Faking History

by Jason Colavito

  The New Solutrean Solution

  The Solutrean connection lay dormant for almost six decades, until Stanford resurrected it at a 1999 conference. With the acceptance of Monte Verde, the time was right for challenging old theories about the peopling of the Americas. Moreover, in July 1996, a skeleton uncovered in Kennewick, Washington, raised anew the idea that Europeans had colonized the continent before the ancestors of today’s Native Americans.

  Initial reports said Kennewick Man, as the bones became known, had “Caucasoid” features. Confusing an obsolete technical term for skull shape for the racial category “Caucasian,” some commentators and activists said Kennewick Man proved white Europeans were “really” the first Americans. These commentators were unaware that skull shapes vary greatly both among individuals and through time. A U.S. government investigation determined that the Kennewick remains were Native American and around 7,000 to 9,000 years old.[410]

  The controversy did not die down, and today several groups ranging from scholars to neo-Norse Pagans to Aryan supremacists still cite Kennewick as proof for prehistoric European colonization of America. Though the bones were dated to around 7200 BCE and were too young to be even Clovis, the door was open for new claims about Paleolithic European voyages to the New World. The Smithsonian’s Dennis Stanford and his colleague Bruce Bradley seized the moment to propose the long-abandoned Solutrean solution anew.

  Essentially, the two researchers repeated and expanded Hibben’s claims about the similarity between Solutrean and Clovis technologies. First, they noted that no Siberian tools had fluting like the Clovis technology, ruling out Asia as a source for the Clovis culture. “Years of research in eastern Asia and Alaska have produced little evidence of any historical or technological connection between the Asian Paleolithic (Stone Age) and Clovis peoples,” they wrote.[411] That the Solutreans lacked fluting posed fewer challenges, however, since other morphological evidence would serve to connect them to Clovis.

  They also cited the similarity in tool kits—the scrapers and knives prehistoric hunters used to chop up big game. They argued that the Solutreans must have originated these points and tools and bequeathed them to the Clovis people. Though the Solutreans had a greater variety of tools, the Clovis people had nothing that was not paralleled in Solutrean finds. In short, because they looked alike, there must be a connection.[412]

  To do Hibben one better, Stanford and Bradley incorporated the new pre-Clovis sites into their hypothesis. They claimed these new sites proved the relationship by showing that pre-Clovis technology was even closer to the Solutrean and “could represent transitional technology between Solu-trean and Clovis.”[413] The fluting seen in Clovis points was therefore an American development from stone tools even more similar to the Solutrean. Thus, Clovis was not a copy of the Solutrean but an outgrowth from it.[414] Why the fluting could not be a development from earlier Asian technologies is less clear.

  The Solutrean hypothesis met with immediate criticism from experts like G. L. Straus and G. A. Clark, who found it lacking, just as an earlier generation discarded it after its first proposal. But even accepting the idea on its face presented logical problems that were difficult to overcome.

  Factual Problems

  First, the evidence seems weighted against a European origin for early Americans. There is not a single artifact or set of human remains from the time period that is unambiguously European. Remember, Kennewick Man, even if he were European, was thousands of years too late.

  Also, today’s native North Americans have clear genetic origins in Asia, not in Europe. Stanford and Bradley attempt to refute this by pointing to research on a type of mitochondrial DNA called haplogroup X, a genetic marker, which is found in a higher frequency in Asian populations than either Native American or European populations.[415] Superficially, this would seem to show a link between Native Americans and Europeans.

  However, since the first migrants to the Americas were likely few in number, well-known evolutionary mechanisms like the founder effect and other forms of genetic bottlenecking could have easily affected the frequency of haplogroup X. In fact, after examining the mitochondrial DNA code instead of its relative frequency, a 2002 study linked the Native American haplogroup X genetically to that found in Siberia. This clearly tied Native Americans to Asia and not Europe.[416] All other genetic data to date have confirmed the Asian link.

  Second, the old questions from the 1930s about the Solutrean connection still remain unanswered. Why were Clovis points fluted when the Solutrean points were not? What were they doing for the thousands of years that separate the Solutrean and Clovis cultures? How did the Solutreans come to North America if they are not known to have boats? Bradley and Stanford propose that the Solutreans arrived by traveling along the edge of the great Ice Age glaciers.[417] Their boats, if they had them, simply failed to survive in the archaeological record.

  For the other questions, Stanford and Bradley have a convoluted explanation. Essentially, they concede that Clovis was not the first North American culture. Earlier cultures, such as that represented at Meadow-croft Rock Shelter, had unfluted points that may be transitional from Solutrean to Clovis.[418] Thus, for thousands of years the Solutreans hung out in the Americas gradually developing Clovis technology.

  This raises an obvious logical problem. If Stanford and Bradley admit that there were cultures in America before Clovis, and if they concede that Clovis points may have developed from previous stone tools used in the Americas, why bother with a Solutrean origin at all? Weren’t the ancient inhabitants of the Americas, known to scholars as Paleoindians, intelligent enough to invent their own tools? Unfortunately, since there are so few pre-Clovis sites, it is difficult to say how closely the earlier stone tools matched their alleged Solutrean counterparts, so a true test of this still awaits the proverbial turn of the spade.

  Logical Problems

  But let us accept for a moment, as a thought experiment, that Stanford and Bradley are right that Clovis stone tools are clearly derived from Solutrean predecessors. Would this prove that prehistoric Spaniards migrated to the New World and made a new life on a new continent, as the authors claim? Even accepting the identification of Clovis and Solutrean stone tools, one cannot logically deduce this conclusion.

  First, technology is not identical with culture, and culture is not identical with genetic or geographic origins. To take a slightly exaggerated example, one can travel into the Amazon rain forest or the Kalahari Desert and find tribes whose members wear Nike merchandise. Does this mean that these people are from the United States? That is what the cultural origins of their clothing would tell us. But since the labels on their clothes tell us the garments were made in China, does that make these people Chinese?

  Following Stanford’s and Bradley’s logic, we must conclude that these people are Chinese since for them cultural indicators like stone tools or Nike sneakers must travel with the people who invented them. Their logic precludes handing these indicators from person to person across a great chain of interaction, commerce, and trade. In short, if the Clovis people did use Solutrean technology, it does not necessarily make them Spaniards.

  However, since there is no likely Atlantic trade route from Spain to America until the Arctic was peopled around 3000 BCE, our thought experiment forces us to consider that Solutreans did come to America. But again, assuming a Clovis-Solutrean connection does not prove that these people were one and the same.

  Let us imagine Stanford’s and Bradley’s hearty band of Solutreans traveling along the edge of the glaciers and arriving in the Americas. These Solutreans discover a thriving population of Paleoindians and share their technology with them. The Paleoindians jump for joy that the Spaniards have brought their benighted people pressure-flaked stone tools and eagerly share the new technology with all their friends. The Solutreans, disillusioned that there are so many Paleoindians to share in the mammoths and mastodons, turn around and go home. Thus technology, but not people or genes, ha
s traveled to the New World.

  It is because of this possibility that Stanford and Bradley indirectly expose the weakness of their argument in the abstract of their recent paper: “Evidence has accumulated over the past two decades indicating that the earliest origin of people in North America may have been from south-western Europe during the last glacial maximum. In this summary we outline a theory of a Solutrean origin for Clovis culture and briefly present the archaeological data supporting this assertion.”[419]

  Notice the misdirection: impersonal “evidence” shows the first North Americans came from Europe, but the authors merely suggest Clovis “culture” came from the Solutrean. The two are not the same, and the authors know that one does not prove the other, however much they wish to imply it. But since the authors previously admitted, and archaeology accepts, that Clovis was not the first North American culture, even a Solutrean origin for Clovis does not contribute to the claim that the “earliest” people in the New World came from Spain.

  Under the most favorable interpretation, they can prove little more than diffusion. Under no interpretation does the theory make Europeans America’s first colonists.

  A More Likely Story

  For the moment there is no clear evidence relating Solutreans to the Clovis people—or any earlier people of North America. Anthropologist G. A. Clark makes a compelling case that the similarities between the two cultures are coincidental, the result of two independent peoples stumbling across similar solutions when faced with similar problems in hunting ancient big game.[420] It has happened before. The bow and arrow were developed independently in the Americas and in the Old World. Writing developed on its own in the ancient Near East, in the ancient Far East, and in Mesoamerica. Witness, too, the mountains of paper devoted to supposed connections between Old and New World pyramid building and mummification. As anthropologist Lawrence Guy Straus told National Geographic, “One of the great failings of archaeology ... is a continuous falling back on the notion that if a couple of things resemble one another, they have to have the same source. But these similarities appear and reappear time and again in different places.”[421]

  The Solutrean hypothesis is simply the latest in a long string of ideas that have sought the ultimate origins of American history in other lands. Since the first explorations of the New World, researchers have tried to tie the continent’s history back to Europe, as if to fulfill a need to own America’s most distant past as well as its present.

  The Clovis culture was likely an indigenous creation, a product of some very clever people working with what they had thousands of years ago. Until there is physical evidence that ties the ancient Americas to Europe, there can be no justification for continuing to deny Native Americans their history, their culture, and their accomplishments.

  46. The Zeno Brothers’ Voyage of Discovery

  After Europeans realized that Christopher Columbus had discovered new lands, not a new path to Asia as he had claimed, national jealousies helped inspire a range of claims that other European groups had made the same journey earlier and should be granted pride of place. Many these claims are familiar: Irish monks under Saint Brendan, Welsh explorers under Prince Madoc, and the Norse. The last on that list had the virtue of also being true.

  In 1558, a Venetian named Nicolò Zeno published a book and an accompanying map claiming that his ancestors, Nicolò and Antonio Zeno, brothers of the naval hero Carlo Zeno, had made voyages of equal importance to Columbus, and a century earlier to boot, earning Venice a place at the pre-Columbian table and a triumph over its rival Genoa, home to Columbus.[422] The book supposedly summarizes the correspondence of the two brothers about their adventures—correspondence which was conveniently destroyed before scholars could examine it when the younger Nicolò Zeno tore the original manuscripts to pieces.[423] Oddly, the book freely mixes supposed quotations from the letters and first person narration by the later author, all cast in the same first-person voice, as though one writer took on three personalities.

  According to the younger Nicolò’s book, one of the Zeno bothers (also called Zeni in the plural, or the Zen in the Venetian dialect), Nicolò, sailed to England in 1380 (which is true) and became stranded on an island called Frisland (which is not true), a non-existent North Atlantic island larger than Ireland. In the book, the elder Nicolò claims to have been rescued by Zichmni, a prince of Frisland. Fortunately for him, everyone he meets speaks Latin. Nicolò invites his brother Antonio to join him in Frisland, which he does for fourteen years (Nicolò dying four years in), while Zichmni attacks the fictitious islands of Bres, Talas, Broas, Iscant, Trans, Mimant, and Dambercas well as the Estlanda (Shetland) Islands and Iceland.

  Later, after Nicolò had died in 1394, an expedition lost for twenty-six years arrives and reports having lived in a strange unknown land filled with ritual cannibals, whom they taught to fish. In fact, rival island groups fought a war in order to gain access to the travelers and learn the art of fishing. Worse, despite being the arctic “they all go naked, and suffer cruelly from the cold, nor have they the sense to clothe themselves with the skins of the animals which they take in hunting.”[424] Antonio Zeno is still there and joins Zichmni on a voyage to the west in search of these strange lands. They encounter a large island called Icharia, whose residents’ speech Zichmi understands. Finally, they travel to Greenland, where Zichmni remains with a colony while Antonio returns to Frisland.

  On the surface of it, the story seems ridiculous—any survey of the Atlantic admits many of the islands are fakes (though defenders suggest Nicolò the younger misread references to Icelandic settlements as referring to islands since Iceland is called Islande)—but it was one of the most successful hoaxes in the history of exploration. The sixteenth century mapmakers Orelius and Mercator reportedly used it as a source, and Sir Martin Frobisher took it with him on his voyage to the Arctic.[425] One part of the reason for this is that the Zeni were real people, and they really did undertake voyages in the north. There was a foundation on which the younger Nicolò drew in fabricating the story. The other reason for the success is the infamous Zeno Map, also called the Zeni Map.

  Before we look at the map, let’s stipulate the Zeno narrative is a hoax. The real Nicolò Zeno (the elder) had been a military governor in Greece from 1390-1392 and was on trial in Venice in 1394 for embezzlement. He lived until at least 1402, despite having “died” in Frisland in 1394.

  The map in question was drawn by the younger Nicolò, supposedly from his ancestors’ now-vanished charts, and was for a long time considered the most important chart made in the 1390s, showing the North Atlantic in stunning accuracy for its day, despite the appearance of several islands that simply do not exist. Even those who denied its authenticity noted it was extremely accurate even for 1558. Of particular note is the accuracy of the shape of Greenland, better than any other fourteenth century chart. Of course, no copy of the map exists prior to its appearance in Nicolò Zeno’s 1558 book.

  But even from the first, there were several troubling issues. For one thing, the map showed latitude and longitude, something not included on medieval maps. Some scholars dismissed these as a later interpolation. Second, the accuracy of the map varies wildly from land to land. Greenland’s shape is highly accurate, while Iceland’s shape is very much inaccurate. Frisland—which does not exist—has been identified with the Faroe Islands, but only at the cost of sacrificing any claim to the map’s tremendous accuracy, since the two lands look nothing alike.[426]

  Martin Frobisher, in exploring the Arctic in 1577 in search of the Northwest Passage, relied on the hoax map, and as a result of its mistaken latitudes—listing Greenland’s south tip at 65° north latitude instead of 60°, he mistook Greenland for Frisland—twice!—in 1577 and again in 1578, and extolled how accurately the map of Frisland matched the coast he reached, which was really Greenland![427]

  John Davis, on his subsequent trip to the Arctic in search of the same Northwest Passage, at least recognized that the Zeni Ma
p’s Frisland did not match the coast he found, so he claimed to be the discoverer of the new island of Desolation. Sadly, it was again Greenland, which he completely misunderstood because he was using a hoax map to guide him. The island of Desolation, which never existed, was then placed on Jodocus Hondius’ great chart of the world and the Molyneux Globe. The fictitious passage between Desolation and Greenland was named Frobisher’s Strait, and Henry Hudson though he found it when he sailed up the east coast of Greenland at 63°, believing himself still south of Greenland proper. Also, when Spitsbergen was discovered, it was mistaken for part of Greenland for the same reasons![428]

  Modern scholars, having researched the map, concluded that it is derived from a haphazard compilation of earlier charts, including Olaus Magnus’ Carta marina (1539), printed in Venice; Cornelius Anthoniszoon’s Caerte van Oostlant (1543); and derivatives of Claudius Clavus’ early map of the North (c. 1427), including Greenland, which appears nearly identical in shape and orientation on the Clavus-derived 1467 map of Nicolaus Germanus as it does on the Zeni Map.

  Many believe that the younger Nicolò Zeno faked the voyage of his ancestors to help give Venice a prior claim to the discovery of the New World, older than that of Genoese rival Columbus. Some still hold that Zeno merely garbled his ancestors’ real-life voyage to the north, exaggerating or misreporting real events. The weight of evidence is that the Zeno affair is yet another episode in the chronicle of fake history passed off as the real thing. But here’s the takeaway: How can we be expected to believe, as alternative writers would have it, that Europe possessed secret maps of America and Atlantis dating back a thousand years or more if they couldn’t manage to determine whether Frisland actually existed?