Secrets of Ancient America: Archaeoastronomy and the Legacy of the Phoenicians, Celts, and Other Forgotten Explorers

by Carl Lehrburger

  After the death of Copernicus, Galileo Galilei became a proponent of the heliocentric view and championed the Copernican revolution, which was met with great controversy. Despite the irrefutable evidence of his telescopic observations and his prominence as a physicist, mathematician, astronomer, inventor, and philosopher, Galileo was condemned by the churchmen and scientists of his day and denounced to the Roman Inquisition. The Catholic Church rebuked the sun-centered solar system as “false and contrary to scripture,” and Galileo was convicted by the Inquisition of heresy and forced to recant.

  While the greatest scientist of his day was then forced to spend the rest of his life under house arrest, his contemporary, Giordano Bruno, was not so fortunate. Sentenced to be burned alive at the stake, bravely he pronounced, “Perchance you who pronounce my sentence are in greater fear than I who receive it.” He was burned alive at the stake. The numerous charges against him included holding opinions contrary to the Catholic Church and erroneous opinions about the cosmos, Christ, the Trinity, and the Incarnation. He was also convicted of dealing in magic and divination and denying the virginity of Mary. Before the fire was lit, when an image of “Our Savior” was presented to him he turned away. Then, according to a notice in the Torture Museum in Siena, Italy, a block that had protruding spikes was forced into his mouth to permanently silence both his opinions and screams while he slowly died on the pyre.

  Fig. I.1. Giordano Bruno seeking the pardon of Pope Clement VIII. Bruno was burned at the stake for his heretical views by the Inquisition in 1600 after seven years’ imprisonment and a lengthy trial. ( The Trial of Giordano Bruno by the Roman Inquisition, bronze relief by Ettore Ferrari, Campo de’ Fiori, Rome.)

  (Photo © Marie-Lan Nguyen/Wikimedia Commons)

  What was remarkable about these persecutions was the fact that the heliocentric view, as I will document in chapter 17, was not new at the time and had been understood for a thousand years before. Thus, Copernicus and Galileo actually rediscovered what had previously been known since before the Catholic Church was founded.

  THE ARCHAEOPRIESTS

  The stories of the Promethean Flatlander, Socrates, Plato, Galileo, and Bruno all convey a sense of dismay. How can society present something called the rational, yet act irrationally? How can something be said to be factual, yet be contrary to the facts? In the context of our topic of the New History, how can history be stated as an accurate accounting of the past when the ancient records dispute and disprove such an accounting?

  It is easy to conclude that efforts to change long-held belief systems will be met with opposition. The subject at hand, a New History of America that starts with a new look at Columbus’s so-called discovery, reinforces the view that society will challenge and resist change.

  So who are the proponents and enforcers of the Old History? Can we put a name to deception and blind ignorance? Words will always fall short, but in the context of my story, such antagonists to progress can be called the archaeopriests. The word itself reduces the control of American history over time to two self-serving institutions: the church and the academic/anthropological/ scientific “priesthood.” In regard to outside contacts with the Americas they are isolationists, believing the Americas were largely isolated from global influences. Opposed to them are the diffusionists, of whom I am one.

  LANDING OF THE DIFFUSIONISTS

  I must confess that over many decades I thought quite incorrectly that we were on the verge of a great leap forward, where a New History would shed light on the Old History. After reading America B.C. by Barry Fell in 1986 (published in 1976) and American Discovery by Gunnar Thompson in 1996 (published in 1994) I was confident that the old paradigm would soon crumble. This seemed especially likely after reading a January 2000 Atlantic Monthly magazine article titled “The Diffusionists Have Landed.” While the article conceded that the archaeopriests retained the upper hand, it suggested a coming renaissance by raising fundamental questions not addressed by archaeologists.

  The independent inventions theory, also referred to as the isolationist theory, is the idea that North America’s natives evolved free from cross-cultural influences and advanced internally until Columbus arrived. On the other hand, diffusionism, as advanced by Barry Fell, Gunnar Thompson, William McGlone, and others, bases its ideas on the premise that cultures came in from the outside to influence myths, artistic traditions, languages, and other cultural traits, as demonstrated by evidence left by transoceanic cultures. While it is now universally accepted that Norse settlers were in Newfoundland at least a thousand years ago, the mainstream archaeopriests vehemently oppose claims that they had any influence on the American Indians or that there was any other significant pre-Columbian New World contact. However, Mark K. Stengel, in the Atlantic article, wrote:

  To many, the inventionists have clearly gained the upper hand, having marshaled shards, spear points, and other relics that indicate the independent cultural development of a native people whose Ice Age ancestors came overland from Northeast Asia. Still, the diffusionists have a habit of raising awkward questions—questions that even some mainstream scholars find hard to ignore, much less to explain away. Who carved Phoenician-era Iberian script into a stone found at Grave Creek, West Virginia? How did a large stone block incised with medieval Norse runes make its way to Kensington, Minnesota? Why would a rough version of the Ten Commandments appear in Old Hebrew script on a boulder-sized tablet near Los Lunas, New Mexico? Conversely, how could the sweet potato, known to be indigenous to the Americas, have become a food staple throughout Polynesia and the Pacific basin as early as A.D. 400?2

  Stengel’s list goes on and on, yet the act of suppressing history is so insidious that it would not occur to the normal person that it has been happening. The conundrum is confounded by the many hoaxes and frauds that have been perpetuated over the centuries with fake artifacts. These have proved to be an obstacle to serious investigations and a source of discredit to many well-intended diffusionists. Equally disheartening, uncritical and often erroneous reporting of discoveries by diffusionists has created a disincentive for archaeologists to seriously evaluate promising and legitimate evidence of an Old World presence in America before Columbus.

  Fortunately, there are an increasing number of books and articles documenting aspects of the New History, and the Internet has tremendously advanced access to information and independent research. Today, I believe we are in the same sort of transitional stage of acceptance for the New History that Europe went through in the debates over heliocentrism. However, there are many obstacles to overcome, one of which, in a double sense, could be called an ethnocentric problem.

  In the bitter battles challenging the “Columbus discovered America” myth, anthropologists and many Native Americans have suggested that the diffusionist approach is insulting to Native Americans because it claims that “they didn’t do it all themselves.” In addition, the diffusionists’ stance deliberately challenges long-held views within the mainstream academic institutions while also denigrating the economic and religious interests of the institutions that benefited from the conquest. The legacy of the myth that Columbus discovered America is an Old History that glorifies and justifies conquest, a policy that continues into the twenty-first century. To examine these issues and the subversion of our history, let’s begin with the myth of Columbus and then explore what remains of the visitors who came before him.

  1

  Two Stories of Columbus

  Truth must be our guiding light, because history sets the very tone and direction of our society, and only a truthful society can effectively meet the challenges that lie ahead. A society that denies the truth about its past will never be free to face the realities of the future; it will always have its feet mired in a false identity.

  GUNNAR THOMPSON, AMERICAN DISCOVERY

  DISCOVERING A NEW HISTORY

  I begin by noting that nobody, most notably this writer, can discover the New History by himself or herself. Before me there have
been many notable and revealing people presenting the New History, emphasizing that Columbus did not discover America, our history books are false, and our identity as a nation is contrived.

  Among the significant efforts that span centuries, Thompson’s American Discovery is among the most comprehensive and reader friendly. Unlike other leading New History proponents who are not trained in archaeology, Thompson is a professional anthropologist with a doctorate from the University of Illinois who has served on the faculties of seven universities. In his American Discovery, he articulates the New History of America—that America was known throughout the ancient world and that our shores were busy ports for visiting explorers, miners, settlers, and those seeking a new life.

  According to Thompson, the lack of knowledge by the American public of Columbus in light of the New History has its reasons. In the following excerpt, he discusses some of these reasons and explains why academics and institutions like the National Geographic Society and the Smithsonian Institution have continued to ignore the New History.

  The reasons are academic nepotism and ethnocentric bias. Most historians and anthropologists are loyal to a doctrine of cultural isolation that was originally promulgated by a medieval religious fraternity. During the 1800s, the Columbian Order promoted the ethnocentric belief that Columbus was chosen by God to bring the first Christian civilization to America. Although the modern scholars abandoned the religious premise of American discovery, they adhered to the belief that no significant voyagers preceded Columbus to the New World. This belief is often referred to as “The Monroe Doctrine of Cultural Isolation.” Because of this doctrine, establishment scholars automatically dismiss evidence of pre-Columbian cultural diffusion as heresy. The resulting academic myopia is a clear indictment of scholars who claim that their beliefs are based on scientific principles.1

  Yet, as of this writing, academics and institutions like the Smithsonian have prevailed in keeping the Columbus myth alive and presenting the Old History as fact. Thompson’s work is more fully described in chapter 15.

  THE USUAL STORY OF COLUMBUS

  We have all heard the usual story of Columbus and how he completed four voyages to the Americas between 1492 and 1504, thereby igniting the colonization and exploration of the Americas by Europeans. We are also told that he thought he had landed in the islands that abutted what was then known as the East Indies, so he named the natives Indians. The four voyages of Columbus took place during a thirteen-year period:

  First voyage: 1492–1493

  Second voyage: 1493–1496

  Third voyage: 1498–1500

  Fourth voyage: 1502–1504

  As for America, it was named after the little-known Amerigo Vespucci, who sailed farther along the South American coast than Columbus and so was the first to positively identify the new land as a continent. However, the veneration of Columbus as “first discoverer” and what are believed to be his ideals dates back to colonial times and has been interwoven into our cultural history ever since. For example, the name Columbia instead of America first appeared in 1738 in a weekly publication of British Parliament debates that was then sent over to the colonies.

  Fig. 1.1. First Landing of Columbus on the Shores of the New World

  (Painting by Dióscoro Teófilo de la Puebla Tolin)

  Following the American Revolution, the use of Columbus as the founding figure of the New World nations and the use of the word Columbia, or simply the name Columbus, spread rapidly as numerous cities, towns, counties, and streets were named after him. Today, in academic vocabulary, a lasting commemoration of Columbus is the term “pre-Columbian,” which is routinely used to refer to the peoples and cultures of the Americas before his arrival.

  Writing in the October 2009 issue of Smithsonian, Edmund S. Morgan, Ph.D., Sterling Professor emeritus of Yale University, gave an introduction to the legacy of Christopher Columbus: “Columbus surely expected to bring back some of the gold that was supposed to be so plentiful. The spice trade was one of the most lucrative in Europe, and he expected to bring back spices. But what did he propose to do about the people in possession of these treasures?”2

  Columbus and Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had expected to take dominion of the newly discovered lands, but what might they offer that would ease the process? If it was deemed necessary to rule by force, what would justify such a strategy? Morgan’s answer reflects the historical truth:

  The answer is that they had two things: they had Christianity and they had civilization. . . . Christianity has meant many things to many men, and its role in the European conquest and occupation of America was varied. But in 1492 to Columbus there was probably nothing very complicated about it. He would have reduced it to a matter of corrupt human beings, destined for eternal damnation, redeemed by a merciful savior. Christ saved those who believed in him, and it was the duty of Christians to spread his gospel and thus rescue the heathens from the fate that would otherwise await them. . . . The superior clothing, housing, food, and protection that attached to civilization made it seem to the European a gift worth giving to the ill-clothed, ill-housed and ungoverned barbarians of the world.3

  THE REAL STORY OF COLUMBUS EMERGES

  A much different story of Columbus begins in the city of Toledo, located in the center of what became a united Spain in the early fifteenth century. Occupied since the Bronze Age, it had become an important commercial and administrative nexus for the Roman Empire. After its fall to the Visigoths, Toledo served as their capital until the Moors conquered it in A.D. 712. During the following centuries, there were many revolts and many rulers as its population became largely Muladi, a mixture of Arab, Berber, and European ancestry, who were brought up in the Arab culture. Thus, Toledo became the center of la convivencia—the peaceful coexistence of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Then in 1085 it became the first city taken in la reconquista of Spain by the Christian forces led by Alphonso VI of Castile.

  After the conquest, Toledo continued to be a major cultural center, in part because its twenty-eight Arabic libraries were not pillaged. Thus, a center was established where books were translated from Arabic or Hebrew into Spanish by Muslim and Jewish scholars and then from Spanish into Latin by Castilian translators. This allowed long-lost knowledge to spread through Christian Europe, and the results were major advances in medicine, mathematics, art, astronomy, and geometry—but not in geography.

  It was in Toledo that Christopher Columbus and his brother Bartolomeo (or Bartholomew) set up a cartographic studio, and around 1490 they drew a map, but this was not a map of the world as they knew it to be. Christopher and his brother who followed him knew they were not going to sail to China, as the Old History tells us. Why? There were more than a few reasons.

  Fig. 1.2. Map drawn by the Columbus brothers ca. 1490, in the Lisbon workshop of Bartolomeo and Christopher Columbus. (Wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus)

  First, they would have known the world was not flat, contrary to what has been commonly thought and taught in the modern West. A 1945 pamphlet issued by the British Historical Association, which was an organization dedicated to educating teachers, suggested that this was the second of twenty of the most common errors that were taught to schoolchildren.

  Historian James Hannam explained:

  The myth that people in the Middle Ages thought the earth is flat appears to date from the seventeenth century as part of the campaign by Protestants against Catholic teaching. But it gained currency in the nineteenth century, thanks to inaccurate histories such as John William Draper’s History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874) and Andrew Dickson White’s History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896). Atheists and agnostics championed the conflict thesis for their own purposes, but historical research gradually demonstrated that Draper and White had propagated more fantasy than fact in their efforts to prove that science and religion are locked in eternal conflict.4

  Another historian, Jeffrey Burton Russe
ll, claims that “with extraordinary [sic] few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat.”5 The myth that the ancients thought the Earth was flat was largely an invention of the nineteenth century.6

  Still another historian, Jack Weatherford, added, “The Egyptian-Greek scientist Eratosthenes . . . already had measured the circumference and diameter of the world in the third century B.C. Arab scientists had developed a whole discipline of geography and measurement, and in the tenth century A.D., Al Maqdisi described the earth with 360 degrees of longitude and 180 degrees of latitude. The Monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai still has an icon—painted 500 years before Columbus—that shows Jesus ruling over a spherical earth.”7

  Second, Columbus would have known about the New World because of his access to both Viking and Arab maritime maps. His wife was Felipa Perestrello, whose family had intermarried with the Drummond-Sinclair family of the famous Henry Sinclair, prince of the Orkney Islands (located north of Scotland). Legend says that Sinclair had set sail a century earlier from Norway to explore the New England coastline and establish a colony in the Americas.8

  If this were true, surely details of his voyages would have been available to Columbus through his wife’s family. However, more important, there were The Saga of Erik the Red and Greenlander and Icelandic stories and texts about the eleventh-century Vinland colonies.9

  Third, Columbus knew how to get to the Americas because, in addition to Viking maps and information gleaned from his famous in-laws, Columbus and his brother would have seen Arabic and other charts that depicted the New World as they searched the libraries in Toledo for other maps to copy from. That these were in foreign languages would not have been a problem. Although Columbus was not a scholar, he nevertheless could speak and read Italian, Latin, Portuguese, Spanish, and perhaps Catalan, skills learned through collecting more than fifty thousand books by the time of his death. If he couldn’t read the maps himself, the libraries had translators, including Jewish scholars, who could. Moreover, he had sailed in Portuguese ships engaged in the slave trade to the Gold Coast of Africa, and these ships, because of the trade winds, had to perform the volto do mar (“turn of the sea” or “return from the sea”) to get back to Europe. Thus he knew the trade winds would take him west to the new lands.