Muslims discovered America before Columbus, says Erdogan

[Galloism]

That, or a sapient French pigeon.

Having watched Columbo, I'd say the writer's intent on that fact was unclear.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

That, or a sapient French pigeon.

Having watched Columbo, I'd say the writer's intent on that fact was unclear.

Well, not so. If we put on our conspiracy theory hats and smoke from the soap bubble pipe, all we have to do is analyze Colombo's shape to realize he was rather roundish, like a pigeon. Therefore, my esteemed colleague, Colombo was really a sapient French pigeon in disguise who 500+ years ago, landed in the new world.

[Hurdegaryp]

Having watched Columbo, I'd say the writer's intent on that fact was unclear.

Well, not so. If we put on our conspiracy theory hats and smoke from the soap bubble pipe, all we have to do is analyze Colombo's shape to realize he was rather roundish, like a pigeon. Therefore, my esteemed colleague, Colombo was really a sapient French pigeon in disguise who 500+ years ago, landed in the new world.

The main problem I have with this theory is that I am way too sober for it.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Well, not so. If we put on our conspiracy theory hats and smoke from the soap bubble pipe, all we have to do is analyze Colombo's shape to realize he was rather roundish, like a pigeon. Therefore, my esteemed colleague, Colombo was really a sapient French pigeon in disguise who 500+ years ago, landed in the new world.

The main problem I have with this theory is that I am way too sober for it.

Easily remedied. Drink.

That poster, honestly now, was probably using Columbus's Genoa name instead of the anglicized version.

[Hurdegaryp]

The main problem I have with this theory is that I am way too sober for it.

Easily remedied. Drink.

That's your answer to everything. I think I'm going to make tea instead.

[Galloism]

Easily remedied. Drink.

That's your answer to everything. I think I'm going to make tea instead.

Let me get you a recipe for tea:

Here you go!

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Easily remedied. Drink.

That's your answer to everything. I think I'm going to make tea instead.

The main problem I have with this theory is that I am way too sober for it.

That poster, honestly now, was probably using Columbus's Genoa name instead of the anglicized version.

[Papait]

... We're talking about what Continent they are on, not in waht Fauna Region they are

Point stands.

Timor is just as much Australia as New Zealand or Fiji.

No It's not
because Australia is a continent, which includes New Guinea, Australia and Timor.
New Zealand is part of no continent and is just an island, fiji is as well
they are sometimes classified as oceania

[Risottia]

Easily remedied. Drink.

That's your answer to everything. I think I'm going to make tea instead.

Spike your tea with some nice Irish whiskey.

[Czechanada]

None of them survived for a considerable period, or expanded very much territorial-wise. But yes, they did exist...in Senegal and Ghana specifically. @Arch there's been some archaeological work done near Elmina to recover Norman artifacts, starting with a dig by David Calvocoressi in 1977. At the time Calvocoressi mentioned that local tradition still recalled a French presence there which predated the Germans and the Dutch, who arrived later and apparently built new forts over the site.

Colonial France as we remember it did not arrive in this region until the 1600s.

I had no idea either until I read a report on this phenomenon by the Grolier Society a few years ago.

This source claims that Norman interest in the area was shut down due to the Hundred Years' War. This one puts the date of the Norman arrival on the Senegal River at 1364. You can read part of a 1650 manuscript referencing the incident here which states that the Norman settlers departed due to quarrelling amongst themselves.

Multiple studies (in print) have been published on the subject by the West African Archaeological Newsletter.

I think you're just possibly putting two and two together and coming up with six, though I'm willing to reserve judgement until I talk to Chris De Corse.

1) We know Europeans were looking for the mouth of the Senegal river as early as the late 13th century. This is not news. Exploration is, however, categorically not the same as colonisation. I am unconvinced, moreover, by the uncited '1364' date listed on the Blackpast.org website. I would prefer something with a specific citation, please.

2) The reference in Prince Henry the Navigator's life to Normans 'in the area' specifically and explicitly refers to trade at Cape Bojador (you have to go back one page from the link you provided to page 34), specifically at "a very hot place, which is called now-a-days Cape Bugiador, which belongs to the kingdom of Guinea". Cape Bojador is not, by any measure, either Sub-Saharan Africa or even the Senegal River. This is not a particularly remarkable observation by Prince Henry.

3) As to Calvocoressi's work, you'll note that your own book citation specifically says (emphasis added) "supposed early Norman trading site". Given that Elmina is in Ghana - nowhere near Cape Bojador or the Senegal River, this would indeed be news, even if set aside the observation there's a significant difference between 'colony' and 'trading site'.

But this is hardly a definitive citation; certainly it's not proof of medieval Norman colonies in Ghana. Even leaving aside the "supposed", there is no additional date or context in that sentence that might allow me to unpick what's meant by "Norman" in that sentence; whether it refers to medieval Normans, or later individuals from the region of Normandy.

As it happens the colleague in charge of the ongoing archaeological fieldwork at Elmina - the leading current authority on the subject, and indeed the individual who's both the editor of the volume you're citing here and the author of the cited introduction - is someone I know personally, and with whom I'm connected on LinkedIn; so I'll ask him. I'm having some trouble tracking down back issues of the West African Journal of Archaeology so I can check what's being claimed here, even via my academic library access. So best if I just ask the relevant individual directly in order to cut out the misunderstandings that might result from second hand information so I can sort out precisely what is being claimed here.

Ah, LinkedIn. One of the best sites of the internet.

I'm very proud of my own LinkedIn profile.

[The Archregimancy]

Yes he did.

On his fourth voyage, Columbus landed on the continental landmass of North America on the 14th of August, 1502, at what's now Puerto Castilla, Honduras. He continued down the Caribbean coast of Central America - the "southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent" - as far as Panama.

Columbus also landed on the continental landmass of the Americas on his third voyage in 1498, albeit in South America, in what's now Venezuela.

According to
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/r ... 152948483/

The basque were fishing the st Georgesbank since about 1000. (Damm phone will not c & p). If they could get to the gulf of maine, how not Latin America?

That's not actually a question relating to the quoted post, but I'll assume you were struggling with your mobile phone and really addressing earlier posts and not the quoted one.

I don't know why Smithsonian is offering an unproblematised statement of fact there. The extent to which our Euskaldunak cousins reached the North America cod banks earlier than anyone else is disputed; claims that there was extended secret Basque fishing activity off Newfoundland (and what a secret it was - we're expected to believe that no one else noticed where Basque ships sailing from the Bay of Biscay were going over a period of up to 500 years; that's a fairly amazingly effective conspiracy of silence for the later medieval period) are considered at best dubious. It's significant that no one bothered to make the claim until a full century after John Cabot's (re)discovery of Newfoundland.

The earliest verifiable Basque contacts with Newfoundland fishing banks are post-Cabot. And while there's an awful lot of relevant Canadian (and American) coast to survey, a lot of work has been done here; enough to let us know what the archaeological signatures of seasonal Basque whaling/fishing camps and Basque fishing vessels look like:

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/e ... ical-site/
http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/lhn-nhs/nl/redb ... asque.aspx

Red Bay is not unique; the modern Newfoundland town of Placentia also started as a seasonal Spanish and Basque fishing centre.

http://www.tcr.gov.nl.ca/tcr/pao/arch_i ... entia.html

However, none of the relevant sites pre-date the 16th century. Note also that seasonal Basque exploitation of Placentia - one of the best fishing harbours off the North Atlantic cod fishery - post-dates early Portuguese and Spanish exploration activity in the area. This tends to further suggest claims of pre-Cabotian seasonal secret Basque exploitation of what was once the North Atlantic's greatest fishing ground are problematic.

Again, future research may change our perspective here (and Newfoundland's Memorial University has an excellent archaeology department that carries out world-class research on early colonial activity in the province), but at present the claims are problematic.


As to why Newfoundland and not South America for Basques... this is purely a hypothetical given the existing problematic nature of the claims, but presumably:

1) Latitude.
2) The species being fished are all from the North Atlantic, so you wouldn't sail south to exploit them.
3) Presumed ability to sail close to land using known Norse sailing routes via Iceland and Greenland if activity begins as early as some claim; though we're apparently also asked to believe that the Norse settlers of Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland didn't notice the Basques either.

[Calimera II]

Well, Piri Reis is quite interesting.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

According to
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/r ... 152948483/

The basque were fishing the st Georgesbank since about 1000. (Damm phone will not c & p). If they could get to the gulf of maine, how not Latin America?

That's not actually a question relating to the quoted post, but I'll assume you were struggling with your mobile phone and really addressing earlier posts and not the quoted one.

I don't know why Smithsonian is offering an unproblematised statement of fact there. The extent to which our Euskaldunak cousins reached the North America cod banks earlier than anyone else is disputed; claims that there was extended secret Basque fishing activity off Newfoundland (and what a secret it was - we're expected to believe that no one else noticed where Basque ships sailing from the Bay of Biscay were going over a period of up to 500 years; that's a fairly amazingly effective conspiracy of silence for the later medieval period) are considered at best dubious. It's significant that no one bothered to make the claim until a full century after John Cabot's (re)discovery of Newfoundland.

The earliest verifiable Basque contacts with Newfoundland fishing banks are post-Cabot. And while there's an awful lot of relevant Canadian (and American) coast to survey, a lot of work has been done here; enough to let us know what the archaeological signatures of seasonal Basque whaling/fishing camps and Basque fishing vessels look like:

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/e ... ical-site/
http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/lhn-nhs/nl/redb ... asque.aspx

Red Bay is not unique; the modern Newfoundland town of Placentia also started as a seasonal Spanish and Basque fishing centre.

http://www.tcr.gov.nl.ca/tcr/pao/arch_i ... entia.html

However, none of the relevant sites pre-date the 16th century. Note also that seasonal Basque exploitation of Placentia - one of the best fishing harbours off the North Atlantic cod fishery - post-dates early Portuguese and Spanish exploration activity in the area. This tends to further suggest claims of pre-Cabotian seasonal secret Basque exploitation of what was once the North Atlantic's greatest fishing ground are problematic.

Again, future research may change our perspective here (and Newfoundland's Memorial University has an excellent archaeology department that carries out world-class research on early colonial activity in the province), but at present the claims are problematic.


As to why Newfoundland and not South America for Basques... this is purely a hypothetical given the existing problematic nature of the claims, but presumably:

1) Latitude.
2) The species being fished are all from the North Atlantic, so you wouldn't sail south to exploit them.
3) Presumed ability to sail close to land using known Norse sailing routes via Iceland and Greenland if activity begins as early as some claim; though we're apparently also asked to believe that the Norse settlers of Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland didn't notice the Basques either.

Could it be that the Smithsonian is confusing the fact that, indeed, the Basque fished far and wide in the Atlantic but not as close to catch sight of the Americas with something else? Maybe with the whaling in Labrador in the 16th century?

I read of a theory that some people posited a while back that Basque, somehow, had influenced the Huron language (I think it was). They came to this conclusion on the basis that apparently, both languages use/used the same word for deer, ''orein''. But this was never really substantiated.

Some of this can be found in Mark Kurlansky's Basque History of the World. He delves deeper into the myriad theories on how the Basque were first, supposedly, in the new world before Columbus. Allow me to stress that I'm not saying he's correct, most historians today, when discussing the subject, can't come to one concrete conclusion. All I'm doing is providing information on what I mentioned my post.

[The Archregimancy]

Could it be that the Smithsonian is confusing the fact that, indeed, the Basque fished far and wide in the Atlantic but not as close to catch sight of the Americas with something else? Maybe with the whaling in Labrador in the 16th century?

I read of a theory that some people posited a while back that Basque, somehow, had influenced the Huron language (I think it was). They came to this conclusion on the basis that apparently, both languages use/used the same word for deer, ''orein''. But this was never really substantiated.

I don't know about that (by which I don't mean "I'm skeptical about that", but rather that I genuinely don't know) - but I do know that one of the more fascinating artefacts found on a Native American site in Canada was an early sixteenth-century European wrought iron axe head found at the late pre-contact Huron Mantle site in Ontario (near Toronto).

The site dates to c.1500-c.1530, and predates European exploration of the Great Lakes area - and first known contact between Europeans and the Huron - by a century or so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantle_Site,_Wendat_(Huron)_Ancestral_Village

Current hypothesis is that it was originally traded from an early Basque whaling station on Newfoundland, and was then traded up the Saint Lawrence.

Now that's fascinating.

I always find it disappointing that pseudoarchaeological theories of early exploration and settlement of the Americas gain so much traction with the general public when the actual story, and the serious scholarship revealing that story, are themselves so exciting. I concede my professional bias, but still...

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Could it be that the Smithsonian is confusing the fact that, indeed, the Basque fished far and wide in the Atlantic but not as close to catch sight of the Americas with something else? Maybe with the whaling in Labrador in the 16th century?

I read of a theory that some people posited a while back that Basque, somehow, had influenced the Huron language (I think it was). They came to this conclusion on the basis that apparently, both languages use/used the same word for deer, ''orein''. But this was never really substantiated.

I don't know about that (by which I don't mean "I'm skeptical about that", but rather that I genuinely don't know) - but I do know that one of the more fascinating artefacts found on a Native American site in Canada was an early sixteenth-century European wrought iron axe head found at the late pre-contact Huron Mantle site in Ontario (near Toronto).

The site dates to c.1500-c.1530, and predates European exploration of the Great Lakes area - and first known contact between Europeans and the Huron - by a century or so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantle_Site,_Wendat_(Huron)_Ancestral_Village

Current hypothesis is that it was originally traded from an early Basque whaling station on Newfoundland, and was then traded up the Saint Lawrence.

Now that's fascinating.

I always find it disappointing that pseudoarchaeological theories of early exploration and settlement of the Americas gain so much traction with the general public when the actual story, and the serious scholarship revealing that story, are themselves so exciting. I concede my professional bias, but still...

Yes, I was reading on that a bit ago while searching for sources. I even saw that when it came to their finishing colonies (the Basque), some date them all the way to the 1480s. But I'm not a 100% sure that's accurate.

I could be wrong, but I think it was said too that if it wasn't traded (the axe) it might've been from a shipwreck and it washed on shore?

The thing with the Basque is that when it came to sailing, they were masters at it. One thing that Kurlasky asks is that if there were Basque in America, predating Columbus by a wide margin, why is there no record of it? He seems to ascribe it to secrecy. Fishermen were very zealous and jealous of their fishing sites. But, once again, this falls on the realm of theories rather than facts. Aside from them being jealous, that is. Historically speaking, Basque sailors were very private about their fishing sites.

The language theory, I must confess, I find fascinating. But I'm conflicted because Basque is not an easy language and for it to have influenced the Huron language in a short time. Wouldn't it? The Huron-Algonquin similarities with Basque is very interesting, however. Not just words, but also names.

[New Socialist South Africa]

Well the Vikings certainly got to America before Columbus did. The Muslims, I'm not so sure.

I don't think it really matters to be honest. What matters is who had the big enough guns to kill anyone and everyone who got in their way and steal the land for themselves, and that would be the Europeans who came after Columbus.

[Darrington]

This guy is crazy.

[The Archregimancy]

The thing with the Basque is that when it came to sailing, they were masters at it. One thing that Kurlasky asks is that if there were Basque in America, predating Columbus by a wide margin, why is there no record of it? He seems to ascribe it to secrecy. Fishermen were very zealous and jealous of their fishing sites. But, once again, this falls on the realm of theories rather than facts. Aside from them being jealous, that is. Historically speaking, Basque sailors were very private about their fishing sites.

The language theory, I must confess, I find fascinating. But I'm conflicted because Basque is not an easy language and for it to have influenced the Huron language in a short time. Wouldn't it? The Huron-Algonquin similarities with Basque is very interesting, however. Not just words, but also names.

Kurlasky is right to ask the question if he's presenting the possibility of early Basque exploration of the Americas; but I find his solution wholly unconvincing. I find that level of secrecy across that period of time very difficult to credit for a number of reasons

As to Huron and Basque influences, I can claim no specialist knowledge on Huron-Basque linguistic interaction, but I find this equally difficult to credit.

The Huron historically lived around Lake Ontario and Georgian Bay; they would have had almost no interaction with Europeans until the French turned up in the early 17th century; at that point, the primary point of European linguistic contact would have been French, not Basque. It's hard to see how the Huron language (more correctly the Wyandot language) would have been uniquely influenced by Basque over the other Iroquoian languages - especially those traditionally spoken along the Saint Lawrence - given the lack of any real opportunity for historical interaction between Wyandot and Euskara.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

The thing with the Basque is that when it came to sailing, they were masters at it. One thing that Kurlasky asks is that if there were Basque in America, predating Columbus by a wide margin, why is there no record of it? He seems to ascribe it to secrecy. Fishermen were very zealous and jealous of their fishing sites. But, once again, this falls on the realm of theories rather than facts. Aside from them being jealous, that is. Historically speaking, Basque sailors were very private about their fishing sites.

The language theory, I must confess, I find fascinating. But I'm conflicted because Basque is not an easy language and for it to have influenced the Huron language in a short time. Wouldn't it? The Huron-Algonquin similarities with Basque is very interesting, however. Not just words, but also names.

Kurlasky is right to ask the question if he's presenting the possibility of early Basque exploration of the Americas; but I find his solution wholly unconvincing. I find that level of secrecy across that period of time very difficult to credit for a number of reasons

As to Huron and Basque influences, I can claim no specialist knowledge on Huron-Basque linguistic interaction, but I find this equally difficult to credit.

The Huron historically lived around Lake Ontario and Georgian Bay; they would have had almost no interaction with Europeans until the French turned up in the early 17th century; at that point, the primary point of European linguistic contact would have been French, not Basque. It's hard to see how the Huron language (more correctly the Wyandot language) would have been uniquely influenced by Basque over the other Iroquoian languages - especially those traditionally spoken along the Saint Lawrence - given the lack of any real opportunity for historical interaction between Wyandot and Euskara.

I guess there's history and then historical fiction. Boyle alludes to some Indigenous people up in Canada encountering Europeans who remarked they dressed like the Genoese (one wearing a pearl earring of some sort). I imagine it was an attempt at trying to answer the question of what happened to Cabot in that last trip of his.

I mean, is there no way that the Native American also used pearls? This was hardly evidence of Cabot having died there or whatever it was. Helps pass the time, I suppose.

On linguistics, Kurlasky alluded to similarities in words and names. As I don't know either Huron-Algonquin and my Basque is pretty much nonexistent, other that the mention of "orein", I don't know what else to say. It's fascinating, though, to think of the possibilities. Buy I won't stray farther than that.

[Ethel mermania]

According to
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/r ... 152948483/

The basque were fishing the st Georgesbank since about 1000. (Damm phone will not c & p). If they could get to the gulf of maine, how not Latin America?

That's not actually a question relating to the quoted post, but I'll assume you were struggling with your mobile phone and really addressing earlier posts and not the quoted one.

I don't know why Smithsonian is offering an unproblematised statement of fact there. The extent to which our Euskaldunak cousins reached the North America cod banks earlier than anyone else is disputed; claims that there was extended secret Basque fishing activity off Newfoundland (and what a secret it was - we're expected to believe that no one else noticed where Basque ships sailing from the Bay of Biscay were going over a period of up to 500 years; that's a fairly amazingly effective conspiracy of silence for the later medieval period) are considered at best dubious. It's significant that no one bothered to make the claim until a full century after John Cabot's (re)discovery of Newfoundland.

The earliest verifiable Basque contacts with Newfoundland fishing banks are post-Cabot. And while there's an awful lot of relevant Canadian (and American) coast to survey, a lot of work has been done here; enough to let us know what the archaeological signatures of seasonal Basque whaling/fishing camps and Basque fishing vessels look like:

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/e ... ical-site/
http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/lhn-nhs/nl/redb ... asque.aspx

Red Bay is not unique; the modern Newfoundland town of Placentia also started as a seasonal Spanish and Basque fishing centre.

http://www.tcr.gov.nl.ca/tcr/pao/arch_i ... entia.html

However, none of the relevant sites pre-date the 16th century. Note also that seasonal Basque exploitation of Placentia - one of the best fishing harbours off the North Atlantic cod fishery - post-dates early Portuguese and Spanish exploration activity in the area. This tends to further suggest claims of pre-Cabotian seasonal secret Basque exploitation of what was once the North Atlantic's greatest fishing ground are problematic.

Again, future research may change our perspective here (and Newfoundland's Memorial University has an excellent archaeology department that carries out world-class research on early colonial activity in the province), but at present the claims are problematic.


As to why Newfoundland and not South America for Basques... this is purely a hypothetical given the existing problematic nature of the claims, but presumably:

1) Latitude.
2) The species being fished are all from the North Atlantic, so you wouldn't sail south to exploit them.
3) Presumed ability to sail close to land using known Norse sailing routes via Iceland and Greenland if activity begins as early as some claim; though we're apparently also asked to believe that the Norse settlers of Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland didn't notice the Basques either.

I was trying to catch your attention to kurlinsky's theory. Which was what Smithsonian was reviewing. His book on cod fishing is my source for this conversation.

Thank you for your discussion it was interesting. As an aside, when we the public, read these books they all come footnoted, with, to a layman, looks legitimate. We do assume these folks do their research and it's somewhat vetted by the review process.

As to secrecy of ship charts and logs during that period, that is something I accept as fact. Whether it was possible to the extent claimed, I dunno, but everything I have read about the period says those documents wer treated as state secrets.

I will be looking at the sources when i can get to a puter. (thanks nana for your adds as well)..

[Dalcaria]

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.

If he can provide internationally accepted proof that proves the theory, then I'll believe it. Until then, I say it sounds bunk. Also, as someone else mentioned, yeah the Vikings kind of beat everyone there. Then again, maybe you could say Siberians, since the Natives most likely actually Came from Siberia.... Then again, there were the natives in South America as well to consider... So many possibilities... Regardless, I doubt the Muslims made it there when he says, and I will continue to doubt till he provides evidence.

[Zaldakki]

Actually, I time travelled and was there before it separated from Pangaea even. Evidence can be found in an age-old iPhone I hid inside a dinosaur egg in the Nevada desert.

[The Archregimancy]

As to secrecy of ship charts and logs during that period, that is something I accept as fact. Whether it was possible to the extent claimed, I dunno, but everything I have read about the period says those documents wer treated as state secrets.

It's not just a matter of shipping charts, though...

You can keep the actual charts secret, certainly; but over several centuries not one Basque sailor got drunk and mentioned something along the lines of "and we sail for several days northwest, and you wouldn't believe the the cod banks we find off some land there"?

But the really serious problem is processing and preservation. You can't just ship dead fish across the Atlantic; you have to dry, smoke, or salt it first - otherwise you'll have a hold full of putrefied inedible fish.

So seasonal fishing activity that far away from a home port requires the processing and preservation of the entire catch prior to transportation back to the home port.

We know what this type of seasonal occupation looks like in the early period of exploration/settlement of Newfoundland because a fair number of 16th-century sites have been identified, excavated and studied.

So given the readily identifiable archaeological signature that this type of processing activity would leave behind, where are the pre-Cabotian/pre-Columbian fish processing sites?

That they haven't been found doesn't necessarily mean that they don't exist, of course; but that the 16th-century sites have been so readily identifiable and no earlier sites have ever been found - even though you would expect at least some re-use of the best ports if the Basques had been visiting for decades/centuries - should at least give us pause for thought.

For reference, a good professional friend of mine studies Iberian pottery from early Newfoundland sites, which is why I know something about the topic. Which I appreciate is an appeal to uncitable and unverifiable authority in NSG terms, but I hope I have enough of a reputation here by now that people would know I wouldn't just make this all up.

[Islamic Republic e Jariri]

The evidence isn't conclusive enough to prove anything, the Polynesians were more likely to have discovered the Americas way before Columbus but I don't think Muslims actually discovered the new world pre-Columbus, there's just not enough proof.

[The Archregimancy]

The evidence isn't conclusive enough to prove anything, the Polynesians were more likely to have discovered the Americas way before Columbus but I don't think Muslims actually discovered the new world pre-Columbus, there's just not enough proof.

Saying "there's not enough proof" rather undersells the lack of anything even remotely resembling evidence.

There's absolutely no evidence or proof. Both are wholly absent.


Polynesians, incidentally, almost certainly must have reached South America; not necessarily to the extent that some would have us believe, but the (very) recent publication of DNA evidence from Easter Island is making it increasingly difficult to deny that contact existed when combined with other evidence from chickens and sweet potatoes. It's also an excellent example of what good evidence for this sort of contact across a range of different types of data does look like.

http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/ ... sted-genes
http://archive.archaeology.org/0801/topten/chicken.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/328/5984/1344.summary