Here's a hint: it wasn't Columbus

Who really discovered America?

That's a bit of a loaded question.  No one really "discovered" our hemisphere.  The people who originally lived here knew of it all along.  But even that is up for questioning as we'll soon see.

I was listening to old editions of The Paranormal Podcast, a fine podcast by Jim Harrold that I encourage everyone to check out and I will even feature it in a future blog post, but I digress.  Jim's guest on one particular podcast was from Ancient American magazine, a periodical for professionals in archeology and other such fields whose opinions are...shall we say, a bit different from those of mainstream academics.  While the subject was not exactly paranormal, I couldn't help but be fascinated by these notions that if true, completely toss the accepted and established history of America out the window.  

It is by enlarge an accepted fact in academia that the notion that Columbus discovered America is a fallacy.  "America" is after all named after the explorer Amerigo Vespucci.  Plus, the Vikings likely reached the shores of Newfoundland and even New York long before the Santa Maria ever set sail.  Yet this is but a drop in the bucket when it comes to revisions to American history that certain archeological researchers would argue for.  Here are a few of the more tantalizing allegations:

-Egyptian mummies found with traces of cocaine...a substance that could only have been acquired from South America.

-Decalogues have been found in both New Mexico and Ohio, tablets written in both Hebrew and Ancient Greek that are said to be the Ten Commandments.

-An underwater archeologist claims to have found a stone artifact in the waters off California that is identical to the type of anchors once used by Chinese sea travelers.

-There are numerous accounts of a "white man with a beard" in the oral traditions of North American and South American native peoples, sparking a few believers to maintain that Christ visited this end of the world post-resurrection.

-Scottish miners sculpted depictions of a cactus.

-There are traces of a Viking presence as far west as Minnesota and as far south as Oklahoma.

-An ancient Phonecian altar for human sacrifice was found in Chicago.

-Near Kennewick, Washington, a human skeleton was discovered.  The ethnicity of the skeleton was found to be Caucasian.  The age, according to at least a few arguments, is older than 12,000...placing the man in America before humans even migrated across the Bering land bridge.

-A Native American carving found in Michigan seems to resemble that of the type of cross that the Knights Templar emblazoned upon their sails.  Did a Native American see a Templar ship on one of the Great Lakes?

Obviously there needs to be more evidence to substantiate a few of these claims, especially when it comes to ancient carvings as that sort of thing is a bit of a "in the eye of the beholder" Rorschach test.  That aside, I find myself with an open mind to much of this.  I believe that the human race is probably much older than we originally believed and that entire civilizations might have risen and fallen before we ever began recording history.  Additionally, I can see how evidence to support any of the above mentioned possibilities would not be adequately examined.  My experiences with higher education began at birth.  I know all too well how so very few are willing to risk their careers and professional reputations to argue for a concept that deviates from the established academic norm.  Hence why many paranormal subject will never get the serious scrutiny they deserve.

So here's to those maverick researchers and publications like Ancient American.  Even if they end up being wrong, I'm glad that someone is at least asking the questions.


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