Secrets of Ancient America: Archaeoastronomy and the Legacy of the Phoenicians, Celts, and Other Forgotten Explorers

by Carl Lehrburger

  In Saga America, Fell made a case that contemporaries of the Greeks from the Mediterranean made it to the Americas, including the Tartessians from Tarshish (Tartessos in Greek), a city on the southern coast of Spain that was destroyed by the Carthaginians in 553 B.C. Their script, similar to Phoenician, became known as Tartessian. The Carthaginian conquerors would have taken over the transatlantic trade of the Tartessians and forged an alliance with the Iberian Celts.

  Fell claimed that several Tartessian inscriptions have been found in America. One was off the coast of Maine, and another was discovered in 1780 at Bristol, Rhode Island, on a cliff above Mount Hope Bay. This severely vandalized inscription, which included an etching of a ship without sails, was identified by him as Tartessian Punic, and he translated it to read, “Voyagers from Tarshish this stone proclaims.”36

  Fell also stated that another Tartessian inscription was found in Ohio, and he concluded that trade was carried out between North America and the Mediterranean for copper and furs at least six hundred years before Christ and nearly two thousand years before Columbus.37, 38 He also wrote in Saga America that the Greek historian Plutarch (A.D. 46–120) named Epeiros as “the continent that rims the western Ocean” and was describing North America.39

  Additionally, a manuscript attributed to Plutarch that was discovered in 1558 by a French churchman in an Italian monastery mentions voyages across the Atlantic. According to Plutarch, Carthaginian ships traveled from Spain and Carthage to Iceland and down the eastern coast of North America. His descriptions of the islands fit the Orkneys, Shetlands, Faroes, and Iceland (Ogygia), and he reported that after passing by a frozen sea one comes to a land where Greeks settled and intermarried with the natives.40

  The “Greeks in America” hypothesis was given more credibility in 2012 when Minas Tsikritsis, a researcher of Aegean scripts, used a computer to analyze information provided by Plutarch and concluded that the early Greeks knew that “west of the three islands and northwest of Britain” lay a great continent. As reported by Plutarch, Tsikritsis’s findings suggest that the first contact was made by Minoan merchants and that later the Mycenaeans sailed westward and returned home after years of faltering in the Americas. He surmised that “the information that is mentioned in the text confirms the description of a journey in A.D. 86 from Canada to Carthage.”41

  Fell also observed more than fifty words with Greek roots found in the native Indian dialects of Nova Scotia and Maine, suggesting that Greek traders were the source of the words. He also noted in Saga America that a large number of Greek word roots make up part of the vocabulary of Algonquin, the language of the Micmacs, who live among the Great Lakes.42

  Still, there is even more evidence that the Greeks arrived in North America and intermarried with natives. An engraved nineteen-inch by fifteen-inch limestone tablet was uncovered in 1870 in a mound excavation in Sumner County, Tennessee. As reported by DNA researcher Donald Yates, the depicted Cherokee chief wears a crested helmet and carries a spear and shield, all of which resemble Greek attire, while a Cherokee woman wears a large Star of David.43

  These Greek connections are also consistent with the Walam Olum (Red Record), a historical narrative of the Lenni-Lenape (or Lenape) Native American tribe from Delaware. Botanist and antiquarian Constantine Samuel Rafinesque said he translated it from birch bark and cedar tablets in the 1830s.

  Despite criticism of its authenticity, many think that at least some of it was likely based on stories of the Algonquin or Lenni-Lenape tribes. Yates says that the text teaches that there was a foreign tribe called the Stonys along the south bank of the Missouri River who had metal armor and weapons, and his DNA studies confirm there is a mixture of “anomalous” eastern Mediterranean mitochondrial lineages in that area.44

  All this supports evidence that one of the controversial Red Bird River petroglyphs in Manchester, Kentucky, has a Greek inscription from early in the Christian era and that it was not a simple etching by Cherokees from the 1800s (as maintained by the Archeological Institute of America).45 This was engraved along with inscriptions in eight ancient European, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern languages on a fifty-ton stone that fell from a cliff above the Red Bird River in 1994.46 The huge stone was moved and now resides near the Manchester courthouse, in the Rawlings and Stinson Park, across the street from the main picnic area.

  A sign installed at the Red Bird River petroglyph site reads:

  This is the famous Red Bird Petroglyph known since pioneer days and enrolled on the National Register of Historic Sites. On December 7, 1994, this historic stone fell from a sandstone cliff and rolled onto Highway 66 on Lower Red Bird. On December 9, 1994, it was transported here and set up in its home. At least 8 Old World alphabets are engraved on it. These alphabets were extinct when Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492. The alphabets are first century Greek and Hebrew, Old Libyan, Old Arabic, and Iberian-Punic, which probably dates from the ninth-century B.C. Ogam, Germanic Runes, and Tiffinag-Numidian, are also on this stone. Of all the hundreds of important, translatable, and published inscriptions in the United States, this is the first one to have been given official protection. Clay County and the City of Manchester have granted protection to this Stone. In doing so, they have obtained a good name and public esteem worldwide.47

  Fig. 15.10. The Red Bird River petroglyph from Manchester, Kentucky. A first-century Christian monogram has been interpreted to mean “Jesus Christ Son of the Father.”

  (Characters based on images found at s8int.com/phile/page43.html; accessed July 8, 2014).

  Fell also noted in Saga America a Greek inscription that had been chiseled into the smooth face of a fifty-five-pound stone found near Cripple Creek, Colorado. The inscribed boulder, which is now lost, recorded in a “slightly illiterate North African Greek of the Byzantine period” the burial of a Greek-speaking traveler. Noting the particular use of an omega letter found in Coptic Greek, Fell interpreted it to read, “Here lies the servant of God, Palladeis.”48 It was later determined that the style of Greek letters had striking similarities to Jewish catacomb inscriptions dating from the sixth through the eighth centuries A.D.

  ROMAN CONNECTIONS

  Other writers have provided evidence that Roman ships traveled to India, China, and Southeast Asia. Unknown to many, however, is the abundant evidence proving they also made it to North and South American shores. As mentioned, Roman-era maps show Antipodes as South America along with the Gulf of Mexico, Florida, and Brazil. Also, the 1414 map of Albertin de Virga shows the Peruvian coast and calls it Ca-paru, which is the same as the Land of Per on the 1436 Andrea Bianco map, demonstrating that Peru was named earlier than Pizarro’s arrival in 1521.

  Also, Mexican archaeologist Joe Garcia Payon discovered a curious ceramic head inside a pyramid at Mexico’s Calixtlahuaca ruins in 1933. Excavated from beneath a floor dating to the eleventh century A.D., it was identified in 1961 by Austrian anthropologist Robert von Heine-Geldern as unquestionably being from the Hellenistic-Roman school of art.49

  Scores of other Roman artifacts have been discovered throughout the Americas, including inscriptions, coins, and many ceramic amphorae (vaselike storage jars) that were recovered off the coasts of North and South America. David Pratt, who authored “The Ancient Americas: Migrations, Contacts, and Atlantis,” reported that amphorae from the first century A.D. were discovered off the coast of Maine in 1971 and 1972.50

  Pratt also noted that in 1972, scuba divers off the coast of Honduras found the hull of a ship with a cargo of Roman amphorae. More amphorae were discovered in South America, off the coast of Venezuela and fifteen miles off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1976. Again, off the coast of Brazil, divers discovered a sunken ship from the first century B.C. containing hundreds of Roman urns. However, the Brazilian government banned any investigation to protect the reputation of the Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral, who is credited with “discovering Brazil.” Roman amphorae were also discovered off Venezuela two years
later.51 These Roman vases were used to store and transport liquids, and their prevalence suggests trading routes were well established.

  As for North America, judge and historian John Haywood (1762–1826) described Roman coins and buttons the size of half-dollars and made between A.D. 138 and A.D. 259 that were dug up by settlers in Tennessee and Kentucky between 1819 and 1821.52 More recently, in 1954 or 1955, near the Red River at Terral, Oklahoma, a concave-shaped coin made into a decorative adornment was found in a previously plowed field. On one side could be seen an inscribed bull over a dolphin with a Latin inscription above that spelling the name of a city, Thurium (an Athenian colony in Italy around 200 B.C.). On the other side was a portrait of Athena.53

  In her book In Plain Sight, Gloria Farley describes a coin found in Black Gum, in eastern Oklahoma. It has nearly identical engravings as the Thurium medallion. She also noted that another coin with Nero on the front was found in Heavener, Oklahoma, and she listed more than a dozen other finds throughout the Americas, including a possible sighting by Christopher Columbus of part of a gold coin with letters on a necklace worn by a Caribbean Indian.54

  Another fascinating artifact is a Roman chalice found in southern Virginia in 1946 at a pre-Colonial depth of more than a foot and a half. It was among a trove of ancient worked bog-iron pieces unearthed by engineer James V. Howe from sixteen sites in a sixty-mile stretch of the Roanoke River Valley. The pieces had been fashioned into swords, knives, chisels, nails, and a type of threaded nut used in Germany in the second-century A.D.55 Moreover, the Calalus relics from latter-day Romans who may have found their way to southeastern Arizona were addressed in chapter 14.

  MORE IRISH AND WELSH CONNECTIONS

  As documented in chapter 4, hundreds of stone chambers, dolmans, and habitation or ritual sites, including America’s Stonehenge in New Hampshire and the Calendar One site in Vermont, support a Celtic presence in America, such that the area could be called “New Ireland” instead of New England. In chapters 7, 8, and 9, I explored at great length the Celtic presence in Colorado, Oklahoma, and Kansas, noting the many Celtic Ogham inscriptions that have been discovered and that were often accompanied by archaeoastronomical features. In addition, later Old Irish Ogham inscriptions have been found in West Virginia.

  The Celtic voyages appear to cease after 55 B.C., when Julius Caesar was able to outmaneuver and capture the main Celtic fleet of 220 ships in the most pivotal naval battle of the Roman conquest of the Celts. Noting that the history of “the rise and fall of Celtic sea power has been so strangely neglected,” Fell provided details of how the Celtic ships were superior in size and height and were dressed with iron chains to protect them from being rammed by the Romans. Despite having a relatively mediocre navy, the Romans defeated the entire Celtic fleet with a combination of the newly devised Roman falx (a sharp hooklike weapon) and a prevailing lack of winds that would have aided a quick Celtic retreat.56

  The Celts’ sea power never recovered, and latter-day Welsh sailing vessels during the medieval period were little more than enlarged coracles made with frameworks of wood. Over these, hides were stretched, but they were only large enough to carry six or eight men. Nevertheless, some of the Welsh still got around. Welsh visitors to the Americas could have included Madoc, the son of Madocab Owain Gwynedd, king of Wales (though many dispute this).57 His A.D. 1170 voyage was documented in Historia Cambria (History of Wales) by Cardoc of Llancarfan, which was edited in 1584 by British historian David Powel. Three Madoc voyages from Wales are mentioned: the first was an exploratory journey to the western Atlantic, the second included explorations in the American wilderness, and the third was an attempt at colonization involving ten ships. While no evidences of these trips are known, survivors of Hernando de Soto’s 1540 ill-fated expedition saw abandoned fortifications on their march from Florida to the Mississippi and attributed them to Welsh settlers.58 According to different oral traditions, Madoc and his countrymen first landed and settled in Mobile Bay, Alabama.59

  It was also reported by Thomas Jefferson and others that during the colonial period some Native Americans spoke a language similar to Welsh. Jefferson is said to have believed the Prince Madoc story, and in 1804 he instructed Meriwether Lewis to search for the descendants of the Madoc Welsh Indians “said to be up the Missouri.”60

  Another report suggests that the site of the first Madoc fort, which would have been built in A.D. 1171, was Desoto Falls, near Fort Payne, Alabama. In this rendition of the story, as a result of hostilities with the natives, Madoc moved and built a second fort in what is now Fort Mountain State Park in northwest Georgia. It was situated on top of a three-thousand-foot mountain with a massive wall around it that is still visible today.61

  Another pre-Columbian fort, sited outside present-day Manchester, Tennessee, has been identified as having similar features. Numerous archaeologists have testified over the years that these forts are pre-Columbian, are distinct from structures built by Native Americans, and are constructed in a way similar to Madoc’s family castle in Wales.62

  The descendants of Madoc’s group would have become assimilated into Indian tribes, including the distinctly different Mandan tribe of American Native Indians. The Mandans were described as “having long beards, speaking with a strange dialect, having grey hair in old age, and having women who possessed a soft, magnificent, and distinctly different beauty.”63 Also, the “bull” boats used by the Mandan Indians were nearly identical with Welsh coracles.64 However, the Mandan Indians are sadly no more. Intertribal warfare and a smallpox epidemic in 1836 devastated them, leaving only the reports of others to fill in the previous centuries.

  To deepen the mystery of the Madoc expedition, consider this: Governor John Seiver of Tennessee wrote a letter in 1810 noting an “extensive” conversation he had in 1782 with the great Cherokee Chief Oconosoto, who told him about the people who built the unusual stone forts. Chief Oconosoto had learned from his forefathers that “they were people who called themselves Welsh, and they crossed the Great Water, and they landed near the mouth of the Alabama River at Mobile.” A plaque at Fort Mountain State Park repeats the Tennessee governor’s statement that the Cherokees believed “a people called Welsh” had built a fort on the mountain long ago to repel Indian attacks.65 In 1953, another plaque commemorating Madoc was erected at Fort Morgan on the shores of Mobile Bay, Alabama, by the Daughters of the American Revolution. It read, “In memory of Prince Madoc a Welsh explorer who landed on the shores of Mobile Bay in 1170 and left behind with the Indians the Welsh language.” However, the Park Service removed the controversial plaque in 2008.66

  Known artifacts from other Welsh travelers include fragments of daggers (North Salem, New York, and Merrimacport, Massachusetts), an iron blade fragment (North Carolina), and burial tablets.67 During the 1800s antiquarians reported finding armor breastplates near Louisville, Kentucky, that bore a mermaid-and-harp insignia. Nearby they located a tombstone inscribed with the date A.D. 1186. 68

  Farther north, at Peterborough, in Alberta, Canada, Ogham inscriptions are prominently etched into rock faces, but they are uniquely accompanied by Bronze Age Tifinag letters ten to twenty inches high (twenty-five to fifty-one centimeters). Fell translated the inscriptions as being created by a person named Woden-lithi, who identifies his kingdom in Norway as Ringerike, his ship as Gungnir, and the reason for his voyage being to acquire copper ingots. Woden-lithi’s panel also included an image of a ship and was dedicated to Tziw, a central sun god, and had instructions on calendar regulations, astronomy, Nordic mythology, and festivals. Fell placed Woden-lithi’s visit around 1700 B.C. David H. Kelley confirmed some of Fell’s translations, assigning a date for the petroglyphs between 1200 B.C and 200 B.C. If these dates are correct, this Bronze Age petroglyph panel includes one of the earliest zodiac representations in North America.

  ARAB CONNECTIONS

  As I mentioned in chapter 1, Columbus had access to Arab maps documenting the Americas. While Europeans were struggling
to emerge from the Dark Ages, Arabian merchants made maps showing the American continents. For example, Al-Masudi’s (Abu Al-Hasan Ali ibn Al-Husayn ibn Ali Al-Mas’udi) Historical Annals of 942 described a voyage from Cordova, Spain, under the command of a Captain Khashkhash that “returned from the West” filled with treasures after a long voyage.69

  Another account, this one by the twelfth-century Arabic geographer Muhammad Al-Idrisi, described a trip to America by the Al-Mugrurim brothers in 1154 that took the same amount of time it took Columbus—about a month. Al-Idrisi also described rich fishing in the North Atlantic and the whalebone huts of Labrador’s Inuit natives, while others described the return of boats from transatlantic voyages loaded with American tobacco.70 Also, Persian cartographer Hamad Allah Mustawfi’s map of 1350, thought to be the earliest Arabic map showing the Americas, clearly shows a large continent across the Atlantic that he called “Waq-Waq.”

  Fig. 15.11. The Muhammad Al-Idrisi map of 1154. Inscribed on a silver plate, the Al-Idrisi map confirms Arab knowledge that the earth is round. (Gunnar Thompson, American Discovery)

  One of the earliest maps available to Medieval European mariners from 1414 and presumably compiled from earlier Arab maps was drawn by the Venetian cosmographer Albertin de Virga. Gunnar Thompson’s The Friar’s Map of Ancient America—1360 AD also provides many other examples of European maps before Columbus, including the Yale Vinland map (dated 1440) and the Frau Mauro map (dated 1459).

  An Arabian geographer, Jezirate al Tennyn, identified a land he called “the Dragon’s Isle” as North America in 1424.71 Then there was the “mythical” island of “Brasil” west of Ireland, which first appeared in a chart drawn by Angelino Dulcert in 1325, while a Catalan (from Catalonia in northern Spain) chart of around 1480 labels two islands “Illa de Brasil,” one of which was southwest of Ireland.72 Moreover, shortly after the return of John Cabot’s 1497 expedition, Pedro de Ayala, a Spanish ambassador to England, reported that the land found by Cabot had been “discovered in the past by the men from Bristol who found ‘Brasil.’”73