Solutrean hypothesis 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 9,000 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 contact in antiquity Claims have been made for contact in
Classical Antiquity, primarily with the
Roman Empire, but sometimes also with other contemporaneous cultures.
Lucio Russo proposed that the classical idea of the inhabited world, from the
Isles of the Blessed to the capital of the
Seres, spanning 180° of longitude was based on the Isles of the Blessed being the
Lesser Antilles. Claims of contacts with the civilizations of antiquity 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. . 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. The leaves shown in the depiction (as with stone carvings from
Nineveh) make the pine cone identification problematic. Roman and other European coins have been found in the United States. Jeremiah Epstein, an American anthropologist, rejected the suggestion that these coins can be cited as evidence of Pre-Columbian contact between Europe and the Americas, pointing out the lack of any pre-Columbian archaeological contexts relating to these finds, the lack of detail concerning the discoveries, and the possibility of forgery (at least two were clearly forgeries). A possible explanation for many of the ancient European coins found in the Americas is that they were carried over by modern ships, mixed in with solid
ballast. Ships leaving European harbors would often take aboard sand and gravel dug from the shoreline in order to add weight and stability in the absence of cargo. Upon arrival at New World ports, these ships would dump the ballast and load up on trade goods. It is likely that this ballast, dug from the shores of ancient centers of commerce, contained small artifacts such as coins.
Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca head A small
terracotta sculpture of a head, with a beard and European-like features, was found in 1933 in the
Toluca Valley, 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.
14th- and 15th-century European contact 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 state that Dyer's wife told them that Dyer agreed that the image thought to be maize was accurate. Specialists in medieval architecture have variously interpreted the carvings as stylised depictions of wheat, strawberries, or lilies.
Henry Yule Oldham suggested that the
Bianco world map depicted part of the coast of
Brazil before 1448. This was immediately opposed by members of the
Royal Geographical Society but later repeated by American and European historians. This was later refuted by
Abel Fontoura da Costa, who proved that it actually depicted
Santiago, the largest island of the
Cape Verde archipelago. 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 that 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 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 originating in the New World ==