The Phoenician Theory of the Founding of the South American Cultures

Is there evidence that the Phoenicians Founded the South American Cultures? Mofre evidence of Phoenician contact is presented here www.nephilimgiants.net : Ancient American Cities Seen By Phoenicians

"Old tradition of the native Mexicans and Central Americans described the first civilizers as “bearded white men,” who “came from the East in ships.”

Some of the more intelligent investigators have maintained, with no little confidence, that this ancient American civilization came originally from the Phœnicians. Among those who use reason in their inquiries sufficiently to be incapable of accepting the absurdities of monkish fancy, this hypothesis has found more favor than any other. Wherever inquiry begins by assuming that the original civilizers came from some other part of the world, it seems more reasonable than any other, for more can be said to give it the appearance of probability.

The people are known to us as Phœnicians were pre-eminent as the colonizing navigators of antiquity. They were an enlightened and enterprising maritime people, whose commerce traversed every known sea, and extended its operations beyond the “Pillars of Hercules” into the “great exterior ocean.” The early Greeks called them Ethiopians (not meaning either black men or Africans), and said they went everywhere, establishing their colonies and their commerce in all the coastal regions, “from the extreme east to the extreme west.” But the great ages of these people are in the distant past, far beyond the beginning of what we call history. History has knowledge only of a few of their later communities, the Sabeans of Southern Arabia, the Phœnicians
 (meaning chiefly the Tyrians), and the Carthaginians. What a change there would be in the prevalent conceptions of the past if we could have a complete record of this race from the beginning of its development!

It is not difficult to believe that communities of the Phœnician or Ethiopian race were established all around the Mediterranean, and even beyond the Strait of Gibraltar, in ages quite as old as Egypt or Chaldea, and that they had communication with America before Tyre or Sidon was built. Why did the ancients say so much of a “great Saturnian continent” beyond the Atlantic if nobody in the pre-historic ages had ever seen that continent? It was there, as they said and as we know; but whence came their knowledge of it, and such knowledge as led them to describe it as “larger than Asia (meaning Asia Minor), Europe, and Libya together?” This ancient belief must have been due to Phœnician or Ethiopian communication with America in earlier times, which was imperfectly recollected, or perhaps never completely revealed to other nations; and this must have taken place at a very remote period, for an imperfect recollection of the great continent across the Atlantic, including what Solon heard in Egypt of Atlantis, was more ancient than the constrained voyage of that Tyrian ship of which Diodorus Siculus gives an account; and it can be seen that the early Greeks had a better knowledge even of Western Europe than those of later times. A dark age, so far as relates to geographical knowledge, set in upon the countries around the Ægean Sea and on the coast of Asia Minor after the independence and enter]prise of Tyre and the other Phœnician cities were destroyed by the Assyrians, toward the close of the ninth century before Christ, which was disturbed some four hundred and fifty or five hundred years later by the conquests of Alexander the Great.

The known enterprise of the Phœnician race, and this ancient knowledge of America, so variously expressed, strongly encourage the hypothesis that the people called Phœnicians came to this continent, established colonies in the region where ruined cities are found, and filled it with civilized life. It is argued that they made voyages on the “great exterior ocean,” and that such navigators must have crossed the Atlantic; and it is added that symbolic devices similar to those of the Phœnicians are found in the American ruins and that an old tradition of the native Mexicans and Central Americans described the first civilizers as “bearded white men,” who “came from the East in ships.” Therefore, it is urged, the people described in the native books and traditions as “Colhuas” must have been Phœnicians.

But if it were true that the civilization found in Mexico and Central America came from people of the Phœnician race, it would be true also that they built in America as they never built anywhere else, that they established a language here radically unlike their own, and that they used a style of writing totally different from that which they carried into every other region occupied by their colonies. All the forms of alphabetical writing used at present in Europe and Southwestern Asia came directly or indirectly from that anciently invented by the race to which the Phœnicians belonged, and they have traces of a common relationship that can easily be detected. Now the writing of the inscriptions at Palenque, Copan, and elsewhere in the ruins has no more relatedness to the Phœnician than to the Chinese writing. It has not a single characteristic that can be called Phœnician any more than the language of the inscriptions or the style of architecture with which it is associated; therefore, we can not reasonably suppose this American civilization was originated by people of the Phœnician race, whatever may be thought relative to the supposed ancient communication between the two continents and its probable influence on civilized communities already existing here

Evidence the Vikings Discovered North America

More evidence if the Vikings discovering North America is found in the Dighton Stone. www.nephilimgiants.net : Dighton Rock Viking Petroglyph in Rhode Island

THE LEGEND OF THE NORSEMEN VIKINGS

There are many stories of the coming of white men to the coasts of America and of their settlements in America long before the voyage of Christopher Columbus. Even in the time of the Greeks and Romans there were traditions and legends of sailors who had gone out into the 'Sea of Darkness' beyond the Pillars of Hercules—the ancient name for the Strait of Gibraltar—and far to the west had found inhabited lands. Aristotle thought that there must be land out beyond the Atlantic, and Plato tells us that once upon a time a vast island lay off the coasts of Africa; he calls it Atlantis, and it was, he says, sunk below the sea by an earthquake. The Phoenicians were wonderful sailors; their ships had gone out of the Mediterranean into the other sea, and had reached the British Isles, and in all probability they sailed as far west as the Canaries. We find, indeed, in classical literature many references to supposed islands and countries out beyond the Atlantic. The ancients called these places the Islands of the Blessed and the Fortunate Isles. It is, perhaps, not unnatural that in the earlier writers the existence of these remote and mysterious regions should be linked with the ideas of the Elysian Fields and of the abodes of the dead. But the later writers, such as Pliny, and Strabo, the geographer, talked of them as actual places, and tried to estimate how many Roman miles they must be distant from the coast of Spain.

There were similar legends among the Irish, legends preserved in written form at least five hundred years before Columbus. They recount wonderful voyages out into the Atlantic and the discovery of new land. But all these tales are mixed up with obvious fable, with accounts of places where there was never any illness or infirmity, and people lived for ever, and drank delicious wine and laughed all day, and we cannot certify to an atom of historic truth in themThe only importance that we can attach to such traditions of the discovery of unknown lands and peoples on a new continent is their bearing as a whole, their accumulated effect, on the likelihood of such discovery before the time of Columbus. They at least make us ready to attach due weight to the circumstantial and credible records of the voyages of the Vikings. These stand upon ground altogether different from that of the dim and confused traditions of the classical writers and of the Irish and Chinese legends. In fact, many scholars are now convinced that the eastern coast of Canada was known and visited by the Norsemen five hundred years before Columbus.

From time immemorial the Norsemen were among the most daring and skilful mariners ever known. They built great wooden boats with tall, sweeping bows and sterns. These ships, though open and without decks, were yet stout and seaworthy. Their remains have been found, at times lying deeply buried under the sand and preserved almost intact. One such vessel, discovered on the shore of Denmark, measured 72 feet in length. Another Viking ship, which was dug up in Norway, and which is preserved in the museum at Christiania, was 78 feet long and 17 feet wide. One of the old Norse sagas, or stories, tells how King Olaf Tryggvesson built a ship, the keel of which, as it lay on the grass, was 74 ells long; in modern measure, it would be a vessel of about 942 tons burden. Even if we make allowance for the exaggeration or ignorance of the writer of the saga, there is still a vast contrast between this vessel and the little ship Centurion in which Anson sailed round the world.

It is needless, however, to prove that the Norsemen could have reached America in their ships. The voyages from Iceland to Greenland which we know they made continually for four hundred years were just as arduous as a further voyage from Greenland to the coast of Canada.

The story of the Vikings runs thus. Towards the end of the ninth century, or nearly two hundred years before the Norman conquest, there was a great exodus or outswarming of the Norsemen from their original home in Norway. A certain King Harold had succeeded in making himself supreme in Norway, and great numbers of the lesser chiefs or jarls preferred to seek new homes across the seas rather than submit to his rule. So they embarked with their seafaring followers—Vikings, as we still call them—often, indeed, with their wives and families, in great open ships, and sailed away, some to the coast of England, others to France, and others even to the Mediterranean, where they took service under the Byzantine emperors. But still others, loving the cold rough seas of the north, struck westward across the North Sea and beyond the coasts of Scotland till they reached Iceland. This was in the year 874. Here they made a settlement that presently grew to a population of fifty thousand people, having flocks and herds, solid houses of stone, and a fine trade in fish and oil with the countries of Northern Europe. These settlers in Iceland attained to a high standard of civilization. They had many books, and were fond of tales and stories, as are all these northern peoples who spend long winter evenings round the fireside. Some of the sagas, or stories, which they told were true accounts of the voyages and adventures of their forefathers; others were fanciful stories, like our modern romances, created by the imagination; others, again, were a mixture of the two. Thus it is sometimes hard to distinguish fact and fancy in these early tales of the Vikings. We have, however, means of testing the stories. Among the books written in Iceland there was one called the 'National Name-Book,' in which all the names of the people were written down, with an account of their forefathers and of any notable things which they had done.

It is from this book and from the old sagas that we learn how the Vikings came to the coast of America. It seems that about 900 a certain man called Gunnbjorn was driven westward in a great storm and thrown on the rocky shore of an ice-bound country, where he spent the winter. Gunnbjorn reached home safely, and never tried again to find this new land; but, long after his death, the story that there was land farther west still lingered among the settlers in Iceland and the Orkneys, and in other homes of the Norsemen. Some time after Gunnbjorn's voyage it happened that a very bold and determined man called Eric the Red, who lived in the Orkneys, was made an outlaw for having killed several men in a quarrel. Eric fled westward over the seas about the year 980, and he came to a new country with great rocky bays and fjords as in Norway. There were no trees, but the slopes of the hillsides were bright with grass, so he called the country Greenland, as it is called to this day. Eric and his men lived in Greenland for three years, and the ruins of their rough stone houses are still to be seen, hard by one of the little Danish settlements of to-day. When Eric and his followers went back to Iceland they told of what they had seen, and soon he led a new expedition to Greenland. The adventurers went in twenty-five ships; more than half were lost on the way, but eleven ships landed safely and founded a colony in Greenland. Other settlers came, and this Greenland colony had at one time a population of about two thousand people. Its inhabitants embraced Christianity when their kinsfolk in other places did so, and the ruins of their stone churches still exist. The settlers raised cattle and sheep, and sent ox hides and seal skins and walrus ivory to Europe in trade for supplies. But as there was no timber in Greenland they could not build ships, and thus their communication with the outside world was more or less precarious. In spite of this, the colony lasted for about four hundred years. It seems to have come to an end at about the beginning of the fifteenth century. The scanty records of its history can be traced no later than the year 1409. What happened to terminate its existence is not known. Some writers, misled by the name 'Greenland,' have thought that there must have been a change of climate by which the country lost its original warmth and verdure and turned into an arctic region. There is no ground for this belief. The name 'Greenland' did not imply a country of trees and luxuriant vegetation, but only referred to the bright carpet of grass still seen in the short Greenland summer in the warmer hollows of the hillsides. It may have been that the settlement, never strong in numbers, was overwhelmed by the Eskimos, who are known to have often attacked the colony: very likely, too, it suffered from the great plague, the Black Death, that swept over all Europe in the fourteenth century. Whatever the cause, the colony came to an end, and centuries elapsed before Greenland was again known to Europe.

This whole story of the Greenland settlement is historical fact which cannot be doubted. Partly by accident and partly by design, the Vikings had been carried from Norway to the Orkneys and the Hebrides and Iceland, and from there to Greenland. This having happened, it was natural that their ships should go beyond Greenland itself. During the four hundred years in which the Norse ships went from Europe to Greenland, their navigators had neither chart nor compass, and they sailed huge open boats, carrying only a great square sail. It is evident that in stress of weather and in fog they must again and again have been driven past the foot of Greenland, and must have landed somewhere in what is now Labrador. It would be inconceivable that in four centuries of voyages this never happened. In most cases, no doubt, the storm-tossed and battered ships, like the fourteen vessels that Eric lost, were never heard of again. But in other cases survivors must have returned to Greenland or Iceland to tell of what they had seen.

This is exactly what happened to a bold sailor called Bjarne, the son of Herjulf, a few years after the Greenland colony was founded. In 986 he put out from Iceland to join his father, who was in Greenland, the purpose being that, after the good old Norse custom, they might drink their Christmas ale together. Neither Bjarne nor his men had ever sailed the Greenland sea before, but, like bold mariners, they relied upon their seafaring instinct to guide them to its coast. As Bjarne's ship was driven westward, great mists fell upon the face of the waters. There was neither sun nor stars, but day after day only the thick wet fog that clung to the cold surface of the heaving sea. To-day travellers even on a palatial steamship, who spend a few hours shuddering in the chill grey fog of the North Atlantic, chafing at delay, may form some idea of voyages such as that of Bjarne Herjulf and his men. These Vikings went on undaunted towards the west. At last, after many days, they saw land, but when they drew near they saw that it was not a rugged treeless region, such as they knew Greenland to be, but a country covered with forests, a country of low coasts rising inland to small hills, and with no mountains in sight. Accordingly, Bjarne said that this was not Greenland, and he would not stop, but turned the vessel to the north. After two days they sighted land again, still on the left side, and again it was flat and thick with trees. The sea had fallen calm, and Bjarne's men desired to land and see this new country, and take wood and water into the ship. But Bjarne would not. So they held on their course, and presently a wind from the south-west carried them onward for three days and three nights. Then again they saw land, but this time it was high and mountainous, with great shining caps of snow. And again Bjarne said, 'This is not the land I seek.' They did not go ashore, but sailing close to the coast they presently found that the land was an island. When they stood out to sea again, the south wind rose to a gale that swept them towards the north, with sail reefed down and with their ship leaping through the foaming surges. Three days and nights they ran before the gale. On the fourth day land rose before them, and this time it was Greenland. There Bjarne found his father, and there, when not at sea, he settled for the rest of his days.

Such is the story of Bjarne Herjulf, as the Vkings have it. To the unprejudiced mind there is every reason to believe that his voyage had carried him to America, to the coast of the Maritime Provinces, or of Newfoundland or Labrador. More than this one cannot say. True, it is hard to fit the 'two days' and the 'three days' of Bjarne's narrative into the sailing distances. But every one who has read any primitive literature, or even the Homeric poems, will remember how easily times and distances and numbers that are not exactly known are expressed in loose phrases not to be taken as literal.

The news of Bjarne's voyage and of his discovery of land seems to have been carried presently to the Norsemen in Iceland and in Europe. In fact, Bjarne himself made a voyage to Norway, and, on account of what he had done, figured there as a person of some importance. But people blamed Bjarne because he had not landed on the new coasts, and had taken so little pains to find out more about the region of hills and forests which lay to the south and west of Greenland. Naturally others were tempted to follow the matter further. Among these was Leif, son of Eric the Red. Leif went to Greenland, found Bjarne, bought his ship, and manned it with a crew of thirty-five. Leif's father, Eric, now lived in Greenland, and Leif asked him to take command of the expedition. He thought, the saga says, that, since Eric had found Greenland, he would bring good luck to the new venture. For the time, Eric consented, but when all was ready, and he was riding down to the shore to embark, his horse stumbled and he fell from the saddle and hurt his foot. Eric took this as an omen of evil, and would not go; but Leif and his crew of thirty-five set sail towards the south-west. This was in the year 1000 A.D., or four hundred and ninety-two years before Columbus landed in the West Indies.

Leif and his men sailed on, the saga tells us, till they came to the last land which Bjarne had discovered. Here they cast anchor, lowered a boat, and rowed ashore. They found no grass, but only a great field of snow stretching from the sea to the mountains farther inland; and these mountains, too, glistened with snow. It seemed to the Norsemen a forbidding place, and Leif christened it Helluland, or the country of slate or flat stones. They did not linger, but sailed away at once. The description of the snow-covered hills, the great slabs of stone, and the desolate aspect of the coast conveys at least a very strong probability that the land was Labrador.

Leif and his men sailed away, and soon they discovered another land. The chronicle does not say how many days they were at sea, so that we cannot judge of the distance of this new country from the Land of Stones. But evidently it was entirely different in aspect, and was situated in a warmer climate. The coast was low, there were broad beaches of white sand, and behind the beaches rose thick forests spreading over the country. Again the Norsemen landed. Because of the trees, they gave to this place the name of Markland, or the Country of Forests. Some writers have thought that Markland must have been Newfoundland, but the description also suggests Cape Breton or Nova Scotia. The coast of Newfoundland is, indeed, for the most part, bold, rugged, and inhospitable.

Leif put to sea once more. For two days the wind was from the north-east. Then again they reached land. This new region was the famous country which the Norsemen called Vineland, and of which every schoolboy has read. There has been so much dispute as to whether Vineland—this warm country where grapes grew wild—was Nova Scotia or New England, or some other region, that it is worth while to read the account of the Norse saga, literally translated:

They came to an island, which lay on the north side of the land, where they disembarked to wait for good weather. There was dew upon the grass; and having accidentally got some of the dew upon their hands and put it to their mouths, they thought that they had never tasted anything so sweet. Then they went on board and sailed into a sound that was between the island and a point that went out northwards from the land, and sailed westward past the point. There was very shallow water and ebb tide, so that their ship lay dry; and there was a long way between their ship and the water. They were so desirous to get to the land that they would not wait till their ship floated, but ran to the land, to a place where a river comes out of a lake. As soon as their ship was afloat they took the boats, rowed to the ship, towed her up the river, and from thence into the lake, where they cast anchor, carried their beds out of the ship, and set up their tents.

They resolved to put things in order for wintering there, and they erected a large house. They did not want for salmon, in both the river and the lake; and they thought the salmon larger than any they had ever seen before. The country appeared to them to be of so good a kind that it would not be necessary to gather fodder for the cattle for winter. There was no frost in winter, and the grass was not much withered. Day and night were more equal than in Greenland and Iceland.

The chronicle goes on to tell how Leif and his men spent the winter in this place. They explored the country round their encampment. They found beautiful trees, trees big enough for use in building houses, something vastly important to men from Greenland, where no trees grow. Delighted with this, Leif and his men cut down some trees and loaded their ship with the timber. One day a sailor, whose home had been in a 'south country,' where he had seen wine made from grapes, and who was nicknamed the 'Turk,' found on the coast vines with grapes, growing wild. He brought his companions to the spot, and they gathered grapes sufficient to fill their ship's boat. It was on this account that Leif called the country 'Vineland.' They found patches of supposed corn which grew wild like the grapes and reseeded itself from year to year. It is striking that the Norse chronicle should name these simple things. Had it been a work of fancy, probably we should have heard, as in the Chinese legends, of strange demons and other amazing creatures. But we hear instead of the beautiful forest extending to the shore, the mountains in the background, the tangled vines, and the bright patches of wild grain of some kind ripening in the open glades-the very things which caught the eye of Cartier when, five centuries later, he first ascended the St Lawrence.

Where Vineland was we cannot tell. If the men really found wild grapes, and not some kind of cranberry, Vineland must have been in the region where grapes will grow. The vine grows as far north as Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton, and, of course, is found in plenty on the coasts of Nova Scotia and New England. The chronicle says that the winter days were longer in Vineland than in Greenland, and names the exact length of the shortest day. Unfortunately, however, the Norsemen had no accurate system for measuring time; otherwise the length of the shortest winter day would enable us to know at what exact spot Leif's settlement was made.

Leif and his men stayed in Vineland all winter, and sailed home to Greenland in the spring (1001 A.D.). As they brought timber, much prized in the Greenland settlement, their voyage caused a great deal of talk. Naturally others wished to rival Leif. In the next few years several voyages to Vineland are briefly chronicled in the sagas.

First of all, Thorwald, Leif's brother, borrowed his ship, sailed away to Vineland with thirty men, and spent two winters there. During his first summer in Vineland, Thorwald sent some men in a boat westward along the coast. They found a beautiful country with thick woods reaching to the shore, and great stretches of white sand. They found a kind of barn made of wood, and were startled by this first indication of the presence of man. Thorwald had, indeed, startling adventures. In a great storm his ship was wrecked on the coast, and he and his men had to rebuild it. He selected for a settlement a point of land thickly covered with forest. Before the men had built their houses they fell in with some savages, whom they made prisoners. These savages had bows and arrows, and used what the Vikings called 'skin boats.' One of the savages escaped and roused his tribe, and presently a great flock of canoes came out of a large bay, surrounded the Viking ship, and discharged a cloud of arrows. The Vikings beat off the savages, but in the fight Thorwald received a mortal wound. As he lay dying he told his men to bury him there in Vineland, on the point where he had meant to build his home. This was done. Thorwald's men remained there for the winter. In the spring they returned to Greenland, with the sad news for Leif of his brother's death.

Other voyages followed. A certain Thorfinn Karlsevne even tried to found a permanent colony in Vineland. In the spring of 1007, he took there a hundred and sixty men, some women, and many cattle. He and his people remained in Vineland for nearly four years. They traded with the savages, giving them cloth and trinkets for furs. Karlsevne's wife gave birth there to a son, who was christened Snorre, and who was perhaps the first white child born in America. The Vineland colony seems to have prospered well enough, but unfortunately quarrels broke out between the Norsemen and the savages, and so many of Karlsevne's people were killed that the remainder were glad to sail back to Greenland.

The Norse chronicles contain a further story of how one of Karlsevne's companions, Thorward, and his wife Freydis, who was a daughter of Eric the Red, made a voyage to Vineland. This expedition ended in tragedy. One night the Norsemen quarrelled in their winter quarters, there was a tumult and a massacre. Freydis herself killed five women with an axe, and the little colony was drenched in blood. The survivors returned to Greenland, but were shunned by all from that hour.

After this story we have no detailed accounts of voyages to Vineland. There are, however, references to it in Icelandic literature. There does not seem any ground to believe that the Norsemen succeeded in planting a lasting colony in Vineland. Some people have tried to claim that certain ancient ruins on the New England coast—an old stone mill at Newport, and so on—are evidences of such a settlement. But the claim has no sufficient proof behind it.

On the whole, however, there seems every ground to conclude that again and again the Vikings landed on the Atlantic coast of America. We do not know where they made their winter quarters, nor does this matter. Very likely there were temporary settlements in both 'Markland,' with its thick woods bordering on the sea, and in other less promising regions. It should be added that some writers of authority refuse even to admit that the Norsemen reached America. Others, like Nansen, the famous Arctic explorer, while admitting the probability of the voyages, believe that the sagas are merely a sort of folklore, such as may be found in the primitive literature of all nations. On the other hand, John Fiske, the American historian, who devoted much patient study to the question, was convinced that what is now the Canadian coast, with, probably, part of New England too, was discovered, visited, and thoroughly well known by the Norse inhabitants of Greenland. For several centuries they appear to have made summer voyages to and from this 'Vineland the Good' as they called it, and to have brought back timber and supplies not found in their own inhospitable country. It is quite possible that further investigation may throw new light on the Norse discoveries, and even that undeniable traces of the buildings or implements of the settlers in Vineland may be found. Meanwhile the subject, interesting though it is, remains shrouded in mystery.

Ancient American Cities Seen By Phoenicians

AMERICAN CITIES SEEN BY PHOENICIANS

The view just stated touches the imagination and stirs the feelings like a genuine “wonder story;” but this should not be allowed to deny it a fair hearing. Those who reject it should disprove it before they hasten to pronounce it “absurd” and “impossible,” else it may be suspected that their accustomed views of antiquity are due more to education, and to the habit of following a given fashion of thinking, than to actual reflection. It needs demonstration; and we may reasonably suggest[162] that, in the present state of our knowledge of the past, demonstration is impossible. Meanwhile, a clear historical record appears to make it certain that flourishing towns and cities were seen and visited in America three thousand years ago, by persons who went to them across the Atlantic.

It is said, more or less clearly, by more than one Greek writer, that the Phœnicians and Carthaginians knew the way to a continent beyond the Atlantic. One fact preserved in the annals of Tyrian commerce, and mentioned by several ancient writers, is related by Diodorus Siculus very particularly as a matter of authentic history. His narration begins with the following statement:

“Over against Africa lies a very great island, in the vast ocean, many days’ sail from Libya westward. The soil there is very fruitful, a great part whereof is mountainous, but much likewise champaign, which is the most sweet and pleasant part, for it is watered by several navigable streams, and beautified with many gardens of pleasure planted with divers sorts of trees and an abundance of orchards. The towns are adorned with stately buildings and banqueting houses pleasantly situated in their gardens and orchards.” The great ruins in Yucatan, and elsewhere in Mexico and Central America, bear witness that there was, anciently, such a country as this, across the ocean, “many days’ sail from Libya westward;” but Diodorus Siculus lived before the Christian era, and how was this known to him and others more than fifteen hundred years before America was discovered by Columbus? He tells us as follows: “The Phœnicians[163] (Tyrians) having found out the coasts beyond the Pillars of Hercules, sailed along by the coast of Africa. One of their ships, on a sudden, was driven by a furious storm far off into the main ocean. After they had lain under this violent tempest many days, they at length arrived at this island.”

This reminds us of the constrained voyage of Biarni, the Northman, from Iceland to the coast of Massachusetts, in the year 985 A.D.163-* He, too, was storm-driven “many days,” and in this way forced to the discovery of New England. He started for Greenland, and finally reached it by way of Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod. The tempest-driven ship of the Tyrians must have been carried to the West Indies, and to the coast of Honduras or Yucatan, where the Tyrians saw the gardens, cities, and stately edifices. The description of what they saw brings to mind similar accounts of what was seen in Yucatan by the Spaniards, when they began to sail along the coast of that peninsula in the beginning of the sixteenth century; Juan Diaz de Solis and Vincente Yañez Pinçon in 1506, and Hernandez de Cordova in 1517. They, too, saw handsome towns and stately buildings.

This undesigned voyage of the Tyrian ship seems to have been made previous to the building of Gadir, or Gades. Perhaps they made other voyages to that region, but it was a custom of the Phœnicians to be very secret in regard to the methods and paths of their commerce. A complete history of their commerce and navigation from the earliest times would unquestionably give[164] us views of the past quite as startling to the prevalent assuming, unreasoning habits of belief, or rather disbelief, concerning antiquity, as that hypothesis of Atlantis and the earliest civilization. What is told by Diodorus authorizes us to suppose that the Tyrians who went across the Atlantic as described beheld some of the ancient American cities which are now found in ruins, for it is certain that nothing of the kind existed any where else “many days’ sail from Libya [Northern Africa] westward.” Their voyage was made more than eleven hundred years previous to the Christian era. If the old Central American books may be trusted, this was not very long previous to the beginning of the Toltec domination.

Beyond this date, the history of the “Colhuas,” who are described as the original civilizers, must have covered a very long period; how long we may imagine, but can not know. Gadir, now Cadiz, founded eleven hundred years previous to the Christian era, is still an inhabited city; it has been several times reconstructed, but never deserted. When it was built, Tartessus, then a very old city, still existed, although it was in ruins long before Christ appeared. How long had Palenque been in existence when that Tyrian ship was driven across the Atlantic? And how long had that region been a region of cities and civilization? There is no history which can answer these questions.