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Minoans in America

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  Quote eaglecap Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Minoans in America
    Posted: 06-Feb-2009 at 18:05
These were the Veneti.

The ships Caesar describes are obviously much more suited to the North Sea than Meditteranean galleys were, but whether they were suited to an Atlantic crossing or not is dubious. It's implausible that the Veneti were designing ships to make crossings. They were first and foremost traders, and if they had such rare commodities as they could get in the Americas, they would have been selling them all over Europe. Romans would certainly know about any unusual goods they were peddling, and Caesar wouldn't have failed to make note of it.

The Veneti vessels did have high gunwales and were equipped with sails, but that doesn't mean they weren't coasters - in the 10th century, the same region produced another type of sailing ship with high gunwales, the cog. Cogs were (until the 13th century or so) coasters and certainly were not capable of transoceanic voyages.

I tend to agree but still with your good information it is still inconclusive and it would take a greater study in which I do not have time. The author who brought this up in BC America was only giving an opinion and it does not mean I totally believed him but for me it was only his theory. I was only bringing up a maybe- a big one at that but maybe!! It is more likely they drifted to the New World by accident, caught in a storm etc
Λοιπόν, αδελφοί και οι συμπολίτες και οι στρατιώτες, να θυμάστε αυτό ώστε μνημόσυνο σας, φήμη και ελευθερία σας θα ε
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  Quote Nick1986 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 28-May-2012 at 19:10
Why would the Minoans have gone to mine copper in America when they could acquire it through trade with their European and Middle Eastern neighbors?
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  Quote red clay Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-May-2012 at 09:50
Nick, it wasn't Minoans.  The Phoneticians were the people who mined copper in NA.  Their motivation was gold.
High grade copper ore was not easy to come by, the Colossus used all available copper stocks in the "old world".  They were able to load up with copper ingots, then swing by Britain for tin, a commodity even more scarce than copper, and they had the materials for bronze.
The evidence for this is all over the "upper Peninsula" of Michigan.  It's been known for years that someone mined millions of pounds of copper and smelted it in the same area.  And while it's also known that the Amerinds had a copper trade set up, it could never account for the mass mining effort that appears to have occurred.  The amount of copper artifacts found in NA wouldn't fill the bed of a pickup truck.  The Amerinds most likely used the easily found "Native copper".  At that time there was a fair amount of fairly pure copper "nuggets" that could be surface collected and used without smelting.  But not enough to account for the mining.
 
Nick, this isn't anything new.  The evidence for them being here is all over the East Coast and Canada.  There have been artifacts found, right in the river valley I live in, that have Tartesian and Phonetician scripts on them.   Records show they have been finding them since the mid 1800's.  I always wondered what brought them here myself.  Then I heard about the mining in Michigan and started thinking.  There are 2 old copper mines in one of the Northern countys of New Jersey.  The Dutch mined them when they first settled NY.  However, evidence has shown that the mines had existed long before the Dutch, and long before the Lenape arrived.
Again, the motivation is greed.  A common sailor could go on a voyage of 3 or so years and come home a wealthy man it was a sort of "sweat equity".
 


Edited by red clay - 30-May-2012 at 08:56
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  Quote Nick1986 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-May-2012 at 19:17
Very interesting Red. The Phoenicians were certainly capable of long-distance voyages, being the greatest sailors of the ancient world, but what would they have done about food and water?
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  Quote red clay Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19-Jan-2013 at 14:41
We're talking about a cross atlantic voyage, not the pacific.Smile The trip was short enough to be able to stow enough provisions.
 
Since I wrote that last post I've done some reading.  The Minoans likely were here, actually as time goes on, it begins to look like a question of who didn't discover America.
 
The amount of Copper mined at IsleRoyal has been estimated at about a Billion pounds.  Most of which was "float copper".  It has a purity of approx 95%.  It really didn't need to be smelted before being shipped.
Copper from Mich. has been compared to copper ingots taken from the only shipwreck known for certain to be Minoan.  Purity and other characteristics matched perfectly.
 
I don't have a source for this, but several mining experts have estimated that, using the tools and implements available to them,  it would have needed 10,000 people working over a period of a thousand years to remove that much copper.  I've heard that a few times, but haven't found any secondary mention of it yet.
 
 
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  Quote Nick1986 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20-Jan-2013 at 17:10
I guess it's possible they came over to mine copper. Did they bring workers with them, or use Natives as slaves?
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  Quote Centrix Vigilis Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20-Jan-2013 at 19:33
A million dollar question for a million dollar hypothesis.
 
I have not read the following or his earlier work but it might be worth a perusal.
 
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"

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Pilger's law: 'If it's been officially denied, then it's probably true'

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  Quote Nick1986 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10-Feb-2013 at 09:01
It would also be interesting to know whether Indian stories record encounters with these strangers in large canoes
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  Quote medenaywe Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10-Feb-2013 at 09:16
Flash drives&HDD discs of expeditions are on search list.SmileWe need epitaph stones with the inscriptions.Bad
Creek stone is one of them.(even if i call this Demotic&Ancient "Egyptian"&Ancient "Greek")
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  Quote Nick1986 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Feb-2013 at 17:36
Originally posted by medenaywe

Flash drives&HDD discs of expeditions are on search list.SmileWe need epitaph stones with the inscriptions.Bad
Creek stone is one of them.(even if i call this Demotic&Ancient "Egyptian"&Ancient "Greek")

How substantial are the ancient finds? One stone might have simply been washed ashore from a shipwreck, but the presence of many artefacts make the theory of colonisation more credible. I wish we had Red back to answer these questions
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  Quote red clay Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Feb-2013 at 11:04
There are literally thousands found across the US.  Bat Creek, Grave creek, pemberton axe, The Newark Decalogue and on.  These aren't new. Most have been known for decades.  But until recently anything that didn't follow the accepted history was automatically a hoax.  
 
New science recently done on older known artifacts, such as the Kensington and Heavener Runestone, shows them to be authentic.
 
 
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  Quote Nick1986 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Feb-2013 at 16:58
Originally posted by red clay

There are literally thousands found across the US.  Bat Creek, Grave creek, pemberton axe, The Newark Decalogue and on.  These aren't new. Most have been known for decades.  But until recently anything that didn't follow the accepted history was automatically a hoax.  
 
New science recently done on older known artifacts, such as the Kensington and Heavener Runestone, shows them to be authentic.
 
 

I used to think the same way Red until I noticed what looked like Egyptian or Phoenician beads in the grave of a Siberian princess. If Classical era traders made it as far as Russia, it's possible they could sail across the Pacific, as the blacks who colonised Australia did.
http://www.allempires.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=33209
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