Ancient Caucasians with beards in Meso America

There are no proofs of contacts, this is the fact. Yet if we consider shipbuilding technology that ended in European discovery of Americas (as some American Indian leader said: What is this big fuss about a white guy that got lost), it was inferior to many technologies that preceded it or existed at the same time. If I wanted sea adventure in that time, I would choose Polynesians anytime. The same holds for Science and in particular Astronomy and Navigation. Europe was not that hot in these fields until XVIII century. Actually, it is amazing that Columbus made it in such a primitive ship. It was certainly less sea worthy than Viking Drakkar.

Originally posted by Cryptic [ And perhaps we should also re-define "contact". For example. contact can mean A- Contact that leads to a direct exchange of culture and technology that directly impacts both civilizations B- Temporary and rare contact by small groups of nearly the same culture / technology that leaves little or no impact on both civilizations.   "B" type contact with the new world is entirely possible. My guess is that "b" type contact was more likely to occur with Polynesians or  indigenous north east Asians. They had much of the same  culture as the Amerindians and would less likely make a big impact.   Even by the time of Columbus, the existance of a large land mass to the west was a well known "unknown" in Europe (among the several thousand deep sea sailors). My guess is that the Polynesians, during their glory days, had the same knowledge from sporadic "B" type contact.

Originally posted by Pachacutec   (4) The Inuits and Amerindians to reach Europe (surprise). They have the skills since 8th century AD. Curiously it is the only of these hipotetical "discoverers" of whom there are some circumstancial written evidence.

Edited by cavalry4ever - 20-Sep-2009 at 11:26

Originally posted by Pachacutec Type "B" contacts maybe possible. But rationally who got the chances to make it? From the Old World the few people that HAD the technology to do it were: (1) The Polynesians with theirs superbs catamarans; not early that the 12th century AD.   (2) The Chinese with theirs imperial fleets. Not earlier than the 15th century AD.   (3) The Arabs, with theirs latin sail ships; not earlier than the 9th century AD.

Originally posted by Jams Originally posted by Pachacutec Originally posted by Sander ...You are almost sounding like Pinguin with that sort of stuff. Read this: Some cultural exchanging with the other civilizations on earth does not make the indians inferior or something.  Romans, Arabs,  Turks , Africans , Chinese etc etc. all builded civilizations with some mutual exchanging.    The problem is very simple. There aren’t contacts to the Americas certified by science; none at all. Not a single case. The Americas were completely isolated from the rest of the world, since 12.000 years ago, with only two exceptions.   (1)   The Inuit reached the New World’s Arctic circa 2.000 years ago.   (2)   The Norse reached New Foundland around 1.000 A.D.   vs. Originally posted by Pachacutec But not contact has been proved whatsoever, at any time after the Bering Strait closed.   You contradict yourself there. Eskimo's are also contact. They came from the old world, and they went back to the old world, to and fro ( "Eskimo" is a slur, but I don't know what to call them otherwise? It's supposed to be an umbrella term). The open Bering Strait was no hindrance at all.   There's also the evidence that the earliest Proto-Eskimo or Paleo-Eskimo came at an earlier time than the "true" Thule Inuits (they did, it's undebatable). Much earlier than 2K years ago. We know that, because their bodies still exist in Greenland, in a frozen state.   Some evidence suggests that they came island hopping across the Aleutian Islands. Others suggest that their inception was in the Americas, and that they "hopped" the other way! That would mean that they have been there for thousands of years beyond the pre Dorset cultures!  That would kind of mean that "Eskimos" really are first nations peoples just as Amerindians, and that their presence in the Americas may be almost as old as the Dine/Tinglit etc. Of course, that's speculative, maybe we will have more evidence in the future.

Originally posted by Sander   Jams disputes, but its solely arguing without presenting any contra-evidence.   Not one American figure with such facial features and beards  that antedates the Olmecs is shown.  Thus any suggestion that  such beards, features and artstyle were  there before the Olmecs is unsupported.  All antedate in the Med. /Middle East.

 
I don't have to present any evidence. It's you that make the assumption. It's an interpretation on your part, not the actual evidence itself. The evidence does not support such a specific interpretation, which is what I said.

Edited by Jams - 05-Oct-2009 at 10:27

A Florida area Native American, 1700s.

Selocta, Creek, 1836-44

Holmes Colbert, a Chickasaw, 1850s.

Ely Parker, an Iroquois of the Seneca tribe, late

Of course one of the top supporters of diffusionism was the late Thor Hyerdahl. It must be remembered that he was a believer in the natural conveyors of the sea, the Ocean currents!

One has to rememember that all weather sailing is not considered as an ancient invention, that is it seems the eary sailors, at least those who sailed upon mostly inland waters like the Med. the Baltic, and the Black Sea etc., reportedly sailed when wind conditions were favorable. That is sea trade followed the cycle of the winds. At certain times of the year, winds are expected to follow a cyclic pattern, that is in some months the primary wind to be expected would be from the N.W to the S.E., and later in the year the primary winds would reverse, or nearly so. For an example early Portugese sailors, whould sail from the Red Sea area or East Africa to the East (India) when the prevaling winds allowed, and then have to wait in India until the winds were favorable to return, a voyage of many months.

Early sailing vessels have been described by some very smart men like Sir Isaac Newton, described them as "round" in shape. Whether this was a corrrect supposition is left to you, but it certainly would make sailing in a straight line very difficult without some type of keel!

Thus Thor H. figured that merely getting a sea worthy vessel into the conveyor belt called the current, would be a very easy way to travel from the N.W. coast of Africa into Mesoamerica. You might well know that his major theme supporting diffusionism was the apparent use of the African sweet potato in the Americas before the conquest.

And, it seems that Colombo did exactly the same, he relied upon the strong current to help carry his vessels from East to West, with a vessel that probably had very little ability to travel at any great angle into the wind (tacking)! It seems the further development of long and heavy keels, as well as sail design, led to the developement of ships which could sail at a good number of degrees into a wind!

Note these problems were not very great in the Med. area, since strong currents seem to not be either a problem or a help. And regular wind changes made it economical to sail only when the times were right. So, in the Med., as in the Baltic, and Black seas, etc., vessels equipped with oars were used to make all year voyages possible, but this meant sailing close to land in most instances since crews of rowers whould soon become exausted trying to row into a strong wind, and if in deep water no method of anchoring was possible, thus when faced with these problems they would head to the nearest sheltered land or harbor.

So, it was, it seems, a very easy accicental method of travel when one of more of the more ancient sailing vessels became trapped in the deep ocean West of Spain and N. Africa, with counter prevailing winds, to finally give up and travel with both the winds and the currents, or perhaps just to drift. Thus Thor H. suspected that any well constructed reed vessel or wooden log raft might well survive a cross Atlantic voyage, especially since the prevailing winds were to the S. West, in the lower attitudes, and from the Gulf of Mexico, there existed both prevailing currents (the Gulf Stream) and winds, to make a return voyage to N. Europe possible.

To make this post somewhat shorter, I will close by saying that it was only upon the development of sails, and sailing tactics, along with a well designed keel which made the most use of both hydrostatic pressure and wind pressure, that sailing became a venture availabe for most times of the year.

By the way, currents have been measured to travel about three to five miles per hour, thus using four as an average, a floating vessel in becalmed seas, would travel about 100 miles per day with no expenditure of effort, thus 1000 miles in ten days, and 2000 miles in 20 days, etc..

Thus Colombo's fleet needed but a little over 30 days to travel from the Canary islands to the Bahamas! But, do not be confused by straight line measurements, his course took him well S. of the Canaries on more of what is called a Great Circle route. So, without much help from the winds, his ship might well have traveled 2500 to 3000 miles with out much effort. The problems were, of course, fresh water, and foodstuffs.

I should also mention that "deep draft" vessels, could also be a problem in these inland seas, since harbors were sometimes very limited in depth, thus a shallow draft vessel could take advantage of more harbors, and not have to anchor off shore! In later times, large cargo vessels were anchored (in waters with enough depth) and their cargos were lightered into the port docks via smaller boats.

Dear moderator, perhaps the above post should also be posted on the newly created "diffusionism..." site? Ron

Edited by opuslola - 06-Oct-2009 at 08:10

What is Eurocentric, Sinocentric or Afrocentric is to think Indians couldn't develop theirs civilizations by their own.

Originally posted by cavalry4ever I have no problem with starting new thread, it is interesting topic. Sander - you are wrong about separating diffusion and diffusionism. Diffusionism is based on theory of diffusion and is not a different concept. It is often used interchangeably by Historians. I consider diffusionism as a body of work and contributions around theory of diffusion. Often -ism has a pejorative meaning as any theory may get twisted by its followers. When I use word theory, this is in a context of Humanities and it does not have the same meaning as a scientific theory.

Edited by Sander - 08-Oct-2009 at 00:12