America was discovered by Columbus - this is known to every student. He visited America in 1492 at the behest of the Spanish king. However, Europeans and Chinese sailed to America long before Columbus. Columbus's expedition to the shores of Central and South America is considered the earliest and most complete of the reliably known. The 1492 expedition consisted of three ships with a total crew of about 90 people
Columbus sailed in the wrong place
But why is not the entire continent discovered by him called Colombia, but only a small country in its central part? The fact is that the brave navigator until the end of his life believed that he had found a new sea route to India. His mistake is immortalized in the collective name of the indigenous inhabitants of the American continent - the Indians.
Seven years later, to the lands reached by Columbus, another no less famous navigator, Amerigo Vespucci, a native of Florence, made the first of several of his expeditions, who was in the sea service in Spain and Portugal. He expressed his conviction that this was not India at all, but a previously unknown continent, and suggested calling it the New World.
And in 1507, the Lorraine cartographer Waldzmüller gave the mainland its current name - America, in honor of Vespucci. So after 15 years, the newly discovered land received its final name. Well, the locals did not call themselves "Americans" after that, and remained - Indians. It would seem that everything fell into place. But…
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Leiv was here
Since the early 60s of the twentieth century in different parts of the eastern coast of the North American continent, archaeologists have found irrefutable evidence that in 800-1000 years, that is, more than 500 years before Columbus, these lands not only visited, but also settled for a long time there lived brave sailors from the north of Europe - the Vikings, or the Normans. Archaeological finds - the remains of buildings and fortifications, utensils, fragments of weapons and clothing, runic inscriptions carved on the rocks - convincingly testify that for a number of years in different parts of the coast there were settled colonies of pale-faced aliens from overseas.
This is also recognized by the modern inhabitants of the continent. In 1964, on the recommendation of the US Congress, President Lyndon Johnson signed a bill on the annual celebration of Leyv Eiriksson's Day on October 9 - in honor of the leader of the Norman expedition, which, according to Old Norse legends and chronicles, was the first to reach the legendary Vinland, an area on the northern tip of Newfoundland.
Moreover, already in the 19th century, evidence of the presence of Scandinavians on the shores of Florida and Mexico was discovered, and in our time, many researchers consider it proven that the Vikings lived at the foot of the Andes, in the legendary Tiahuanaco - one of the oldest cities in the world on the territory of modern Bolivia.
In 1975, a French scientist, Professor Jacques de Maye, director of the Anthropological Institute in Buenos Aires, made a sensational report that the Vikings even visited the Amazon basin and climbed up along it and its tributaries - Beni and Madeira - far into the interior of the South American continent. The anthropologist came to this conclusion after more than 20 years of research into the mysterious tribe of the so-called "White Indians".
During one of his expeditions to the Brazilian state of Piauí, he came across the remains of a 10-meter wall, the ruins of two small forts and the Temple of the Sun. The stone statues that were there seemed to be copies of the Scandinavian Viking era, and the walls were covered with runic inscriptions characteristic of the ancient Danish-Norse language.
On one of the fragments of the wall, de Maye discovered carvings of a Norman ship with dragon heads on the bow and stern, as well as symbolic images of the hammer of Thor, the Nordic god of lightning and thunder. The professor is convinced that the light-skinned "white Indians" are the descendants of fearless Scandinavian sailors.
Jews? Arabs? Chinese?
However, it is possible that the Vikings were not the first overseas aliens on American shores. In the states of Tennessee and Georgia, inscriptions carved into the rocks were found, suggesting that representatives of the Jewish people lived there about 3,000 years ago. The Yuchi Indian tribe of Georgia has customs and phrases in which researchers of American folklore see the possible influence of Hebrew culture.
There is a version about the discovery of America by the Arabs. Medieval Arab legends describe lands with animals and plants unknown to the then world, which, according to some scientists, belong to the fauna and flora of both Americas. The Arabs set off on a voyage allegedly from the territory of present-day Morocco, from where the port city of Casablanca is now located.
For hundreds of years in Europe, they say that in ancient times the Chinese reached America. And in 1962 there was a message from a certain Peking professor about a landing on the coast of Mexico in 459 BC. e. six Chinese sailors led by a Buddhist monk. Chinese scientists are trying to substantiate this hypothesis, relying on ancient legends, mythology, numismatics, as well as on the allegedly discovered Chinese motifs in the culture of the Aztecs.
Celts?
In 1975, several scholars from the American Epigraphic Society announced that more than 2500 years ago, the Celts landed on the northeastern coast of the American continent, in present-day New England - representatives of the Indo-European people who then inhabited a vast part of Northern and Central Europe, including the British islands and Ireland.
This landing is evidenced, in their opinion, by the inscriptions in the language of this people, found on the rocks in the states of New Hampshire and Vermont. These inscriptions were studied by Harvard University professor Barry Fell, a specialist in marine biology and epigraphy - a science that searches for and studies ancient inscriptions. He confirmed that the time of their appearance is the period between the 7th and 3rd centuries BC. BC, and suggested that they were most likely left by fishermen who sailed to North America from Europe about 2000 years before Columbus.
Hypotheses, hypotheses …
In 1940, about 400 stones covered with inscriptions were found near the mouth of the Susquehanna River, about 160 kilometers from Philadelphia. At first, it was believed that this was the work of the Vikings, but Barry Fell saw in them the signs of Phoenician writing. He believes that he was able to translate some of the inscriptions, and because they mentioned women and children, Fell concluded that in this place between 800 and 600 BC. e. there was a settlement founded by the Basques - mountaineers from the Pyrenees.
The next hypothesis of the indefatigable Fell concerns the ancient Egyptians. In his opinion, in 231 BC. e. they, having crossed the Pacific Ocean (!), landed on the coast of Chile, 200 kilometers south-west of present-day Santiago. The basis for this sensational hypothesis was an equally amazing discovery by scientists at the University of Texas.
On the walls of the Casa Pintada cave in the Cordillera, they found inscriptions dated to the 16th year of the reign of the Egyptian king Ptolemy III (and he began to rule in 246 BC: “… the southern border of the coast, which Mavi reached … The fleet managed to swim to this southern border. Navigators occupy these lands for the king of Egypt, the queen and their son."
The following is a detailed description of the lands mentioned. Scientists have noted the amazing similarity of the texts with those that Fell found in Libya, as well as … with the written records of the Polynesians. It has been suggested that the inhabitants of Ancient Egypt, and therefore Libya, reached the coast of South America across the Pacific Ocean, stopping along the way on the islands of Polynesia.
Great Hanno
Another discovery of Fell is associated with the name of the Carthaginian prince Hanno-vel-Hannon, a subject of Hiram III, king of the Phoenician city-state of Tire, founded in the IV millennium BC. e. At the head of an expedition of sailors from Carthage and Gadir (present-day Cadiz - a port in southern Spain) Hanno in 480 BC. e. went in search of overseas lands and, reaching the American continent, landed in several places on the east coast between Quebec and Yucatan.
In the state of Massachusetts, as well as in Canada and Mexico, inscriptions were found carved into the rocks, made, according to Fell, in the Ibero-Punic language, which was used in southern Spain and North Africa around Carthage about 2,500 years ago. One of the inscriptions reads: "Hanno, who arrived from Tamu, reached this place." Another says: “Declaration of ownership. Do not destroy. Hanno declares this place to be his domain."
True, some archaeologists and linguists doubt that Fell correctly identified the origin of these inscriptions and understood their content. But he also has many supporters. Among them is the famous Swiss linguist Linus Brunner, who praised Fell's discovery as a genius. Independently of Fell, Thomas Lee, a professor at Laval University in Canada, was engaged in reading three such inscriptions, discovered in the early 20th century in the province of Quebec. From them, in his conviction, it follows that 2000 years before Columbus the Phoenician expedition from Carthage reached the coast of North America and climbed up one of the tributaries of the St. Lawrence River.
Who are the inhabitants of the Old World and when they first set foot on the American continent, we will probably never know. We can only assume that the very first inhabitants of it were people who moved there from Eurasia by land, which existed in very ancient times on the site of the Bering Strait, and are now known to us as the American Indians.
This event happened tens, and possibly hundreds of thousands of years ago. And the results of recent studies by American geneticists indicate that the distant ancestors of today's Indians lived in the area of Lake Baikal.
Vadim Ilyin
