Posted on 01/10/2012 1:11:20 PM PST by Theoria
A 500-year-old Portuguese gun has been found on an NT beach, and may suggest Europeans arrived earlier than thought.
A DARWIN BOY may help re-write Australia's history after unearthing what he believes is a 500-year-old Portuguese swivel gun on a Northern Territory beach.
Portugal occupied Timor from 1515 until 1975, although it is hotly debated whether Portuguese explorers made it to Australia, about 700km away.
Christopher Doukas made the discovery at Dundee Beach, about two hours' drive from Darwin. He found the gun when tides dipped to exceptional lows in January 2010, and he could walk out a long way from shore.
The boy, now aged 13, saw the item poking out of mud, dug it out with his father and took it back to his home. Striking resemblance
"As soon as we got it back into Darwin my dad got an angle grinder and nicked a little bit of it. We saw it was bronze, so we knew it was old," Christopher says.
Research on the internet showed the item - about the size of a rifle - bore a striking resemblance to Portuguese swivel guns, used as anti-personnel weapons on ships in the 16th Century.
(Excerpt) Read more at australiangeographic.com.au ...
I used to work with a guy who said that he had traced his geneology back to one of the natives who killed Magellan.
A few years ago, a team restoring the Mill Springs battlefield here in Kentucky found a flintlock stuck up under a rock ledge. The battle was fought of a cold, snowy, foggy morning and most of the Confederate units had old flintlocks that kept misfiring. The gun’s action had been partially disassembled, so they speculated that a Confederate had been trying to clear a misfire, got fed up, and got rid of the infernal troublemaker.
I guess it would prove John Glenn went to the moon.
I have my grandfather’s cheap old double barrel, made before 1900. He never came to Idaho in his life, and yet, his gun is right here.
I traced my family DNA and my grandmother (Mrs Smith) is related to this guy.
Just about all the first families of Virginia were descended from Pocahontas. (for instance Robert E. Lee) Her line almost died out too. She had only one child then that one also had only one and the next had only one but they all survived.
Finally one had around five and the line was fairly safe from then on.
Probably was a combination of new moon low tide and off shore winds.
I’m soooo confused.. Darwin? Portugese swivel gun? How could this have evolved????
I don’t think that is the only thing he fantasizes about. It reminds me of the kid in the movie Animal House who thanks god for the girl that pops through his window.
Sounds like there was some creative geneaology underway there.
Sure. The guy’s family was from the pertinent part of the Philippines, but I don’t know how/whether he drilled down and got more specific than that. Church baptismal records wouldn’t go that far back.
Wow I’m surprised to even see any news at all about Oz, seems to me the MSM in America just does not know what to do about Australia, the Land Down Under, the country of low unemployment and a higher rated country to live in.
And contrary to what most people think you can own a gun in Oz, and if for some reason your choice of gun requires too much paperwork then just make your own.
I used to work with a guy who was an amateur anthropologist. He told me that in his studies, he learned that before the Magellan party arrived, life in the islands was so idyllic that they didn’t even have names for days of the week, or even weeks for that matter. It probably took the Spanish a couple of generations before they started keeping records and the people there could’ve told the priests took it as gospel and so wrote it. We’ll never know.
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