Muslims discovered America before Columbus, says Erdogan

[The Union of Tentacles and Grapes]

Yeah, I've heard it said(but never really believed) that some Irish priest did it in the 900s.

Ah, yeah, Brendan was it?
I was also reading about rumors of Bristol (UK) merchants having settled a fishing outpost in the new world circa 1488, iirc. Wether this is true or not, I haven't the slightest.

People arrived in the americas in this order:
Siberians over the alaskan land bridge
Polynesians crossing the pacific
phoenicians, probably on accident, definitely stranded if any made it to shore
Romans, also probably on accident and also a definite stranding
Vikings in newfoundland and eastern canada
possibly chineese explorers, but probably not
some asshat from spain via italy

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Ah, yeah, Brendan was it?
I was also reading about rumors of Bristol (UK) merchants having settled a fishing outpost in the new world circa 1488, iirc. Wether this is true or not, I haven't the slightest.

People arrived in the americas in this order:
Siberians over the alaskan land bridge
Polynesians crossing the pacific
phoenicians, probably on accident, definitely stranded if any made it to shore
Romans, also probably on accident and also a definite stranding
Vikings in newfoundland and eastern canada
possibly chineese explorers, but probably not
some asshat from spain via italy

Phoenicians and Romans? I've never heard such a thing posited, but who knows.

[West Aurelia]

Seems legit.

[The Union of Tentacles and Grapes]

People arrived in the americas in this order:
Siberians over the alaskan land bridge
Polynesians crossing the pacific
phoenicians, probably on accident, definitely stranded if any made it to shore
Romans, also probably on accident and also a definite stranding
Vikings in newfoundland and eastern canada
possibly chineese explorers, but probably not
some asshat from spain via italy

Phoenicians and Romans? I've never heard such a thing posited, but who knows.

Artifacts from their cultures were found in brazil. They were probably trying to get to the gold coast, northern spain, or britain in the case of the romans. Storm yanks a ship out into ocean currents and they get lost and end up in south america. Not sure if anyone survived the strip, though. Probably just floated as hulks into running ground.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Phoenicians and Romans? I've never heard such a thing posited, but who knows.

Artifacts from their cultures were found in brazil. They were probably trying to get to the gold coast, northern spain, or britain in the case of the romans. Storm yanks a ship out into ocean currents and they get lost and end up in south america. Not sure if anyone survived the strip, though. Probably just floated as hulks into running ground.

Hm, interesting. I had no idea Roman or Phoenician artifacts had been found in Brazil? Do you have a link I could check? Sounds fascinating.

A while back I was reading a book by David Boyle, and there are accounts of sailors glimpsing land due to that, storms getting them far out off course, before Columbus. They just assumed these might've been mythical islands that were believed to exist, like Hy-Brasil. I guess that what these sailors saw was the Americas.

[Meowfoundland]

All aboard the crazy train, çuf çuf.

[Theistic Satanism]

Hah.
No.

[Not the NSA]

He's already on our lists.

[The Union of Tentacles and Grapes]

Artifacts from their cultures were found in brazil. They were probably trying to get to the gold coast, northern spain, or britain in the case of the romans. Storm yanks a ship out into ocean currents and they get lost and end up in south america. Not sure if anyone survived the strip, though. Probably just floated as hulks into running ground.

Hm, interesting. I had no idea Roman or Phoenician artifacts had been found in Brazil? Do you have a link I could check? Sounds fascinating.

A while back I was reading a book by David Boyle, and there are accounts of sailors glimpsing land due to that, storms getting them far out off course, before Columbus. They just assumed these might've been mythical islands that were believed to exist, like Hy-Brasil. I guess that what these sailors saw was the Americas.

That is definitely not standard mesoamerican sculpture.

There are also claims that portugese fishermen got to brazil first, but there is absolutely no archaeological evidence for it. But as colombus demonstrated, they certainly had the capability to do so.

[Sun Wukong]

Hm, interesting. I had no idea Roman or Phoenician artifacts had been found in Brazil? Do you have a link I could check? Sounds fascinating.

A while back I was reading a book by David Boyle, and there are accounts of sailors glimpsing land due to that, storms getting them far out off course, before Columbus. They just assumed these might've been mythical islands that were believed to exist, like Hy-Brasil. I guess that what these sailors saw was the Americas.

That is definitely not standard mesoamerican sculpture.

There are also claims that portugese fishermen got to brazil first, but there is absolutely no archaeological evidence for it. But as colombus demonstrated, they certainly had the capability to do so.

You have to be careful with this sort of thing. The discovered/not discovered barrier is not as impermeable as many suppose, and the Americas have likely be visited from both sides many times, but any single claim not-substantiated is dubious.

Now I've not heard this thing about Portuguese fishermen off Brazil, but you may be thinking of Beothuk, the waters around which they did fish.

[The Neo-Confederate States of America]

The Turkish president, ever the joker, held a speech in which he claimed that Muslims sailed to the Americas several centuries before Columbus and left their marks in form of Cuban mosques, which Columbus also wrote about apparently.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that the Americas were discovered by Muslims in the 12th century, nearly three centuries before Christopher Columbus set foot there.

"Contacts between Latin America and Islam date back to the 12th century. Muslims discovered America in 1178, not Christopher Columbus," the president said in a televised speech during an Istanbul summit of Muslim leaders from Latin America.

"Muslim sailors arrived in America from 1178. Columbus mentioned the existence of a mosque on a hill on the Cuban coast," Erdogan said.

The president also said that Ankara was prepared to build a mosque at the site mentioned by the Genoese explorer, the AFP news agency reported.

"I would like to talk about it to my Cuban brothers. A mosque would go perfectly on the hill today," he said.

Most history books say that Columbus set foot on the American continent in 1492, while seeking a new maritime route to India.

Some Muslim scholars have recently suggested a prior Muslim presence in the Americas, although no pre-Columbus ruin of an Islamic structure has ever been found.

In a controversial article published in 1996, historian Youssef Mroueh refers to a diary entry from Columbus that mentions a mosque in Cuba.

However, the passage is widely understood to be a metaphorical reference to the shape of the landscape.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeas ... 41516.html

What do you think? Personally, I just think it's Erdogan being, well, Erdogan.

Even the claims about Zheng He or other Chinese explorers setting foot on the Americas before Columbus are probably more likely than this theory.

Erdogan once again goes full retard

[The Scandinvans]

Everyone knows that Leif Eriksson discovered the Americas first.

Leif did discover Iceland, but the Inuits got to Greenland first.

There is no evidence of prior habitation. The Norse might well have been the first permanent population, instead of the much more short nature of settlement from Inuit progenitors.

[The Nihilistic view]

Phoenicians and Romans? I've never heard such a thing posited, but who knows.

Artifacts from their cultures were found in brazil. They were probably trying to get to the gold coast, northern spain, or britain in the case of the romans. Storm yanks a ship out into ocean currents and they get lost and end up in south america. Not sure if anyone survived the strip, though. Probably just floated as hulks into running ground.

I wonder what would have happened if they had properly discovered it i.e got word back to Rome and Rome decided to send a few legions.

[Rabotnikisoyedinennyye]

T'was the vikings, dammit! Why does everyone forget the vikings?

Nobody remembers the vikings. Why should they?

[The Nihilistic view]

The Turkish president, ever the joker, held a speech in which he claimed that Muslims sailed to the Americas several centuries before Columbus and left their marks in form of Cuban mosques, which Columbus also wrote about apparently.



http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeas ... 41516.html

What do you think? Personally, I just think it's Erdogan being, well, Erdogan.

Even the claims about Zheng He or other Chinese explorers setting foot on the Americas before Columbus are probably more likely than this theory.

Erdogan once again goes full retard

[Sociobiology]

muslim vikings?

so the thirteenth warrior was real?

[The Archregimancy]

The Turkish president, ever the joker, held a speech in which he claimed that Muslims sailed to the Americas several centuries before Columbus and left their marks in form of Cuban mosques, which Columbus also wrote about apparently.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that the Americas were discovered by Muslims in the 12th century, nearly three centuries before Christopher Columbus set foot there.

"Contacts between Latin America and Islam date back to the 12th century. Muslims discovered America in 1178, not Christopher Columbus," the president said in a televised speech during an Istanbul summit of Muslim leaders from Latin America.

"Muslim sailors arrived in America from 1178. Columbus mentioned the existence of a mosque on a hill on the Cuban coast," Erdogan said.

The president also said that Ankara was prepared to build a mosque at the site mentioned by the Genoese explorer, the AFP news agency reported.

"I would like to talk about it to my Cuban brothers. A mosque would go perfectly on the hill today," he said.

Most history books say that Columbus set foot on the American continent in 1492, while seeking a new maritime route to India.

Some Muslim scholars have recently suggested a prior Muslim presence in the Americas, although no pre-Columbus ruin of an Islamic structure has ever been found.

In a controversial article published in 1996, historian Youssef Mroueh refers to a diary entry from Columbus that mentions a mosque in Cuba.

However, the passage is widely understood to be a metaphorical reference to the shape of the landscape.

Archaeologist working in the Middle East puts his hand up.

Youssef Mroueh is a charlatan, and I'm disappointed that Erdogan is giving his claims any backing.

Here's a summary of Mroueh's 'theories' as written (I think) by Mroueh himself:

http://www.sunnah.org/history/precolmb.htm

It's the usual farrago of half-truths, deliberate misrepresentations, and outright falsehoods that you find with this sort of thing.

One example will suffice. Mroueh makes extensive use of the claims of Barry Fell, noting that Fell was from Harvard - after all, a Harvard professor must be credible, right? The problem is that Fell was a professor of invertebrate zoology whose amateur theories on trans-Atlantic contact and epigraphy [written inscriptions] have been wholly discredited.

I recommend Stephen Williams' book Fantastic Archaeology for a more detailed examination of this type of pseudo-archaeology. It doesn't address Mroueh specifically, but it does demolish Fell.

[The Archregimancy]

Leif did discover Iceland, but the Inuits got to Greenland first.

There is no evidence of prior habitation. The Norse might well have been the first permanent population, instead of the much more short nature of settlement from Inuit progenitors.

So many factual errors...

1) Leif Eriksson did not discover Iceland. Leif was the son of Erik "the Red" Thorvaldsson, the first Norseman to settle Greenland. Since Leif's father Erik the Red was himself born a century after the Norse Settlement of Iceland, Leif must have had access to a viking time machine if he discovered Iceland.

2) Leif is generally regarded as the first known European to have set foot in North America (excluding Greenland); however, he didn't discover the rest of North America - that was Bjarni Herjolfsson.

3) The Norse were not the first permanent population of Greenland; neither, for that matter, were the Inuit. http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php ... -the-inuit

[The Archregimancy]

Artifacts from their cultures were found in brazil. They were probably trying to get to the gold coast, northern spain, or britain in the case of the romans. Storm yanks a ship out into ocean currents and they get lost and end up in south america. Not sure if anyone survived the strip, though. Probably just floated as hulks into running ground.

Hm, interesting. I had no idea Roman or Phoenician artifacts had been found in Brazil?

That's because they haven't; at least not definitively or unproblematically so

1) The Union of Tentacles and Grapes is offering the Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca head as evidence. However, the head was found in Mexico, not Brazil. There are also a range of significant interpretive problems with the head: http://www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9/tva ... urine.html

2) Pseudo-archaeological hypotheses regarding Phoenician settlement in Brazil rest on the Paraiba Stone, which is demonstrably a hoax since it uses inconsistent Phoenician alphabet forms across a period encompassing some eight centuries.

3) Evidence for Roman artefacts in Brazil generally relates to the highly contested Bay of Jars site, where it's claimed that an amateur archaeologist discovered a Roman shipwreck containing multiple amphorae. However, I'm unable to find a neutral non-fringe diffusionist link outlining this data.

In any case, a very small number of isolated artefacts that are either demonstrably a hoax, come from a seriously dubious context, or have never been independently corroborated, do not make a case for Roman or Phoenician contact with Brazil.

As of November 2014, the only verifiable evidence of pre-Columbian contact between Europe/the Mediterranean and North America remains L'Anse Aux Meadows in Newfoundland. Anyone who claims otherwise is embracing anti-academic fringe pseudo-archaeology.

This doesn't mean that other evidence won't be found in the future, or that we should be closed to the possibility of it being found, but as of right now it simply doesn't exist.

[United Marxist Nations]

Hm, interesting. I had no idea Roman or Phoenician artifacts had been found in Brazil?

That's because they haven't; at least not definitively or unproblematically so

1) The Union of Tentacles and Grapes is offering the Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca head as evidence. However, the head was found in Mexico, not Brazil. There are also a range of significant interpretive problems with the head: http://www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9/tva ... urine.html

2) Pseudo-archaeological hypotheses regarding Phoenician settlement in Brazil rest on the Paraiba Stone, which is demonstrably a hoax since it uses inconsistent Phoenician alphabet forms across a period encompassing some eight centuries.

3) Evidence for Roman artefacts in Brazil generally relates to the highly contested Bay of Jars site, where it's claimed that an amateur archaeologist discovered a Roman shipwreck containing multiple amphorae. However, I'm unable to find a neutral link outlining this data.

In any case, a very small number of isolated artefacts that are either demonstrably a hoax, come from a seriously dubious context, or have never been independently corroborated, do not make a case for Roman or Phoenician contact with Brazil.

As of November 2014, the only verifiable evidence of pre-Columbian contact between Europe/the Mediterranean and North America remains L'Anse Aux Meadows in Newfoundland. Anyone who claims otherwise is embracing anti-academic fringe pseudo-archaeology.

This doesn't mean that other evidence won't be found in the future, or that we should be closed to the possibility of it being found, but as of right now it simply doesn't exist.

As far as the Amphorae in the shipwreck, I think the amateur archaeologist's hypothesis was that the ship was blown way off course, and eventually just sheltered in the area before being sunk; would that at least be fairly plausible? Also, there was a NYT article on it, but that doesn't give it much more merit: http://www.nytimes.com/1982/10/10/world ... visit.html

[The Archregimancy]

As far as the Amphorae in the shipwreck, I think the amateur archaeologist's hypothesis was that the ship was blown way off course, and eventually just sheltered in the area before being sunk; would that at least be fairly plausible? Also, there was a NYT article on it, but that doesn't give it much more merit: http://www.nytimes.com/1982/10/10/world ... visit.html

As it happens, Mr Marx subsequently managed to get himself into a world of trouble with the Brazilian authorities for the illegal selling of Brazilian antiquities recovered from shipwrecks:

http://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/25/scien ... razil.html


While Mr Marx claimed a cover-up by the Brazilian Navy....

To substantiate these charges, the Brazilian officials showed a catalogue of an auction held in Amsterdam in 1983 in which, they said, gold coins, instruments and artifacts removed from shipwrecks in Brazil were offered for sale on behalf of Mr. Marx and his associates. The officials said many of these objects had not been reported on the divers' inventory, contrary to an agreement with Mr. Marx.

Several attempts to give Mr. Marx the opportunity to respond to these charges were unsuccessful. One phone call ended abruptly when Mr Marx said, ''Don't bother me,'' and then hung up.

This doesn't really add confidence to the accuracy of Mr Marx's 'discovery'.

[United Marxist Nations]

As far as the Amphorae in the shipwreck, I think the amateur archaeologist's hypothesis was that the ship was blown way off course, and eventually just sheltered in the area before being sunk; would that at least be fairly plausible? Also, there was a NYT article on it, but that doesn't give it much more merit: http://www.nytimes.com/1982/10/10/world ... visit.html

As it happens, Mr Marx subsequently managed to get himself into a world of trouble with the Brazilian authorities for the illegal selling of Brazilian antiquities recovered from shipwrecks:

http://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/25/scien ... razil.html


While Mr Marx claimed a cover-up by the Brazilian Navy....

To substantiate these charges, the Brazilian officials showed a catalogue of an auction held in Amsterdam in 1983 in which, they said, gold coins, instruments and artifacts removed from shipwrecks in Brazil were offered for sale on behalf of Mr. Marx and his associates. The officials said many of these objects had not been reported on the divers' inventory, contrary to an agreement with Mr. Marx.

Several attempts to give Mr. Marx the opportunity to respond to these charges were unsuccessful. One phone call ended abruptly when Mr Marx said, ''Don't bother me,'' and then hung up.

This doesn't really add confidence to the accuracy of Mr Marx's 'discovery'.

Yeah, that is tantamount to what grave robbers used to do to ancient sites, and it does take most credibility away from him. Though, that he did try to go through more formal channels about the supposed Amphorae is odd. Nonetheless, no real proof to back him up.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

@ Arch:

Third try posting a reply without luck.

The read was interesting nevertheless. But no real Roman or Phoenician findings then, huh? Alright.

I've heard of hypotheses of Europe having had contact with America prior to Columbus but, other than the Vikings, the rest always seem more like legends, much like Prester John... The tale of the Irish monks who sailed and found what was later to be known as America, yeah, that legend. Was it Brendan? I don't recall the name.

[The Archregimancy]

Yeah, that is tantamount to what grave robbers used to do to ancient sites, and it does take most credibility away from him. Though, that he did try to go through more formal channels about the supposed Amphorae is odd. Nonetheless, no real proof to back him up.

Writing as someone who has to deal with the ethics of underwater archaeology treasure hunting on a regular basis via my membership of two professional society governing boards of directors (one society has difficulties almost every year with for-profit treasure hunters attempting to give papers at our conferences in contravention of our ethics statement), it's not just a comparative matter of what grave robbers did to ancient sites, but part of a much broader contemporary problem relating to the recovery and sale of maritime site artefacts for personal profit.

Individuals who excavate sites in order to derive profit from the sale of artefacts (as opposed to ordinary commercial archaeology which derives profit from much the same manner as any wing of the construction industry - via its contracts with the developer of a site) are beyond the pale in mainstream archaeology. I concede that just because they're unethical doesn't mean they might not recover valid detail in the course of their treasure hunting, but that data was recovered by a treasure hunter acting both illegally and unethically (as in this specific case) should immediately raise alarm bells with anyone who values credible data.

[The Grand World Order]

I can't believe you people actually buy into the official story. You think we ever actually landed on some continent, out of several that Europe colonized, that had overabundant resources and became home to the world's prime superpower? Wake up sheeple. The New World "discovery" is a fraud designed to keep you living in the consumerist, materialist paradigm that keeps the powerful powerful and you in your place. Leif Erikson, Christopher Columbus, and now the Muslims are all just cover stories for a lie that you insist on believing in. The "New World" probably doesn't even exist.