Posted on 01/11/2003 2:01:33 PM PST by vannrox
However what all these articles forget is that before Columbus, before the Vikings, before the Irish (i will play along and treat include that 'theory' here), before the Chinese (another questionable 'theory' that i will also include just to be fair) .....before all these groups arrived the Native Americans had been here for centuries!
They had crossed eons ago when there was a landbridge (before tectonic shifts and rising waters sealed it off). Hence it was not the Vikings nor the Chinese nor the Spaniards nor the Irish (????) who got here first but the Native Americans.
However if you think of it people have claimed to have been 'the first to see' a valley in the Himalayas (when there was a tribe of Sherpas farming in it), or discover a river in africa (oblivious to the natives fishing in the river), or a lost temple complex in India (apparently ignorant of the fact that for the 'lost' temple to exist someone must have built the darn thing). Mountain ranges (that have villages at their base) have had explorers claim to the the 'first to see' them, probably because somehow the people who had farmed the volcanic slopes for generations apparently had never had the sudden epiphany that they were living next to a mountain!
Hence if that is possible then i guess the Native Americans who had been in N. America for centuries did not factor.
Even today blue and white porcelain shards are occasionally exposed on the beaches. This leads me to believe the Chinese, or the Japanese, were coming around the Pacific too, perhaps at the same time.
What I find interesting is the historical comparison this story presents us. The Chinese could have settled the western hemisphere but instead withdrew unto themselves. We, the United States, are on the brink of moving into the frontier of near-earth space but seem tied down with earth-bound tribulations.
So, who will eventually venture out and reap the metal riches to be found in near-earth asteroids? And they are indeed very rich, with platinum group metals, known as PGMs.
One medium-sized PGM asteroid is equal to the earth's gross economic product for one year!
If the Chinese had been bolder the United States would never have existed, and as for the future...?
I know the true story of this but the details escape me. The Dynasty tha ruled China did send out huge junks to many parts of the world to gather information and bring back samples and impress the barbarians. Once those huge junks returned the Emperor decided that the Chinese had nothing to learn from the outside world and burned the fleet, banned contact with outsiders and closed itself from the outside world. China was centuroes ahead of any civilization in terms of technology then but the isolation doomed China by the time the Europeans caught up with the Chinese during the industrial revolution.
Did the Vikings visit America? Yes and we have their uncovered Canadian settlements as proof. Did Polynesians visit South America? Probably. Did any Europeans and West Africans? Maybe. There is the enigma of Cocaine and tabacco traces found among mummies. Greek charts used by Columbus did declare that there was a land mass in the Atlantic but they were vague as to what it was or where.
Visist may have occured but they may have had only superficial impacts on those of the old and new worlds. Even Columbus did not know it was the New World so it is doubtful other explorers or shipwrecked castaways knew what they found when they got to the Americas.
This brings to mind an old Flip Wilson routine.
I truly do love these history posts...but I have a question.
How could the Chinese claim to be civilized, when they allowed an obvious First Tenor with Falsetto tendencies, leave the theatre for a life aboard ship.
The Sioux Indians lived at or near Cahokia up until the 1500s. They may have been there when DeSoto made his trip in 1541.
When (1410) the Chinese made the trip that is the subject of this thread they had not used the Shan characters for a couple of thousand years.
So, the mystery is - where did the Sioux get their character set? Did they just happen to invent the same characters as the Shan, or did the Shan settle in Cahokia some time circa 1400 BC?
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