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To: Mike Fieschko
What I would find interesting is if there were evidence that the Romans or other Mediterranean peoples had knowledge of the Western Hemisphere. If this excavation uncovers a work like the Icelandic Eddas that recorded Viking visits to North America circa 1000 AD, the world of pre-Columban history will be turned upside down. Men like Barry Fell and Thor Heyerdahl will be exonerated and the mainstream historians' view of "no Europeans before Columbus (or the Vikings)" will be overturned.
18 posted on 02/14/2005 8:41:07 AM PST by Wallace T.
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To: Wallace T.
What I would find interesting is if there were evidence that the Romans or other Mediterranean peoples had knowledge of the Western Hemisphere.

While it's conceivable that at some point, a Roman galley may have been blown across the Atlantic (although, given prevailing winds, it seems highly unlikely), that's a far cry from knowledge of the Western Hemisphere. Ptolemy was the greatest geographer of the classical world, and he had no knowledge of the Western Hemisphere. The Greek, Krates of Mallos, who lived several hundred years beforehand, predicted that North and South America would exist, but not because of any knowledge of them, but because he thought that the world would look funny if there weren't continents in the Western Hemisphere to make the world symmetrical.

43 posted on 09/21/2005 1:58:18 PM PDT by Alter Kaker (Whatever tears one may shed, in the end one always blows one’s nose.-Heine)
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