European Contact with the New World before Columbus (England, state, DNA)
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When I saw your nickname, I knew you were going to post about San Borondón.
Also a Spanish myth, something to do with the Canary Islands.
Ya he was an Irishman, but the legend/myth/story seems to have implanted itself in the imagination of much Western Europe, it was meant to have inspired alot of Spanish & Portugeese explorers and a little know Genoese explorer
Islands believed to be the island in his story include, Newfoundland, Greenland, Madera, the Azores, or the Canary Islands. Or he was a big fibber.
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OT: yesterday I met a man that happens to be a star gazer by hapstance. I was there for other reasons, but he is into other things and has a rock of 'beach' dug out of Albany NH , just up the road from here in White Mountains Country. This rock shows tidal lapping, and contains white sea shells, and he says comes from 11 feet deep, where a swimming pool was installed.
When he showed me, he asked if I knew what kind of rock it was, and I said this is sand stone and from a beach. He looked a bit dissapointed I could tell that much, but I was shocked to find this beach 11 feet down is presently at apx 600 feet above sea level. This is older than man probably, by a few million years.
If I am understanding what you are saying correctly, I am not surprised. My minor is in Michigan history, and to that end I took several courses in the history of Native Americans in Michigan. The commonly held belief is that the diet of 'pre-historial' Indians included wild rice, a grain that grew in marshy areas along the Great Lakes.
However, if you look at the locations of the settlements, confirmed by archeological digs, the settlements are all quite some distance from the shoreline. Generally speaking, people tend to live near their primary food source so this seems odd. And since they traveled by water, one would think that they didn't park the 'car' by the shore and then hike ten or 20 miles home. One day, many years ago, I happened to be speaking to a geologoist about this who pointed out that the shoreline of Michigan is not in the same place now as it was thousands of years ago.
As it was explained to me, and this is a simplification as I don't remember all the technical terminology (college was a looooooonnnnnggggg time ago), the weight of glaciers pushed the land mass that we know as Michigan down beneath it. This could happen because the there is some give and play due the molten core at the center of the planet. Over thousands of years, Michigan has slowly been on the re-bound, this would explain how their settlements could have been on the "Shores of Gitche Gumee' then but be inland by 10 or 20 miles in present day.
Since glaciers covered way more than Michigan, I think it is likely this senario could be playing out elsewhere along the coastline.
As to the argument that St. Brenden and others could not have reached North America because there is no proof. Goodness we have a lot of doubting Thomas', don't we? Have you never visited a place and left without leaving evidence of your visit? Good thing no one is suggesting that Juliet Lowe or Sir Balden Powell and their troops visited North America. Leaving evidence behind goes against their Scouts' code.
I personally find it hard to believe that St. Brenden wrote this manuscript strictly from his imagination when given the fact that, other than the 'mythological' San Borondon, the rest of the account seems to be an accurate description. How could he write such an accurate description if he had not experienced it? What would be the point of writing such a manuscript? And I am not so quick to dismiss the island as a myth. What if his navigation were off due to storm? What if something happened to the island? Have we not seen other island disappear or be greatly altered by volcanos, earthquakes, and other seismic activity?
There is another thread flaoting around here discussing great inventions. It has been discussed at some length there that inventions are not created in a vacuum. Generally speaking, many inventors are intriuged by the same idea. Why would we think that the exploration of our homeworld would be any different? Wouldn't it be kind of ludicrous, not to mention egotistical, to suggest that only cetain cultures possessed a desire to explore, or to conquer, or whatever their motivation was? Certainly that some cultures were more successful in their endevors as evidenced by the 'proof' can't be disputed. But to suggest that the 'proof' proves that only those cultures were successful is a bit shortsighted in my opinion.
I think it is quite likely that St. Brendan (or someone like him) and countless other humans originating in Europe have made landfall on the North American continent for millennia. Without material evidence it all remains speculation though.
St. Brendan's is the most compelling historical account. I also believe that various Basque fisherman probably saw North America in the centuries preceding Columbus's arrival in the Caribbean.
Anyway my gut feeling is that why not the vikings ?? as it sounds to me that Neng has a thing not only against the french but also against the scandanavians
Anyway i watched a show a while back on the History Channel called ''Secrets of the Viking Warriors'' and so it was about how they designed and built their hulls along with the special material they used on their sails and so all this allowed them to hydro-plane off the water to travel very fast and at great distances.
They also mentioned how they weather proofed their clothing to withstand the north atlantic wet and frigid temps and they were experts at celestial navigation amongst other things i've forgotten about since i saw this show some years back and so yeah if the Vikings landed in North America during the 800's to 1000 's then i wouldn't be surprised at all.
Last edited by Six Foot Three; 04-09-2010 at 02:26 PM..
Reason: Edit - 6/3
By that rule of thumb, there were other ancient civilizations that had far better nautical skills. Cretans, Phoenicians, Punics, Greeks, Romans. Roman had the tecnology to arrive to America in three weeks saling through the Atlantic.
It just happens that Vikings, a barbaric people that weren't even good fighters, just opportunistic thiefs that preyed upon a devastated world, want their little piece of ephimeral glory by reinventing sagas, that are just sagas, tales of bards.
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