It is said that Phoenicians discovered America, so who knows. I mean, the Aztecs said white skinned people from the east are GODS.
The Aztecs had a prophecy about someone’s return from the east, in ships, and resume their former role, which to the ruling class means, ain’t never gonna happen. One reason Cortez and his rather small company so easily poleaxed the number one military power in Central America was that superstition.
One of the universities in Pennsylvania did a dig at Mystery Hill NH, which is really obviously a megalithic site (and large, there are “maze” paths defined by stones all around the apex of the hill), and found material from inside the passage chamber RC dated to 2000 BC. IOW, ain’t no “colonial root cellar”, regardless of what was later built on the ruins.
Here’s an interesting page, has some additional info about the current topic as well.
http://davidpratt.info/americas1.htm
[snip] Phoenicians
Much of Egypt’s trade was handled by the Phoenicians, who were known in the Old Testament as Canaanites; they lived in Canaan, the ‘land of purple’, a title that translates into Greek as Phoenicia. The name is a reference to the purple dye that the Phoenicians extracted from shellfish. Shellfish purple was also used in the pre-Columbian New World, from Mexico to Ecuador. As in the Mediterranean, the colour purple was equated with wealth, status and fertility in Mesoamerica and northern South America. Extracting and processing the dye was an extremely laborious process, and the Phoenicians may have introduced it to the New World.1
After the Spanish had invaded Peru in the 1530s, the Spanish historian Joseph de Acosta became convinced that the Spaniards had found the lost site of King Solomon’s mines. Gunnar Thompson argues that the empty mine shafts they found had been made by the Phoenicians. The Peruvians gained a portion of the gold extracted in addition to imported metal tools and textiles. They learned the Phoenician secrets of alloying copper and tin to make bronze, and acquired a variety of metal casting techniques for manufacturing weapons and jewellery. The Phoenicians also left behind a few inscriptions.2
In 1787 workmen unearthed a hoard of coins in Massachusetts, minted in the 3rd century BC, which bore short inscriptions in Kufic, a script used by the Carthaginians (Phoenicians who settled in the western Mediterranean). Further early Carthaginian coins have been found in more recent times. In New Hampshire an eastern Mediterranean oil lamp, dated to the 3rd century BC, was found at an Amerindian site, and an ancient Iberian short iron sword blade was uncovered bearing an Iberian inscription.3
[/snip]