Who Discovered America? : The Untold History of the Peopling of the Americas (9780062236777)

by Menzies, Gavin; Hudson, Ian

  One of the more significant, though still highly controversial, finds in the Pacific took place more than four decades ago. In September 2007 Ian met with Bob Meistrell, cofounder with his twin brother, Bill, of the Body Glove wet-suit company, in Redondo Beach, California, near Los Angeles. In the 1970s, Bob, an experienced diver, came across a swath of round, stone rings, some of which were more than three feet in diameter off Palos Verdes, southwest of Los Angeles. Further research was to show that these were in fact Chinese stone anchors. Since then he has been trying to solve the mystery of the Palos Verdes anchors. Bob and his team eventually managed to salvage a few of the anchors but many of them remain on the sea floor. (You can see a photograph of one of the anchors in the first color insert of this book.)

  The area of the find is now overgrown with kelp and diving the site is not recommended, not least due to the great white sharks that patrol the area, known chillingly as “the Red Triangle.” On land, the recovered anchors were investigated by four separate authorities, who were unable to come to an agreement on their origin. Some say that they were mined from local Californian rock by Chinese fishermen in the nineteenth century. However, we and many others think the manganese deposits that had built up on the anchors indicate they were under the sea for centuries. Such a significant quantity of anchors also points to a wrecked fleet, as opposed to sporadic wrecks of fishing boats.

  A U.S. Navy ship also came across the stone anchors in 1973. The report from that mission also said the anchors appeared to be quite old and obviously man-made. Specialists said that the anchors appeared to be of a style used on ships in the Bronze Age, between 1500 and 1100 B.C.4 Once more, any mention of such anchors coming from a previously unaccepted source brought rejection from the scientific community.

  Two scientists in California, Carl William Clewlow, an archaeologist at the University of California, and James Moriarty, an anthropologist at the University of San Diego, confirmed in a news release that the stones were in fact Chinese anchors and might have been as much as one thousand years old. Chinese historian Fang Zhong Po published an article in the magazine China Reconstructs that described the anchors as “perforated stones . . . made from a rock commonly found in southern China.” The anchor was secured with a rope tied through the hole. He said the practice of making anchors had existed in China for thousands of years.

  There were additional reports about the stone anchors, some round, some rectangular, also with holes in the middle.

  A second site was reported, this one by a research vessel, the Pioneer, which retrieved a round stone with a hole in it off Mendocino Point, California, five hundred miles north of Palos Verdes. Again, the stone was covered with a thin layer of manganese. Professor Moriarty said that that kind of stone was not found locally and had originated in China. Scientists calculated it had been on the ocean floor for between two thousand and three thousand years.

  New reports published in 1984 said that thirty-five more anchors had been recovered from Californian waters around Palos Verdes, some weighing as much as three hundred pounds. They were judged to be as much as three thousand years old.

  Eugene D. Wheeler, in his book Shipwrecks, Smugglers, and Maritime Mysteries, states that Chumash Indians had drawn pictures of Chinese junks in caves. The Chumash live along the coast of south-central California and in the mountains north of what is now Los Angeles. Wheeler said the find brought theories that Chinese seamen could have entered the Santa Barbara Channel before the arrival of the Spanish explorers. We are eager to see these drawings and to date them where possible.

  Dissenters continue to say that none of the evidence is absolute proof of Chinese presence. Some said that the same type of stone could be found in Monterey, California, on the coast about sixty miles south of San Francisco. Others said that the stone anchor could have been made by Chinese immigrants to California during the California gold rush of the 1850s. According to this argument, those who didn’t find gold went back to fishing, their traditional occupation. These latter-day Chinese fishermen used their traditional skills, making anchors from local stone, according to the theory, with large stones used to anchor ships and smaller ones tied into fishing nets.

  Argentine cartographer and historian Paul Gallez said there was indeed a problem knowing whether an anchor stone was one hundred years old or one thousand years old. The presence of a manganese coating didn’t predetermine absolutely the age of the stone. “Yet again,” wrote Gallez, who died in 2007, “the experts seem determined to defend a pre-established theory rather than to seek a scientific truth, for fear that this might endanger the ideas they have been expounding for years. Resistance to change is one of the main brakes to scientific progress.”5

  It had become increasingly difficult against all the evidence and analysis to say that these anchors did not indicate Chinese visits to the North American Pacific coast.

  Beyond anchors, paintings, and legends that mention foreign arrivals, in California there is a huge selection of foreign plants and animals found along the coastline. Not least are Chinese roses and hibiscus (Rosa sinensis), which were found by first European explorers; Monterey pines, indigenous to China, are found along the coast; and the Torrey pine, which grows in the San Diego area, as well as on Santa Rosa Island, off the coast of California, and in China. One reader told us how it is commonly known that the China rose we call “Old Blush” has been grown for centuries in California. It has been supposed that it was brought to the Spanish missions by Chinese traders. However, there is another Chinese rose, Chi Long Han Zhu (White Pearl in Red Dragon’s Mouth), which was only imported from China in the last few years of the twentieth century. Chi Long Han Zhu is now obtainable from several sources in the United States. It was not known in the United States prior to its twentieth-century importation from China. However, the knowledgeable horticulturist Fred Boutin has found what appears to be Chi Long Han Zhu growing as a feral plant in the Sierra Foothills of California.

  Another case of transplant is the peach, Prunus persica. The peach originated in China, where it has been cultivated since the early days of their ancient civilization. The peach is generally believed to have been brought to America via the Spanish conquest. However, Nancy Yaw Davis, in her book The Zuni Enigma, contends that the Spanish invaders, on coming into contact with the Zuni people of the American Southwest, found that peaches had been long cultivated there. This hypothesis is supported by archaeological excavations discovering peach pits that were believed to predate the arrival of the Europeans to America.

  Asian-type wild horses were still running wild on the deserts between Redmond and Prineville, Oregon, in the 1930s and 1940s. They were said to be Mongolian horses. According to Dr. Judi West, they were small, short-bodied, with big heads, and were smaller than wild ponies or any of the other small wild horses that ran in the area.

  Ray White, a horse breeder and veterinary surgeon, contends strongly that the American horse never was completely extinct, as commonly believed; he feels that the Appaloosa of the Pacific Northwest was of Asian extraction. The Appaloosa, used almost exclusively by the Nez Percé Indians, was, in White’s opinion, more of an Asian breed than Spanish, as are most mustangs.

  The Appaloosa was a recognizable breed by the time Lewis and Clark passed through the area. The Nez Percé were the only Native Americans who were breeding horses. They understood breeding the best stallions to the best mares and practiced gelding inferior stallions. All other Native Americans caught their horses wild or stole them from one another. The Nez Percé horses were highly prized by their neighbors. They were known for their speed, endurance, and surefootedness. They were short-legged, stocky, and had large heads and thick necks. Their spotted rumps are the defining characteristic today. All these characteristics were common with the “heavenly horse” from China.

  THE ZUNI ENIGMA

  The Zuni, Native American peoples from New Mexico and Arizona, were the subject of thorough investigation by Dr. Nancy Yaw Davis in
her book The Zuni Enigma.6

  Yaw Davis hypothesizes that the Zuni were errant Japanese travelers who landed on the coast of Southern California in 1350 A.D. and gradually moved inland, forming the people we today call Zuni. Their DNA has been tested and shows remarkable closeness to Japanese DNA. Furthermore, some appear to be able to understand Japanese, sharing a host of similar words. The linguistic parallels between the Zuni and Japanese are quite startling and many more examples can be found. Here are just a few: English, meaning to be inside: Zuni = uchi, Japanese = uchi; English, meaning leaf: Zuni = ha, Japanese = ha; English, meaning yes: Zuni = hai, Japanese = hai; English, meaning to wake up: Zuni = okwi, Japanese = oki (ru).

  The Japanese ceremony known as Namahage and the Zuni ceremony called Uwanaga are both intended to scare children to behave well and obey their parents. Masked monsters, considered to be from the land of the dead, appear carrying knives and other weapons and threaten to kill and then eat the bad children. The masks of both ceremonies have horns and large bulging eyes with long hair and beards. In both ceremonies the monster has assistants who help frighten the children and collect the gifts of the parents to supplicate the monster. In Japan and the Zuni areas, the masked monsters traditionally appear after the New Year’s ceremony, in mid-January. Both ceremonies are associated with purification and with protecting fruit trees, especially peach trees.

  The Zuni tribe can be linked to the Japanese on a biological basis by looking at their teeth. The prevalence of an extra cusp on the upper first molar, called the cusp of Carabelli, shows this. The percentage of Native Americans likely to have such a cusp is 60.2 percent. The Pima Indians who live near the Zuni are 53.3 percent likely, while the Zuni drop to a 36 percent likelihood, which is similar to the Japanese at 31–35 percent.

  Davis summarizes her work:

  [E]vidence suggesting Asian admixture is found in Zuni biology, lexicon, religion, social organization, and oral traditions of migration. Possible cultural and language links of Zuni to California, the social disruption at the end of the Heian period of the 12th century in Japan, the size of Japanese ships at the time of proposed migration, the cluster of significant changes in the late 13th century in Zuni, all lend further credibility to a relatively late prehistoric contact. . . .

  Another example of linguistic admixture can be found in the accounts of Thomas Edwin Farish, a historian from Arizona in the early twentieth century. Farish wrote that the language of the Tartars was a dialect linked to the Apache nation. Farish recounted a nineteenth-century anecdote about W. B. Horton, the superintendent of schools in Tucson, Arizona. Horton had been appointed to run a trading post on the land of the Apache nation. At one point he went on a buying trip to San Francisco and brought back a Chinese immigrant as a cook. Horton, said Farish, one night heard the voices of the cook and some Apaches.

  Wondering what they were doing there at that hour of the night, he opened the door and found his cook conversing with an Apache. He asked his cook where he had acquired the Indian language. The cook said: “He speak all same me. I Tartar Chinese; he speak same me, little different, not much.”

  Farish reported he had heard of that before, that Chinese Tartar could speak with the Indians.

  From these facts it would seem that the Apache is of Tartar origin. From the fact that the Apache language was practically the same as that of the Tartar Chinese, color is given to the theory ​. . . ​that Western America was “originally peopled by the Chinese, or, at least, that the greater part of the new world civilization may be attributed to these people. . . .”7

  These provide a snapshot of some of the many streams of evidence for transcultural diffusionism, which have been uncovered over the years on the Pacific coast of the Americas. The evidence mounts, showing that pre-Columbian contact between Asia and the Americas has been consistent and significant. The “established” version of history negates this evidence as optimistic fallacy. However, as far as we can see, the torrent of evidence continues, and we are sure that the floodgates will burst someday soon.

  In the meantime, we will turn to east central Florida, where despite encroaching development, another remarkable major discovery has occurred. Much more work is to be done.

  CHAPTER 17

  Stone Age Sailors: The “Windover Bog” People of Florida

  In 1982, a backhoe operator outside Titusville, Florida, discovered bones as he dug into the rich soil at the bottom of a pond at Windover Farm, which was being prepared for a housing subdivision. That discovery led to the start of the Windsor Archaeological Research Project. Eventually, this would provide some scattered impressions about the lives and customs of a lost civilization that, still unidentified, was perhaps of European origin, people who came to the New World more than seven thousand years ago.

  After the first discovery of the bones, further investigation revealed a graveyard with the remains of about 168 individuals, along with their implements and artifacts. The cemetery rests in the peat layer beneath the pond, close to Interstate 95 in Brevard County, Florida, within a few miles of Cape Canaveral and about sixty miles from Disney World.1

  The developers of the site, EKS Corporation, called in archaeologists and funded a project to study and conduct radiocarbon testing, which produced the result that the human remains were more than seven thousand years old.

  As more skeletal remains emerged from the bog, scientists described the area as one of the most significant ancient cemeteries ever found. The characteristics of the bog layer had left the remains in a remarkable state of preservation.

  One striking and poignant find about the remains was a child determined to be about three years old, wrapped in fabric that was made from native fibrous plants, and with toys in her arms, an object resembling a mortar and pestle, and a turtle shell.

  The degree of preservation, in fact, was so remarkable that scientists found brain tissue, first in a woman judged to be forty-five years old, and later, in 1991, in recovered skulls; in some cases the brains were complete and intact. The brain matter had decreased in mass to about a third of its original size, but the characteristics of the brains were easily recognizable—each hemisphere and other details were evident. The discovery of brain matter that old, and the opportunity to analyze brain chemistry and DNA, was unique.

  Glen H. Doran, chairman of the anthropology department of Florida State University, was one of the first scientists to study the find. Doran described such details as extremely worn teeth and the absence of ceramic artifacts, which indicated that the grave site was likely more than three thousand years old. Their ancestors, however, appear to have arrived in North America as many as seven thousand years earlier than that.

  There also were indications that the recovered skulls had shapes that were not consistent with the heads of peoples usually categorized as Native Americans. Doran and other anthropologists were able to catalog the characteristics of the 168 people in the cemetery. They established profiles of who the people were, how they lived, and how long they lived. They determined that 67 of the individuals were younger than seventeen; they had an average life expectancy of 27–30, but if they lived that long they might live for about twenty more years. Some lived into their sixties and two of the individuals found lived to be about 75. The researchers also were able to determine that among 83 adults, 40 were men, and 43 were women.

  Dr. Joseph Lorenz, a geneticist then at the Coriell Institute for Medical Research, studied the DNA of the bones of five individuals among the Windover bog people. He expected to find typical DNA markers for Native Americans, but instead found they appeared to be European.2 Further examination of the brain material also indicated the bog people were of European origin.

  CORROBORATION: THE X2 HAPLOTYPE

  In The Lost Empire of Atlantis, I discussed how genetic markers were providing key information about ancient migrations. Among other issues, I focused on the spread of haplogroup X2.3 I noted that there is considerable debate and questioning in
analyzing DNA to determine when mutations took place for sub haplogroups.

  A research team led by Maere Reidla, a geneticist at the University of Tartu in Estonia, identified the X2 haplogroup in 2003 and described its incidence among Europeans and North Americans, but not among populations of Asia or the East. Saara Finnilä has listed the percentages of X2 found in Europe and America. Michael Brown and Douglas Wallace, Emory University researchers, searched for this marker X, found at low frequencies in the remains of ancient Americans.4

  But I noted that from the high percentages that could be determined, the X2 haplogroup appears to have originated in the Near East and particularly eastern Anatolia. That would include the Minoan civilization, established in Crete and the Aegean Sea area. Nevertheless, there is no certainty about when members of the European haplogroup X2 arrived in the New World. The possible dates have a broad separation—either in approximately 7400–7200 B.C. or 3000–1800 B.C.

  Those wide-ranging dates indicate one of two possibilities: that the X2 population in North America could have been caused by Y-DNA mutation from European X2 ancestors around 1800 B.C. or from a migration almost six thousand years earlier.

  The dating of the bog people of Florida at 6,990–8,120 years ago based on their X2 genetic marker is broadly comparable on both sides of the Atlantic. So it seems to me that Lorenz’s analysis is corroborated by DNA results of several different European studies. The bog people of Windover were Europeans who settled in the Americas from 8190 B.C. They came by sea in substantial numbers—in many ships.

  A SOCIETY: THE SEAFARERS WHO SETTLED IN FLORIDA

  Like the later Minoan seafarers, the people of Windover were a kind and caring people—not savages. An examination of the remains of a fifty-year-old woman showed she had suffered multiple bone fractures several years before her death. She could not have lived without being cared for. In another case, a boy thirteen to fifteen years old had spina bifida, a crippling condition caused by failure of the vertebrae to grow together around the spinal cord. One of his feet was severely deformed and bones of the other leg indicated that a terrible—and probably fatal—infection had caused the loss of the foot and part of the leg. They must have cared for this boy almost all his life.