Early Transoceanic Voyages to America

[_reflexzero]

Odin promised to get rid of the frost giants. Vikings landed in Newfoundland, we have actual historic locations and artifacts, UNESCO, etc. There are no frost giants in America.

This is way fun. No wonder these guys like this sort of thing.

[_Amore]

Odin promised to get rid of the frost giants. Vikings landed in Newfoundland, we have actual historic locations and artifacts, UNESCO, etc. There are no frost giants in America.

This is way fun. No wonder these guys like this sort of thing.

Well, if Odin promised.

[_moksha]

Assuming Irish monks set sail to the Americas centuries before Eric the Red, they could have brought with them the Latin language. What proto Uto-Aztecan speakers would not want to incorporate into their language the words of those monks, especially if they had kissed the proto blarney stone.

[_Brackite]

I agree. Science has never closed the door on pre-Norse or pre-Columbian migrations across the oceans. These is evidence for small contacts but these never resulted in major movement of cultural ideas or technology. A couple of examples:

1. There is archaeological evidence the Polynesians reached the coast of California. They have found evidence that Polynesian fish hook and boat technology arrived around 800 years ago. The local Native Americans also use a few Polynesian words.

2. They have detected Native American DNA in Easter Islanders. They are now convinced that it arrived a few hundred years before the arrival of Europeans in the Pacific. My guess is Polynesians (who were amazing sailors) reached the Americas and brought home a few Native Americans.

3. Apologists have used the sweet potato, which occurs in South America and the Pacific, as evidence of migration into Polynesia. It turns out South American and Polynesian sweet potato have been separated for about 100,000 years. This means the sweet potato almost certainly arrived in the Pacific many years before humans.

A really good illustration of how linguistics can reveal ancient routes of migration is the discovery of solid linguistic ties between Polynesian languages and languages spoken by indigenous tribes in parts of the Philippines and Taiwan. These ties could be found because the migration took place within the last 3-4,000 years.

Yep. I had a thread here about Polynesians reaching the Americas from a few years ago.

http://mormondiscussions.com/phpBB3/vie ... =1&t=38389