Hundreds to thousands of years ago, Old World visitors appeared in the Americas, leaving behind their indelible marks on our land and our history.<\/p>\n
Before Christopher Columbus \u201cdiscovered\u201d America in 1492, as many history books teach, there is evidence of numerous pre-Columbian visitors repeatedly landing on our shores with their own agendas.\u00a0 Evidence of these \u201clost colonists\u201d is the subject of Editor-in-Chief of \u201cAncient American\u201d magazine, Frank Joseph\u2019s, latest book, \u201cThe Lost Colonies of Ancient America:\u00a0 A Comprehensive Guide to the Pre-Columbian Visitors Who Really Discovered America.\u201d\u00a0 In his book, Joseph describes the various peoples who influenced pre-Columbian history and offers new evidence regarding their impact on the continent and on our country.<\/p>\n
Joseph, a long-time expert in the field of prehistory and author of more than two dozen books, provides convincing documentation that Old World visitors appeared in the Americas hundreds to thousands of years ago, well ahead of Columbus.\u00a0 Among those visiting the Americas were the Sumerians, Minoans, Romans, Celts, ancient Hebrews, Indonesians, Africans, Chinese, Japanese, Welsh, Irish, and even the Knights Templar.\u00a0 And all of these visitors left their marks on our land and our history.<\/p>\n
What was the purpose of their visitations and how did they get here?\u00a0 According to Joseph, many of these visitors sought to claim American resources such as high-grade copper, precious gems, agricultural products, and other \u201cnative riches\u201d as their own, protecting them from others who would also seek to claim them.\u00a0 And they arrived by boat, long before Columbus set sail.<\/p>\n
So why aren\u2019t these events generally known?\u00a0 Joseph says one reason is academia and its \u201cparty line\u201d in regards to history, which is reflected in our history books.\u00a0 \u201cThese grand events are generally unknown because humanity\u2019s last 25 generations have been schooled to believe that Christopher Columbus was the first and only discoverer of the New World.\u00a0 For them, American history began in 1492, and nothing of equivalent significance took place here before then.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been generally accepted that the first \u201cwide-spread habitation of America<\/a> occurred during the end of the last glacial period or, more specifically, what is known as the late glacial maximum, around 16,500-13,000 years ago.\u201d\u00a0 Joseph points out, however, that even when presented with possible evidence to the contrary, many archaeologists and historians will not \u201cdeviate from an academic party line\u201d because they are concerned for their professional careers.<\/p>\n One such example Joseph gives is \u201cwhen the director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University was presented with credible materials for a quarter-million-year-old or older man-made habitation site outside Mexico City\u2026 (he) declared, \u2018I don\u2019t care what the evidence is, I can\u2019t believe the old dates, because they refute everything that\u2019s known about archaeology and anthropology.\u00a0 I could never bring myself to believe these old dates.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Tragically, because of this type of mindset, Joseph points out that we may never fully understand our true history or our connections to the rest of the world completely.\u00a0 But there\u2019s also another reason why we may remain in the dark about our \u201cancient\u201d history according to Joseph.<\/p>\n Joseph states that \u201csuch ignorance is understandable\u201d in light of the agendas these ancient Old World colonizers arrived with upon our shores.\u00a0 Because they sought to protect their claims and \u201cmonopolize American resources,\u201d they guarded against one another\u2019s finding out about their \u201csecrets\u201d just as today\u2019s modern corporations \u201cguard against one another\u2019s industrial espionage.\u201d\u00a0 He points out that \u201cnavigational directions were state secrets, and rumors of boiling seas filled with monsters or sailing off the edge of the Earth were deliberately spread to discourage competition.\u00a0 Transatlantic voyages were covert operations undertaken only by the most capable maritime kingdoms, each jealous of the others\u2019 success.\u201d<\/p>\n Even if these voyages were \u201ccovert,\u201d as Joseph suggests, is there other evidence that suggests these ancient explorers came to our shores?\u00a0 Yes and no, says Joseph, who claims there is a \u201ccultural amnesia\u201d that occurred with the \u201ccatastrophic close of the Bronze Age, around 1200 BC, when its thorough and widespread collapse ushered in a dark age that virtually wiped clean all memory of contact with the Americas.\u201d\u00a0 The result of this \u201camnesia\u201d was that basically two thousand years of transoceanic history and accomplishments were \u201creduced to legends, until first the Phoenicians, followed by Latin and then Celtic, sailors found some old sea-lanes back to the Opposite Continent.\u201d\u00a0 Unfortunately, however, with the Fifth Century fall of the Roman Empire, Joseph says that \u201canother, deeper dark age ensued to yet again cast its shadow over all previous knowledge of the New World,\u201d except, of course, for the Vikings, who were an exception.\u00a0 But even their voyages were also diminished to \u201csagas, the stuff of which myth was made.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the cultural amnesia, Joseph says there is physical evidence that persists even today.\u00a0 Some of the more interesting examples include an Egyptian temple accidentally unearthed by Tennessee Valley Authority workers in 1935, a \u201cbeautifully crafted metal plate with the image of a Phoenician woman\u201d excavated in the Utah desert, the discovery of Viking houses and wharves outside of Boston, and a pre-Columbian archaeological site in Ohio with links to Egypt\u2019s Great Pyramid.<\/p>\n According to Joseph, these enigmas are but a small portion of the abundant proof that exists for Old World visitors coming to our shores hundreds to thousands of years ago.<\/p>\n As David Goudsward, author of \u201cAncient Stone Sites of New England and the Debate Over Early European Exploration\u201d suggests, perhaps it\u2019s time to quit asking the question about who discovered America and begin asking \u201cWho didn\u2019t discover America?\u201d\u00a0 And that\u2019s where Frank Joseph\u2019s research begins.<\/p>\n Frank Joseph joins Barb Adams live on Amerika Now<\/a> this Saturday, November 16, from 9 to 10 p.m. Pacific, midnight to 1 a.m. Eastern, to discuss \u201cThe Lost Colonies of Ancient America.\u201d<\/p>\n