellus Celer recalls the following: when he was proconsul in Gaul, he was given people from India by the king of the Sueves;
upon requesting why they were in this land, he learnt that they were
caught in a storm away from India, that they became castaways, and
finally landed on the coast of Germania. They thus resisted the sea, but
suffered from the cold for the rest of their travel, and that is the
reason why they left.
Frederick J. Pohl suggested that these castaways were possibly American Indians. This account is open to question, since Metellus Celer died just after his consulship, before he ever got to Gaul.
Icelander DNA finding
In
2010, Sigríður Sunna Ebenesersdóttir published a genetic study showing
that over 350 living Icelanders carried mitochondrial DNA of a new type,
C1e, belonging to the C1 clade which was until then known only from
Native American and East Asian populations. Using the deCODE genetics
database, Sigríður Sunna determined that the DNA entered the Icelandic
population not later than 1700, and likely several centuries earlier.
However Sigríður Sunna also states that "while a Native American origin
seems most likely for [this new haplogroup], an Asian or European origin
cannot be ruled out".
In 2014, a study discovered a new mtDNA subclade C1f from the
remains of three people found in north-western Russia and dated to 7,500
years ago. It has not been detected in modern populations. The study
proposed the hypothesis that the sister C1e and C1f subclades had split
early from the most recent common ancestor of the C1 clade and had
evolved independently, and that subclade C1e had a northern European
origin. Iceland was settled by the Vikings in the 9th century and they
had raided heavily into western Russia, where the sister subclade C1f is
now known to have resided. They proposed that both subclades were
brought to Iceland through the Vikings, and that C1e went extinct on
mainland northern Europe due to population turnover and its small
representation, and subclade C1f went extinct completely.
Norse legends and sagas
Statue of Thorfinn Karlsefni
In 1009, legends report that Norse explorer Thorfinn Karlsefni abducted two children from Markland,
an area on the North American mainland where Norse explorers visited
but did not settle. The two children were then taken to Greenland, where
they were baptized and taught to speak Norse.
In 1420, Danish geographer Claudius Clavus Swart wrote that he personally had seen "pygmies" from Greenland who were caught by Norsemen in a small skin boat. Their boat was hung in Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim
along with another, longer boat also taken from "pygmies". Clavus
Swart's description fits the Inuit and two of their types of boats, the kayak and the umiak. Similarly, the Swedish clergyman Olaus Magnus wrote in 1505 that he saw in Oslo Cathedral two leather boats taken decades earlier. According to Olaus, the boats were captured from Greenland pirates by one of the Haakons, which would place the event in the 14th century.
In Ferdinand Columbus's biography of his father Christopher, he says that in 1477 his father saw in Galway,
Ireland, two dead bodies which had washed ashore in their boat. The
bodies and boat were of exotic appearance, and have been suggested to
have been Inuit who had drifted off course.
Claims of Inuit travel to the Old World
It
has been suggested that the Norse took other indigenous peoples to
Europe as slaves over the following centuries, because they are known to
have taken Scottish and Irish slaves.
There is also evidence of Inuit coming to Europe under their own power or as captives after 1492. In Scotland, they were known as the Finn-men. A substantial body of Greenland Inuit folklore first collected in the 19th century told of journeys by boat to Akilineq, here depicted as a rich country across the ocean.
Claims of Incan travel to Oceania
Peruvian historian José Antonio del Busto Duthurburu popularized the theory that Inca ruler Topa Inca Yupanqui may have led a maritime exploration voyage across the Pacific Ocean around 1465, eventually reaching French Polynesia and Rapa Nui
(Easter Island). Different Spanish chroniclers of the 16th century
recount stories told to them by Inca peoples, in which Yupanqui embarked
on a sea voyage, eventually reaching two islands referred to as Nina Chumpi ("fire belt") and Hawa Chumpi ("outer belt", also spelled Avachumpi, Hahua chumpi).
According to the stories, Yupanqui returned from the expedition
bringing back with him black-skinned people, gold, a chair made of
brass, and the skin of a horse or an animal similar to a horse. Del
Busto speculated the "black-skinned people" may have been Melanesians, while the animal skin may have belonged to a Polynesian wild boar that was misidentified. Critics have pointed out that Yupanqui's expedition—assuming it ever took place—could have reached the Galapagos Islands or some other part of the Americas instead of Oceania.
Claims based on religious traditions or symbols
Claims of pre-Columbian contact with Christian voyagers
During the period of Spanish colonization of the Americas,
several indigenous myths and works of art led a number of Spanish
chroniclers and authors to suggest that Christian preachers may have
visited Mesoamerica well before the Age of Discovery. Bernal Díaz del Castillo,
for example, was intrigued by the presence of cross symbols in Mayan
hieroglyphs, which according to him suggested that other Christians may
have arrived in ancient Mexico before the Spanish conquistadors. Fray Diego Durán, for his part, linked the legend of the Pre-Columbian god Quetzalcoatl (whom he describes as being chaste, penitent, and a miracle-worker) to the Biblical accounts of Christian apostles. Bartolomé de las Casas describes Quetzalcoatl as being fair-skinned, tall, and bearded (therefore suggesting an Old World origin), while Fray Juan de Torquemada
credits him with bringing agriculture to the Americas. Modern
scholarship has cast serious doubts on several of these claims, since
agriculture was practiced in the Americas well before the emergence of
Christianity in the Old World, and Mayan crosses have been found to have
a very different symbolism from that present in Christian religious
traditions.
According to Pre-Columbian myth, Quetzalcoatl departed Mexico in
ancient times by travelling east across the ocean, promising he would
return. Some scholars have argued that Aztec emperor Moctezuma Xocoyotzin believed Spanish conquistadorHernán Cortés
(who arrived in what today is Mexico from the east) to be Quetzalcoatl,
and his arrival to be a fulfilling of the myth's prophecy, though
others have disputed this claim.
Fringe theories suggest that Quetzalcoatl may have been a Christian
preacher from the Old World who lived among indigenous peoples of
ancient Mexico, and eventually attempted to return home by sailing
eastwards. Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, for example, speculated that the Quetzalcoatl myth might have originated from a visit to the Americas by Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century CE. Later on, Fray Servando Teresa de Mier argued that the cloak with the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which the Catholic Church claims was worn by Juan Diego, was instead brought to the Americas much earlier by Thomas, who used it as an instrument for evangelization.
Mexican historian Manuel Orozco y Berra
conjectured that both the cross hieroglyphs and the Quetzalcoatl myth
might have originated on a visit to Mesoamerica by a Catholic Norse missionary in medieval times. However, there is no archaeological or historical evidence to suggest that the Norse explorations ever made it as far as ancient Mexico or Central America. Other proposed identities for Quetzalcoatl (attributed to their proponents pursuing religious agendas) include St. Brendan or even Jesus Christ.
A popular thread of conspiracy theory originating with Holy Blood, Holy Grail has it that the Templars used a fleet of 18 ships at La Rochelle
to escape arrest in France. The fleet allegedly left laden with knights
and treasures just before the issue of the warrant for the arrest of
the Order in October 1307.
This, in turn, was based on a single item of testimony from serving
brother Jean de Châlon, who says he had "heard people talking that
[Gerard de Villiers had] put to sea with 18 galleys, and the brother
Hugues de Chalon fled with the whole treasury of the brother Hugues de
Pairaud."
However, aside from being the sole source for this statement, the
transcript indicates that it is hearsay, and this serving brother seems
to be prone to making some of the wildest and most damning of claims
about the Order, which have led some to doubt his credibility.
What destination, if any, was reached by this fleet is uncertain. A
fringe theory suggests the fleet may have made its way to the Americas,
where the Knights Templar interacted with the aboriginal population.
Helen Nicholson of Cardiff University
has cast doubt on the existence of this voyage, arguing that the
Knights Templar did not have ships capable of navigating the Atlantic
Ocean.
Claims of ancient Jewish migration to the Americas
Since the first centuries of European colonization of the Americas
and up until the 19th century, several European intellectuals and
theologians tried to account for the presence of the Amerindian
aboriginal peoples by connecting them to the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, who according to Biblical tradition, were deported following the conquest of the Israelite kingdom by the Neo-Assyrian Empire.
In the past as well as in the present, these efforts were and still are
being used to further the interests of religious groups, both Jewish
and Christian, and they have also been used to justify European
settlement of the Americas.
One of the first people to claim that the indigenous peoples of the
Americas were descendants of the Lost Tribes was the Portuguese rabbi
and writer Menasseh Ben Israel, who in his book The Hope of Israel argued that the discovery of the alleged long-lost Jews heralded the imminent coming of the Biblical Messiah. In 1650, a Norfolk preacher, Thomas Thorowgood, published Jewes in America or Probabilities that the Americans are of that Race, for the New England missionary society. Tudor Parfitt writes:
The
society was active in trying to convert the Indians but suspected that
they might be Jews and realized they better be prepared for an arduous
task. Thorowgood's tract argued that the native population of North
America were descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes.
In 1652 Sir Hamon L'Estrange, an English author writing on history and theology, published Americans no Jews, or improbabilities that the Americans are of that Race
in response to the tract by Thorowgood. In response to L'Estrange,
Thorowgood published a second edition of his book in 1660 with a revised
title and included a foreword written by John Eliot, a Puritan missionary who had translated the Bible into an Indian language.
In a 1998 letter to the Institute for Religious Research, the National Geographic Society
stated that "Archaeologists and other scholars have long probed the
hemisphere's past and the society does not know of anything found so far
that has substantiated the Book of Mormon."
Some LDS scholars hold the view that archaeological studies of
the Book of Mormon's claims are not meant to vindicate the literary
narrative. For example, Terryl Givens, professor of English at the University of Richmond, points out that there is a lack of historical accuracy in the Book of Mormon in relation to modern archaeological knowledge.
In the 1950s, Professor M. Wells Jakeman popularized the belief that the Izapa Stela 5 represents the Book of Mormon prophets Lehi and Nephi's tree of life vision and was a validation of the historicity of the claims of pre-Columbian settlement in the Americas. His interpretations of the carving and its connection to pre-Columbian contact have been disputed. Since that time, scholarship on the Book of Mormon has concentrated on cultural parallels rather than "smoking gun" sources.
