Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact theories

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archaeological evidence, the discovery of alleged out-of-place artifacts, superficial cultural comparisons, comments in historical documents, or narrative accounts.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.

Norse colonization of the Americas

Norse journeys to Greenland and Canada prior to Columbus's voyages are supported by historical and archaeological evidence. A Norse colony was established in Greenland in the late 10th century and lasted until the mid-15th century, with court and parliament assemblies ('' þing'') taking place at Brattahlíð and a bishop being posted at Garðar. The remains of a Norse settlement used as a base-camp at L'Anse aux Meadows in what is now Newfoundland, a large island on the Atlantic coast of Canada, were discovered in 1960 and have been radiocarbon-dated to between 990 and 1050 CE. More recently, tree-ring analysis of structures at the site have been dated to the year 1021.

This remains the only site widely accepted as evidence of post-prehistory, pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact with the Americas. L'Anse aux Meadows was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1978. It is also possibly connected with the attempted colony of Vinland established by Leif Erikson around the same period or, more broadly, with Norse exploration of the Americas.

Though L'Anse aux Meadows establishes that Norse colonists traveled to and built permanent structures in North America, few sources describing contact between indigenous peoples and Norse people exist. Contact between the Thule people (ancestors of the modern Inuit) and Norse in the 12th or 13th century is known. The Norse Greenlanders called these native people "skrælingar". Conflict between the Greenlanders and the "skrælings" is recorded in the ''Icelandic Annals''. The term ''skrælings'' is also used in the Vínland sagas, which relate to events during the 10th century, when describing trade and conflict with native peoples.

Polynesian, Melanesian, and Austronesian contact

Genetic studies

Between 2007 and 2009, geneticist Erik Thorsby and colleagues published two studies in ''Tissue Antigens'' that 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).

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 haplogroup B4a1a1, 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, 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.

Sweet potato

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. Phylogenetic analysis supports the hypothesis of at least two separate introductions of sweet potatoes from South America into Polynesia, including one before and one after European contact.

Dutch linguists and specialists in Amerindian languages Willem 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 Island ''kumara'', Hawaiian ''uala'', Māori ; 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 Aymara ''k'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".

Physical anthropology

In December 2007, several human skulls were found in a museum in Concepción, Chile. These skulls originated on Mocha Island, an island which is located just off the coast of Chile on the Pacific Ocean, formerly inhabited by the Mapuche. Craniometric analysis of the skulls, according to Lisa Matisoo-Smith of the University of Otago and José Miguel Ramírez Aliaga of the Universidad de Valparaíso, suggests that the skulls have " Polynesian features" – such as a pentagonal shape when they are viewed from behind, and rocker jaws.

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 ( es, conchal). A global review of rocker jaws among different populations show that while rocker jaws are not unique to Polynesians " e 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:

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".

California canoes

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."

Claims of Chinese contact

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 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 minted in the 19th century. He believed that claims that these were very old made them notorious and 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 made the claim that the treasure fleets of Ming admiral Zheng He arrived in America in 1421. Menzies, Gavin. '' 1421: The Year China Discovered the World'' (Transworld Publishers, 2003). 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 proof of pre-Columbian contact by Chinese sailors. Later geological investigations showed them to be made of a local rock which is known as Monterey shale, and they are thought to have been used by Chinese settlers who fished off the coast during the 19th century.

Claims of Japanese contact

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.Davis, Nancy Yaw (200). ''The Zuni Enigma''. W. W. Norton & Company. 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

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.

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.

Claims of African and West Asian contact

Claims of 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 est Africaand 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") (). 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.

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 (', ar, 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.

Claims of ancient Phoenician contact

In 1996, Mark McMenamin proposed that Phoenician sailors discovered the New World c. 350 BC.Scott, J. M. 2005. ''Geography in Early Judaism and Christianity.'' Cambridge University Press, pp. 182–183. 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.

Claims of ancient Judaic contact

The Bat Creek inscription and Los Lunas Decalogue Stone have led some to suggest the possibility that Jewish seafarers may have traveled to America after they fled from the Roman Empire at the time of the Jewish–Roman Wars in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE.

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.

Claims of European contact

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 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.

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.

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 discovered the Americas. In 1784, he was identified by Johann Reinhold ForsterJohann Reinhold Forster, ''History of the Voyages and Discoveries Made in the North'', Printed for G.G.J. and J. Robinson, London, 1786 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.T. J. Oleson
"Zeno, Nicolò"
in ''Dictionary of Canadian Biography'', vol. 1, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed October 1, 2014 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,Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas. ''The Hiram Key''. Fair Winds Press, 2001 . 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.Historian Mark Oxbrow, quoted i
"The ship of dreams"
by Diane MacLean, Scotsman.com, May 13, 2005

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 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.

A plaque at Fort Mountain State Park

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