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Transcript of the History Channel’s Ancient Voyages: Who Really
Discovered America?
This transcript goes up to the point where we stopped the video. 
00:02:36 >> Narrator: At the bottom of the sea lies a maritime mystery.
These large round stones, some weighing nearly 300 pounds, bear a striking
00:02:40 resemblance to stone anchors used on Chinese ships as early as the time of
Christ.
Bob Meistrell, an avid diver and cofounder of Body Glove, was the first to find
00:02:53
the stones back in 1972.
00:03:03 >> I hope in my lifetime that we find out what these anchors are.
00:03:06 That's why I'm doing this interview.
00:03:08 These are a couple of stone anchors.
00:03:10 This is the original one I found.
00:03:12 It weighed 280 pounds.
We brought this one up, and then we started looking around, and we found
00:03:14
more, and there's a total of 35 or 40 stones out there.
>> I have no doubt that the stones in Palos Verdes, the Meistrell stones, are in
00:03:21
fact anchors of various forms, both weight anchors and compound anchors.
>> Narrator: Archaeologist Larry Pierson was among the first to examine the
00:03:34
stones and perform what's called a lithological analysis.
>> It's a comparison of microfossils from known sources with the microfossils
00:03:43
in the stone samples from the anchors themselves.
We were trying to identify specific quarries that the stones may have come
00:03:53
from.
00:03:58 The results were that these stones came from the coast of China.
00:04:05 We were not terribly surprised about the origin of the stones.
The style extended back to an early period, perhaps as early as the Han dynasty,
00:04:09
about the time of Christ.
>> Narrator: Anchors that looked like the stones Meistrell found were used
00:04:18 during the time of Hui Shen, but they were also used on Chinese junks from the
19th century.
Now there may finally be a way to learn if these are ancient Chinese anchors or
00:04:30
modern ones, thanks to a science called forensic petrography.
Forensic petrographers like Scott Wolter are geologists who do autopsies on
00:04:41
rocks.
>> Hopefully we'll be able to come up with something, but it starts by taking a
00:04:49
look at it.
>> We're gonna drop down the anchor line and see if we can find some of these
00:04:54
stone anchors.
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>> Narrator: Ray Ortiz has seen and filmed the stones before, but in recent
years, kelp has been taking over the area.
Whether or not he'll be able to see well enough to get another anchor is
00:05:07
uncertain.
>> What you're looking for, basically, I guess, would be the hole where they
00:05:13
run the ropes through and stuff.
>> Narrator: Nonbelievers in the Chinese anchor theory insist the holes in the
00:05:20
rocks are naturally occurring and could have come from sea urchins.
00:05:28 >> People look at it, and they say, "Well, maybe." A sea urchin did not do that.
00:05:33 This is what a sea urchin does.
And sea urchins live to be 100 years, but that's about as deep as I've seen any of
00:05:35
them go.
>> There is no doubt in my mind that the Palos Verdes stones are anchors and
00:05:40
that they're Chinese.
00:05:48 >> Narrator: But how old are they?
00:05:52 Back on the boat, Ortiz dives down.
00:05:57 The ocean is stirred up from a recent storm.
That plus the forest of kelp rising high above the seafloor makes the dive
00:06:00
difficult.
00:06:12 >> Oh, man.
00:06:13 You couldn't find a stone anchor down there right now with headlights.
00:06:16 As soon as I got to the bottom, it was pitch-black, pitch-black.
00:06:19 >> You don't think it's worth going down again, huh?
00:06:22 >> The surge is really strong, and the dirt is just sloshing back and forth.
00:06:27 No anchors today, gentlemen.
>> Narrator: It’s a disappointment, but Wolter will try testing one of the
00:06:30
original anchors pulled out years ago.
00:06:37 >> This is one of the samples that we prepared of the ship anchor.
And what we're looking at here would be the outside surface of the anchor, and
00:06:42
this curved surface here is the inside.
00:06:51 >> Narrator: The stone is dolomite.
Shells left embedded in the rock prove these small holes were made by sea
00:06:54
creatures.
00:07:00 What or who made the interior hole of the doughnut-shaped stone is less clear.
00:07:07 >> I don't see anything here that indicates a man-made origin definitively.
00:07:12 There's no weathering profile.
00:07:14 It doesn't allow me to say anything about the age.
00:07:17 I can only deduce that they were man-made.
00:07:19 I don't see anything directly.
00:07:21 I can't imagine a natural occurrence like that.
00:04:58
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Maybe--maybe one or two might show up in some natural environment, but
00:07:25 based on what I understand, there's dozens of these things all in a local area that
are not necessarily indigenous to where they were found.
00:07:38 That implies a man-made origin to me.
The burden of proof, I guess, is on somebody who wants to try to prove that
00:07:40
that's not man-made.
>> Narrator: Man-made or not, nautical archaeologist James Delgado says
00:07:50
there's no way these are anchors from any fifth-century Chinese ship.
>> At the time the Hui Shen voyages were supposed to have happened, the only
00:08:00 way he could have sailed to the new world was to have hitched a ride on an
Arab boat.
The ancient Chinese built magnificent vessels that navigated on the rivers, but
00:08:09
they didn't build seagoing craft.
00:08:16 The Arabs were the great seafaring power of that time.
>> Narrator: And you wouldn’t find Chinese-style ship anchors on an Arab
00:08:20
boat, if that is what Hui Shen took to get to America.
>> The Arab dhow is a long sleek vessel built of wood that carries lateen sails
00:08:29
that swing and are more maneuverable, so they can catch a wind.
00:08:38 They can move.
00:08:39 They can tack.
00:08:39 They can follow a coast, and they can also sail over large bodies of water.
>> Narrator: Arab dhows could reach speeds of 8 or 9 knots and were fixtures
00:08:44
in and around the Indian Ocean in medieval times and beyond.
So if these are Chinese ship anchors and they're not from Hui Shen's voyage,
00:08:54
when were they lost?
>> The Palos Verdes stones probably represent accidental anchor loss from
00:09:01
19th-century Chinese fishing vessels.
>> Narrator: In the second half of the 19th century, Chinese junks did fish off
00:09:13 the coast of California, offering a reasonable explanation for the dozens of
doughnut-like stones left on the seafloor.
There is evidence for and against the theory that the Chinese reached the new
00:09:28 world before Columbus, but the search goes on for who could have discovered
America even earlier.
Dotting the American landscape, clues that colonization of the country began
00:09:40
not hundreds but thousands of years ago.
From the east and the west, in all manner of craft, who came, who went, and
00:09:49
who stayed?
00:13:42 >> Narrator: Wales, 1150 A.D., 342 years before Columbus.
Elsewhere in the world, the temple of Angkor Wat is completed in Cambodia,
00:13:49
and the University of Paris is founded in France.
00:13:57 In Snowdonia, Wales, Prince Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd is born.
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Legend says, 20 years later, he set sail from Rhos-on-Sea in search of land to
call his own.
>> The legend of him leaving from here to go to America originated in
00:14:11
mythology.
00:14:16 In a way, the story was handed down from generation to generation.
>> Most of the ancient poetry in Wales which refers to it, certainly prior to
Columbus's time, has references not of Madoc going to America, since people
00:14:22
had no perception of America, just that he was a bold and courageous sailor
who went somewhere a long distance away across the great sea.
>> Narrator: The idea that Madoc discovered America didn't become part of the
00:14:42
legend until the mid-1500s.
Its sudden inclusion came at a time when Queen Elizabeth was trying to prove
00:14:48
the British, not the Spanish, made it to America first.
>> As things are passed on through the generations, there's a chance that there
00:14:58
will be embellishment and change.
00:15:05 >> Narrator: Today the legend has grown even more.
Some believe Madoc and a party of colonists left Wales in 1170 on a ship called
00:15:08
The Gwenan Gorn and sailed all the way to Mobile Bay, Alabama.
00:15:20 >> What type of vessel would Madoc have used if he had done this?
Most likely a Saxon ship, very much like a Viking ship, a large rowboat,
00:15:23
heavily fastened and built.
>> Narrator: Saxon ships were clinker built, meaning built with heavy wood
00:15:31
planks overlapping each other.
Though the legend suggests Madoc used stag horns for nails, iron rivets would
00:15:37
have been more conventional.
A Saxon ship would have had a steering oar and an estimated 15 sets of
00:15:44
rowlocks and 30 oars to help battle an unfavorable wind.
In the 1950s, the Daughters of the American Revolution placed a plaque in
00:15:54
Mobile commemorating Madoc's discovery of America.
00:16:03 It's since been removed to the chagrin of the Alabama Welsh Association.
>> We don't want to take away from Christopher Columbus discovering
00:16:09
America in 1492, but we do want to know our real heritage.
>> They began their trek inland along the Alabama River to the Coosa River,
00:16:20
up to this location here, Desoto Falls.
00:16:29 And this is one of the places where the Welsh built a fortification.
>> Narrator: These half-buried stones above what's nicknamed the Welsh Caves
00:16:33
are all that are left of one of Madoc's alleged forts.
Believers say its layout bears a striking resemblance to the footprint of
00:16:43
Dolwyddelan castle where Madoc was supposedly born.
00:16:51 Today there's no way to compare.
00:16:55 >> The original castle is probably lost in the foundations of this one.
00:14:01
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00:16:59 >> Narrator: Dolwyddelan was rebuilt, making a comparison impossible.
00:17:03 That's one problem.
00:17:04 The other is why Americans think Madoc was born at Dolwyddelan at all.
>> There is no early evidence or local tradition that Madoc was born in
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Dolwyddelan.
There is a local tradition that his nephew Llywelyn Fawr was born here,
00:17:14
certainly not in this castle because Llywelyn Fawr built this.
If he was born anywhere, it would have been on the small hillock in the valley
00:17:22
bottom there where there was a small tower.
>> Narrator: Madoc also gets credit from the locals for this site in Fort
00:17:32
Mountain, Georgia.
Legends of the Cherokee natives in the area say blonde-haired, moon-eyed
00:17:37 people built it, although accepted archaeology suggests the natives themselves
are responsible.
Whether or not Madoc made contact with the Cherokee, his Welsh party is most
00:17:49
often associated with a different tribe.
00:17:56 >> Well, the legend goes that they assimilated into the Mandan group.
00:18:01 >> Narrator: The Mandan tribe originated in the Ohio River Valley.
If Madoc's Welsh party continued traveling northwest from the Fort Mountain
00:18:06
site in Georgia, the two groups could have met.
Artist George Catlin, who spent time with the Mandan, thought they did more
00:18:14
than just meet.
00:18:21 He thought they intermingled.
Catlin was struck by the Mandans' European features while painting their
00:18:23
portraits.
He also noted similarities in boats both the Mandan and the Welsh used for
00:18:29
navigating the river system.
>> George Catlin drew pictures showing the boats that they used, which were
00:18:36
very similar to the Welsh coracle.
>> Narrator: The legend of the Welsh Indians was popular even before the time
00:18:43
Catlin lived and worked among them in 1833.
President Thomas Jefferson had heard of them 30 years prior and, in 1804,
00:18:51 asked Lewis and Clark to keep their eyes out for them while exploring the land
gained in the Louisiana Purchase.
00:19:03 Jefferson heard they spoke Welsh.
>> If Madoc had actually lived and mixed with the Mandans, it's quite feasible
00:19:07
that the language would have passed through.
00:19:14 >> Narrator: At first glance, some words do appear similar.
In Mandan, the word "ti" means house, and in Welsh, the word "ty" means the
00:19:18
same thing.
00:19:25 But that's far from enough to convince linguists of a connection.
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00:19:30 >> There's no linguistic evidence.
00:19:32 There's claim to be linguistic evidence.
In fact, I've analyzed most of what there is, and it's what we would call
00:19:34
spurious.
>> Narrator: While DNA testing of Mandan blood could be valuable in
00:19:40
determining if there is a Welsh connection, it's not possible.
In 1837, a smallpox epidemic wiped out all but about 150 of the 1,600 member
00:19:48
tribe, and today there are no full-blood Mandans left to test.
00:20:03 In the end, it seems there is no proof Madoc made it to America at all.
00:20:09 The legend is plagued not just by a tide of uncertainty but by the tide itself.
00:20:19 >> I can tell that this path is pretty unlikely.
Our model shows that for a slowly moving boat, it's nearly impossible to move
00:20:23
westward between Florida and Cuba.
Shows Prince Madoc would have had a hard time reaching his alleged docking
00:20:34
point in Mobile Bay.
A boat like the Gwenan Gorn likely couldn't have crossed the powerful gulf
00:20:39
stream between the southern tip of Florida and Cuba.
That means Madoc would have had to go all the way around Puerto Rico,
00:20:47 Jamaica, and the Caymans before entering the Gulf of Mexico to reach
Alabama, adding many days to the voyage.
00:20:59 >> Travel from Wales to Mobile Bay would require at least 300 days.
>> Narrator: That’s 300 days each way--twice-- for Madoc is said to have made
00:21:05
it to America not once but two times.
>> There's certainly no archaeological or hard fact evidence to support that, but
00:21:15
it is certainly a big part of the story.
>> Narrator: Right now, the Madoc theory is viewed as a legend by most
00:21:22
archaeologists.
>> American archaeologists really find that it's part of what we do to debunk
00:21:28 those theories and to keep those things at bay, because they have no-- most of
them have no credible scientific basis.
>> Narrator: Terry Jones has spent years studying what he says is a much more
00:21:41 likely case of pre-Columbian contact, one strongly supported by science but one
that still comes with the risk of career suicide.
00:21:56 >> For the first two years, we wouldn't even talk about it in public.
>> Narrator: Across the Pacific , a new group of contenders emerges in the
00:22:00
quest to learn who really discovered America.
And back in the North Atlantic, one of the most legendary sailors ever
00:22:10
chronicled leaves on his own quest.
00:26:42 >> Narrator: Polynesia, 492 years before Columbus.
Elsewhere in the world, China is inventing gunpowder, and a very important
00:26:50
journey by Norseman Leif Eriksson is taking place in the North Atlantic.
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In Polynesia, explorers are in the midst of settling the Marquesas and Hawaiian
islands, but did they also sail by the stars to North and South America?
00:27:11 >> Ancient Polynesians as voyagers, well, they're the best.
We know that they reached every distant island in the pacific, and they did it in
00:27:14
a short amount of time.
>> Narrator: Spread out over more than 7 million square miles of ocean,
00:27:20
Polynesia covers more area than any nation in the world.
There are 1,000 islands; Polynesian voyagers managed to travel to and colonize
00:27:28
all of them.
00:27:39 >> Polynesia, biggest nation on earth, bigger than Russia.
00:27:42 There's 600 times more water than there is land.
I would argue that the Polynesians were the only culture that were purposely
00:27:44 voyaging, exploring, and navigating the largest ocean on earth at a time when
other cultures weren't.
>> If you look at world maritime history and you ask who the most successful
navigators are and the most successful types of ships, very few people would
00:27:54
give you the correct answer, which is the Polynesian seagoing canoe and
Polynesian navigators.
00:28:08 >> Narrator: Polynesian voyaging canoes, or te pukes, were up to 60 feet long.
Their double hulls were made from logs of the koa tree, hollowed out by a
00:28:14 traditional tool called an adze or made from smaller wooden planks sewn
together.
Their crab claw sails were woven together out of lauhala leaves, and some
00:28:23
1,500 feet of hand-wound coconut fibers were used for lashings.
>>Hokule'a, we believe with an awful lot of research, is kind of a design00:28:36 accurate replica of the deep-sea voyaging canoes that was the main tool that was
used to explore and colonize all of Polynesia.
>> Narrator: This is the Hokule'a built using some of those ancient
00:28:49
specifications.
It does have a modern sail and other modern touches, but the basic hull design
00:28:54
is the same.
>> At the time that hokule'a was being constructed, there was no other physical
00:29:01 deep-sea voyaging canoe on earth, and so it had to be reconstructed from both
modern science as well as culture and oral histories.
>> Narrator: The Polynesian Voyaging Society first launched the hokule'a in
00:29:17 the 1970s to challenge the idea that Polynesia was settled from east to west by
the Inca from South America.
That theory was first proposed by notable adventurer Thor Heyerdahl in the
00:29:29
1940s, who suggested statues like these on Easter Island were Incan in origin.
To help prove the voyage was possible, he built and successfully sailed his own
00:29:40 raft called the Kon-tiki from South America to the Tuamotu Islands in
Polynesia in 1947.
00:27:00
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00:29:52 Even though the sail was successful, academics balked at his theory.
>> The South Americans aren't known for having seaworthy canoes or for
00:29:57 having high voyaging capabilities, so it really makes more sense that the
Polynesians made it to South America.
>> Narrator: Polynesians were able to island-hop across the pacific because
00:30:10 they knew what to take with them to survive, like plants and chickens, chickens
they may have introduced to South America.
>> We have a very good case for chickens moving from Polynesia to South
00:30:22
America.
00:30:29 The discovery of chicken bones from Chile has turned out to be very exciting.
>> Narrator: When these chicken bones with Polynesian traits were unearthed
00:30:33
in South America, they were immediately controversial.
While many scientists originally thought chickens were introduced to South
00:30:40 America by Spanish explorers in the 1500s, the radiocarbon date of these bones
would prove otherwise.
00:30:52 They're pre-Columbian.
>> Polynesians made it to South America, probably dropped off chicken while
00:30:56 they were there, picked up the sweet potato, and then made the two-way voyage
back to Polynesia.
>> Narrator: Sweet potatoes are not believed to be native to Polynesia, but they
00:31:07
are native to South America, a possible clue.
>> The sweet potatoes are these low, viny plants, and you can see that they're
00:31:17
flowering here.
>> Narrator: Studies on charred sweet potato remains found in Polynesia
00:31:26
suggest the plant was introduced to the islands in pre-Columbian times.
00:31:34 >> Sweet potato is an American plant.
00:31:36 It has wild populations in Central and South America.
00:31:40 It was domesticated by Native Americans thousands of years ago.
00:31:45 >> We knew that sweet potato had been introduced from somewhere else.
00:31:48 The linguistic name for sweet potato, kumara, is not a Polynesian word.
And linguists had looked for a long time to find out where the word kumara
00:31:53 came from, and it's actually been linked to an Ecuadorian tribe that are intensive
sweet potato producers.
>> It is absolutely certain that we have pre-Columbian sweet potato, preEuropean sweet potato, in Polynesia, and that it was transferred by people, not
00:32:04
by floating or by birds, because you don't get the word traveling with the potato
if it's not face-to-face transfer of the sweet potato.
>> Narrator: There’s even evidence the Polynesians made it farther north, to
00:32:26
what would become the United States.
Near Santa Barbara, California, a tribe called the Chumash has been building
00:32:33
this type of sewn-plank canoe since 1000 AD, calling it a tomolo'o.
00:32:44 Linguists say that's how the Chumash would have pronounced the eastern
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central Polynesian word for the same boat, one they call a tumuraa'au.
00:32:55 >> They would have trouble pronouncing that, and it would come out tomolo'o.
00:32:59 That's very normal, regular in Chumash.
>> Narrator: The Chumash are thought to have started using the word tomolo'o
00:33:02
sometime between 500 and 1200 AD.
00:33:09 But it's more than the word for this canoe that's important.
00:33:12 It's also the canoe itself, which has a design that turns out to be rare, very rare.
00:33:19 >> Once the planks were created, there would be holes drilled.
We have holes on opposing edges of the planks that were sewn together using
00:33:22
this vegetable product-based cordage.
That's a common technology throughout all of Polynesia, and it's only seen in
00:33:32 two places in the entire native new world: The coast of southern California and
the coast of Chile.
>> Narrator: Common words, common engineering, and there's more:
00:33:43
fishhooks.
Yosihiko Sinoto, a veritable expert on fishhooks, who's studied them all over
00:33:50
the pacific.
He has a collection of primitive fishhooks found off Catalina Island near Los
00:33:57
Angeles.
>> Narrator: The Catalina fishhooks seem to match fishhooks made in Tahiti
00:34:08
around 1000 AD.
Fishing for food is one way they could have survived a 4,000-mile voyage from
00:34:14
the center of Polynesia to California.
00:34:22 Maximenko's maps of ocean currents say about all of this?
>> For a Polynesian voyage from Cook Islands to Santa Barbara area in
00:34:28
California, the path would require nearly 300 days.
That voyage would imply a lot of paddling, and if they were able to do that,
00:34:39
they could make it.
>> We know for a fact that the Polynesians made voyages of 2,000 to 3,000
00:34:50 kilometers across open water not knowing whether there was something to be
found, to be discovered.
>> It's important to realize that their voyages were explicit voyages of
00:35:02
discovery.
This isn't a matter of lost canoes or people running away from wars or anything
00:35:08
like that.
If you think about the movement across the South Pacific into the trade winds
00:35:15 from Asia all the way to ultimately South America, that seems like an
extraordinary thing, sailing that far into the wind.
00:35:27 But actually, it makes some sense.
00:35:30 >> Originally, the thinking was, why would you go upwind to find land?
00:35:33 Well, because if you go downwind and you don't find it, it's so hard to come
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back.
So going east is actually a safer direction to go knowing that you can come
00:35:38
home.
>> Narrator: What Polynesian adventurers illustrate is a concept that's at the
00:35:44 forefront of all pre-Columbian exploration theories: The concept that the ocean
is easier to cross than one might think.
00:35:57 >> Water never is a barrier to people.
00:36:00 Mountains can be a barrier.
You can get very isolated populations if you have mountains between them,
00:36:01
even if they just live a few miles apart.
00:36:06 But water is just never a barrier.
00:36:09 Even an ocean is more like a highway than a barrier.
>> Narrator: And there was always one surefire way for these early mariners to
00:36:12
find land: Just follow the birds.
[seagulls cawing] >> I think it's important that we recognize that some of the
00:36:35
pre-contact people had tremendous capabilities.
>> Narrator: Even if the Polynesians didn't find North America in 1000 AD,
00:36:48
someone else did.
A settlement in Newfoundland proves that's when the Vikings made it to
00:36:56
Canada, but did they reach the United States?
And was the U.S. itself already the new homeland for ancient Israelites who
00:37:03
really discovered America centuries before?
>> Narrator: 1000 AD Turns out to be a very important year for pre-Columbian
00:41:06
contact.
00:41:11 The Polynesians may have reached America, but the Norse definitely did.
00:41:18 Scandinavia, 1000 AD, still 492 years before Columbus.
00:41:26 The Vikings were exploring the North Atlantic.
It was only a matter of time before one of them sailed all the way to North
00:41:30
America.
>> According to the sagas, Leif Eriksson is the one who traveled from
00:41:39
Greenland over to the new world to explore the new land.
>> Narrator: Leif Eriksson was the son of Erik the Red, who started the first
00:41:48
Norse settlement in Greenland.
A voyager like his father, Leif was intrigued when another Viking told him
00:41:55
there was land west of Greenland, land glimpsed from afar but never explored.
Leif quickly gathered a group of 35 men and women and set sail after buying
00:42:05
the Viking ship owned by the man who told him the tale.
>> Viking ships were built like a strong rowboat, clinker built, that is, with
00:42:15
planks overlapping each other and pinned or nailed together.
00:42:23 That gives a boat a great deal of strength.
00:42:27 >> Narrator: Called knarrs, these ships were over 50 feet long and could carry
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over 20 tons of cargo.
00:42:34 Depending on the length, knars could reach a speed of about 13 knots.
Leif's party of 35 likely had a relatively easy time making a journey to America
00:42:39
following subpolar currents in the North Atlantic.
>> All that you need to do is just to cross from Europe to Greenland, and then
00:42:48
you can follow the coast.
00:42:56 I think that would be around 250 days.
>> Narrator: This is the Viking settlement in Newfoundland Leif gets credit for
00:43:02
founding.
00:43:07 It's called L'anse aux Meadows and is dated to around 1000 AD.
00:43:12 The site is undisputed proof the Vikings made it to North America.
But according to the Norse sagas, they eventually went further than that to a
00:43:17
land called Vinland.
>> So L'anse aux Meadows is actually a--you could see it as a gateway into
00:43:23
what would be Vinland.
>> Narrator: "Vinland" means either land of grapes or land of pastures, neither
00:43:30
of which accurately describe L'anse aux Meadows.
That implies a larger settlement that has never been pinpointed lies elsewhere,
00:43:38
which would explain a curious finding at the settlement site.
>> Butternut husks and butternut wood was found, and that's not something you
00:43:47
find naturally at L'anse aux Meadows or in this area.
>> Narrator: Butternut is native to southeastern Canada and the east coast of the
00:43:56
United States.
It's on the east coast that a critical clue to where Vinland might be turned up in
00:44:03
1957.
>> The only evidence we have that the Vikings made it to the United States is a
00:44:11 Norwegian silver penny, a small coin, found in Brooklin, Maine, and it's dated
to the reign of King Olaf Kyrre, which is in the later part of the 11th century.
00:44:28 >> We acknowledge that this coin was found, conceivably planted.
00:44:32 Our best guess is that it wasn't planted, but it could have been.
But we at least acknowledge that it is an honest-to-god authentic Norse artifact
00:44:35
from an archaeological context on the Maine coast.
00:44:44 >> We don't know if the United States could be Vinland.
We know that L'anse aux Meadows was a base camp, and we know that the
00:44:46
Norse went inland somewhere.
00:44:54 >> Narrator: The east coast is home to some other artifacts thought to be Norse.
These stones carved with some runes from an early Scandinavian alphabet
00:44:59 called the futhark were found partially buried near Spirit Pond in Maine, some
150 miles from where the penny was found.
While academics agree the penny is Viking age and genuine, these stones are
00:45:11
widely regarded as frauds because they don't resemble traditional runestones
12
found throughout Scandinavia.
>> Runic carvings are generally on prominent stones where people can see
00:45:22
them.
00:45:26 They are not obscured by being on small stones and buried in the ground.
So that's why I think that whoever created these stones was trying to put one
00:45:30
over on someone.
>> Narrator: Other stones with runic inscriptions have turned up even further
00:45:39
into the United States.
The most famous is the Kensington runestone, unearthed by a farmer in
00:45:44
Minnesota in 1898.
It details a voyage by 8 Goths and 22 Norwegians on an acquisition journey far
00:45:52
to the west of Vinland in the year 1362.
It also graphically depicts the demise of ten of the men, found "red with blood."
>> The problems most scholars have with the Kensington runestone is that the
00:46:03
runes on it and the stone itself and the inscription, the formula, the message, is
nothing like a runestone would be in Scandinavia during this time period.
>> Narrator: Another problem: There's no trace of the ten dead voyagers
00:46:26
referenced on the stone.
00:46:31 Archaeologists spent time looking for their remains in the 1980s.
>> One of the things that bothered us when we were doing our archaeological
00:46:35 research was that as we looked all around, we couldn't find any evidence of
burials.
It would have been interesting to have found some evidence of graves or to
00:46:44
have heard somebody in the past having talked about graves.
00:46:51 The absence of evidence isn't necessarily a negative.
00:46:54 It just means we didn't find it.
>> Narrator: Geologist Scott Wolter says he did find proof the stone is no 19th00:47:00
century hoax.
In 2000, he analyzed the weathering of minerals in the stone's inscription to
00:47:06
determine when it was carved.
>> The weathering study proves that whoever carved this did it at least 200
00:47:15 years prior to when it was pulled out of the ground in 1898, which means that it
can't be the late 19th-century hoax that everybody claimed.
00:47:28 That's impossible.
>> Narrator: Regardless of when the stone was carved, most academics
00:47:31
question Norse voyagers' ability to make it so far inland.
From the gulf of Saint Lawrence where the L'anse aux Meadows site is found,
one route would have required them to portage over the Lachine Rapids near
00:47:41
Montréal and portage over Niagara Falls before making it into the Great Lakes
and on to Kensington via a series of rivers.
>> Certainly some types of Viking ships were small enough that a group of men
00:47:57
could lift them and carry them overland in a portage.
13
If the Vikings came over in a large enough force, towing smaller vessels behind
00:48:05 their larger ships, it's entirely possible that they could have moved and
penetrated further into the Americas.
00:48:16 The question is, where is the evidence?
>> Narrator: The settlement in Newfoundland is proof on its own that the
Vikings made it to the new world before Columbus, whether or not any of these
00:48:19
runestones are authentic or whether this penny was dropped by a real Viking
voyager.
00:48:35 But it's possible even the Norse weren't the first Europeans to find America.
Could a missionary with a motive have blazed the trail 500 years earlier, finding
00:48:40
a land he called "paradise" and returning to tell the tale?
00:52:42 >> Narrator: In 1492, Columbus didn't discover a new world.
00:52:48 The Polynesians might have been in California in 1000 AD.
The Vikings definitely made it as far as Canada, maybe as far as Maine, but
00:52:53
could those Vikings have been following the Irish?
00:53:04 Ireland, 530 AD, 962 years before Columbus.
Elsewhere in the world, the Roman Empire has fallen to Germanic tribes, and
00:53:11
Europe is entering the Dark Ages.
In Ireland, atop a mountain on the Dingle Peninsula, Saint Brendan the
00:53:20
Navigator had a vision of paradise.
00:53:27 Legend says he found it and that it was America.
00:53:33 >> Brendan was the quintessential sailor.
00:53:36 He was the most accredited navigator, sailor, of medieval times.
>> Narrator: Born near Tralee in County Kerry, Ireland, Brendan was ordained
00:53:43
a priest at age 28.
00:53:51 He is said to have spent time sailing the North Atlantic spreading Christianity.
He's even said to have beaten the Norse to Greenland, which was populated at
00:53:56
the time by Paleo-Eskimo whale hunters.
When Saint Brendan supposedly found America, he was allegedly looking for
00:54:03
terra repromissionis sanctorum, or the land promised to the saints.
>> He anticipated that there was a world outside of this island, and hence
00:54:13
ultimately crossed the Atlantic to America.
>> Narrator: The tale of Saint Brendan's voyage is recorded in a text called the
00:54:25
Navagatio.
It details his journey with a number of other monks to a land rich in fruit, flora,
00:54:30
and fauna he'd never seen before.
Along the way, he had many unbelievable adventures that make some question
00:54:39
the legitimacy of his tale.
>> Brendan and his monks had landed on the back of a huge fish, possibly a
00:54:46 whale, and even attempted to light a fire on his back, which of course, woke the
animal up, if he was asleep.
14
>> Narrator: Most modern scholars consider the Navagatio a literary legend
along the lines of Welsh Prince Madoc.
But the descriptions of things like sheep which are found on the Faroe Islands
00:55:07 and volcanoes which are found on Iceland have some historians convinced he
made it to America via a Northern Atlantic route the Norse would later mimic.
00:55:21 Overlaid, their voyages appear quite similar.
>> Under extremely favorable ocean current conditions, it would require, as a
00:55:26
minimum, 180 days but likely much longer.
00:55:37 It would be complicated.
00:55:39 It would require a lot of paddling or a lot of skill with sailing.
>> Narrator: Saint Brendan is said to have sailed a skin boat called a curragh
00:55:45
made of cowhides softened by butter and sewn together.
>> The Irish were building skin boats, skin boats capable of taking extended
00:55:54
voyages.
00:56:00 They have a framework, a skeleton.
You build a basic frame, and then you stitch and sew skins together to create a
00:56:02
watertight covering to keep the sea out.
>> Narrator: Whether Saint Brendan reached America or not, cartographers
00:56:10
began including his alleged paradise on maps in the 1200s.
Christopher Columbus himself was supposedly very interested in where Saint
00:56:18
Brendan had been.
His alleged trip to Ireland to learn the details of Brendan’s voyage has been part
00:56:24
of the country's oral history for centuries.
00:56:32 >> Columbus knew of the story of Brendan.
00:56:36 He came to Galway and learned what he could about Brendan.
It is a recorded fact that the night before Columbus departed for the new world,
he said, "I go to find the promised land of Saint Brendan."
00:56:39 >> Narrator: While a 19th-century French writer and historian named Ferdinand
Denis did include something to that effect in a book about wonders of the
world, his original source for the information is in question.
What isn't in question is the fact that Columbus did find land in 1492, and it was
00:57:04
the Bahamas.
But what Brendan found almost 1,000 years earlier may have been modern-day
00:57:10
Connecticut.
>> This site here at the Gungywamp has all of the kinds of evidence that we
00:57:21
would expect to see in an Irish early Christian site of Brendan’s time.
>> Narrator: Spreading out over 100 acres, the Gungywamp archaeological site
00:57:30 in Groton, Connecticut, is home to stone chambers, dwellings, and rock
carvings some associate with Saint Brendan.
00:57:43 They were here even before English colonists settled the area in the 1600s.
The stone chambers at the site don't look sophisticated at first glance, but they
00:57:49
have undeniable features that suggest they served a religious purpose.
00:54:58
15
On the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, sunlight shines through this window,
illuminating the chamber.
>> The dates that the sun shines into this chamber are of significance to the
00:58:05
Irish early Christian liturgical cycle.
It's the occurrence of the sun's position on the vernal equinox which heralds the
00:58:13
approaching date for Easter.
>> Narrator: Between the sixth and tenth centuries, solar alignments like the
00:58:20 ones found at the Gungywamp site were a component of small Irish churches,
like the Gallarus Oratory on the Dingle Peninsula.
>> It has an east-west alignment, the east window and the west doorway over
00:58:34 here, and the stones have been very carefully selected to build such a perfect
building.
>> Narrator: Solar alignments and stone masonry alone can't prove the Irish
00:58:47 made it to what would become the United States, but these could be another
piece of evidence.
00:58:59 They're symbols called chi-rhos.
00:59:01 Outlining them in chalk makes them easier to see.
>> They are fully consistent with the Irish early Christian tradition, that is to
00:59:05
say, roughly 500 to, let's say, 900 AD.
00:59:15 >> Narrator: A chi-rho is an ancient religious symbol.
It's made by superimposing the first two Greek letters, chi and rho, used to spell
00:59:18
Christ.
Believers think the Irish left these here at the time of Saint Brendan, but they
00:59:24
can't prove it because the etching on this type of stone can't be accurately dated.
There are charcoal remnants, so someone made fires that far back, but there's no
00:59:35
proof it was the Irish.
If they were here, they didn't leave behind any of their written language, called
00:59:44
Ogham, but there may be evidence of Ogham somewhere else in America.
00:59:55 >> Oghams were used either as a memorial or a land claim, land marker.
>> Narrator: Ogham looks to most people like a series of nonsensical hash
01:00:01
marks, but the lines translate into letters of the alphabet.
>> These marks are found all over North America, the United States and
01:00:10
Canada.
01:00:14 >> Narrator: These were found at Buckhorn State Park in Kentucky.
>> In the middle panel, there were things that I could grasp in old Celtic, and it
01:00:19 was saying things like, "We are a band of people traveling" it could be from
across the Appalachians or across the sea.
01:00:34 The debate is, are these truly Oghams or are they something else?
01:00:40 Some of it can read as old Celtic, and some of it can read as Algonquin.
01:00:44 They look very, very, very much alike.
01:00:47 Most American scholars do not regard Ogham as authentic.
00:57:57
16
>> You would need an Irish expert, perhaps, to go out, look at your inscriptions,
and see if they could read them, see if they could make any sense of them.
>> Narrator: With no hard evidence, no undeniable remnants of sixth-century
01:01:01 Irish found in America, Saint Brendan’s legend of an American landfall may be
just that, a legend.
01:01:16 >> Archaeologists look at what's left.
We try to find evidence to suggest whether a myth is just that or if it tells a
01:01:19
fundamental truth that's been forgotten.
01:01:26 We haven't found that evidence for the Brendan voyage.
>> Narrator: Saint Brendan died in 577 AD, leaving behind the mystery of his
01:01:31
paradise.
01:01:39 At the root of his journey was religion and a desire to spread his beliefs.
In that way, he was like others who may have come to America even before
01:01:45
him.
A voyage by ancient Hebrews to America before the time of Christ is the
01:01:52
foundation for an entire religion.
Now, could blood evidence prove not only that they were here but that they're
01:01:59
the ancestors of modern day Cherokee?
01:06:32 >> Narrator: Israel, 600 B.C., 2,092 Years before Columbus.
Elsewhere in the world, Pompeii is founded in Italy, later to be destroyed by the
01:06:38 eruption of Mount Vesuvius, and the Mayan culture is flourishing in
Mesoamerica.
In Israel, Jerusalem will soon be taken over by the Babylonians and the Temple
01:06:49
of Solomon destroyed.
01:06:56 Ancient Hebrews are fleeing but where to?
>> The thought of early Hebrews coming to the new world has been a topic of a
01:07:03
great deal of discussion going all the way back to the 19th century.
>> Narrator: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is based in part on
01:07:12 the Book of Mormon which tells how a prophet named Lehi and his sons built a
boat and sailed it to America around 600 BC.
Artistic renderings often depict it as a type of ark with sails, but there was
01:07:26
another type of ship Israelites were using at that time.
>> The Roman ships that the Hebrews would have used had they made such a
voyage would be solid built, round-formed hulls, heavily framed, that is, thick
01:07:36
ribbed, carrying a square sail with a high-elevated bow and stern, capable of
carrying all sorts of cargo and people.
>> Narrator: Lehi’s alleged route would have taken him from Oman through the
01:07:53
Indian and Pacific Oceans to the Central American coast.
01:08:00 Even using ocean currents, the drifters suggest it would have taken 580 days.
01:08:07 That's more than a year and a half.
01:08:11 >> I don't think there's a question of ships making it.
01:00:52
17
01:08:13 A vessel can make it with dead people.
The question is whether people would make it in that voyage if it took a great
01:08:15
deal of time or they had no way of knowing where they were going.
>> Narrator: Lehi isn’t the only ancient Israelite thought by some to have made
01:08:22
it to America.
There is other lore that one of the ten lost tribes of Israel exiled by the Assyrians
01:08:28
in 700 BC
01:08:34 also ended up in the new world.
Either scenario ends with the same assumption, that ancient Jewish people are
01:08:37
the ancestors of some Native Americans.
01:08:46 >> We are a Jewish people by race and by culture.
All of our ceremonial days are exactly the same time as the Jewish people, and
01:08:53
that cannot be of any accident or any coincidence at all.
>> Narrator: Light-skinned members of the Central Band of Cherokee don't
01:09:03
look like many Native Americans.
Cherokee started mingling with white settlers much earlier than other North
01:09:09
American tribes, as early as the 1600s.
01:09:17 That's one possible explanation for their skin color.
But could another be that they don't have origins in Asia like most Native
01:09:20
Americans do?
So strong is the Central Band's belief that they have Jewish ancestry and origins
01:09:26
in ancient Israel, they set out to prove it by blood.
01:09:36 >> Well, we knew that DNA would play a major role in this proof or disproof.
01:09:44 So we've done a considerable amount of DNA testing with family tree DNA.
01:09:50 >> We do a multitude of things.
01:09:52 We connect people both genealogically and anthropologically to their ancestors.
We're also able to determine someone's deeper ancestry, what we call their
01:09:59
anthrogenealogical information.
And what that does is, that tracks the individual back not hundreds of years, as
01:10:08
we do in genealogy, but thousands or tens of thousands of years.
01:10:21 Everybody needs to suit up.
>> Narrator: Chief Sitting Owl’s blood was tested along with the blood of 89
01:10:24 other members of the Central Band of Cherokee for assignment into what's
called a haplogroup, or group of people with a common DNA sequence.
01:10:36 Jewish people typically fall into one of four haplogroups.
01:10:41 >> A great amount of our beliefs and practices are Jewish.
01:10:47 We have the historical record that comes from the oral history.
01:10:53 >> Narrator: But will they have the blood evidence?
When it comes down to archaeology proving an ancient Hebrew migration to
01:10:59 the United States, such proof is hard to come by. New Mexico state
archaeologist David Eck has led more than his share of people into the Los
18
Lunas Desert to look at this stone etched with the ten commandments in what
appears to be Paleo-Hebrew.
It's just one of several stones in the United States people claim is evidence of an
01:11:20
ancient Israelite migration.
>> There are many theories about what the stone is, all the way from
01:11:28 extraterrestrials carving a message for humanity to lost tribes of Israel
wandering the deserts of the American southwest.
>> Looking at this thing, one of the things that jumps out right away is these
01:11:40
characters look relatively fresh.
>> Narrator: Practically since its discovery in the early 1900s, the stone has
01:11:49 been subject to vandalism, people scratching the inscription, even adding to it in
some cases.
01:12:01 >> This mark has been altered.
As far as I know, no work has been done trying to date the inscription because
01:12:04 there are very few methods that I know of that would even allow the possibility
of dating.
01:12:14 We're hoping that today we'll find out some of those possibilities.
>> Narrator: The state agreed to allow forensic petrographer Scott Wolter to
01:12:19
perform noninvasive testing to hopefully prove when this stone was carved.
01:12:30 >> What we need to do is try to find some original marks, like maybe here.
01:12:35 This looks like they may have left this area alone.
>> Narrator: Wolter photographs the stone with a camera outfitted as a portable
01:12:39
microscope.
>> By nature, my work is invasive, but in this case, it has to be totally
01:12:45
noninvasive.
01:12:50 What I would like to do is, you see this weathered surface?
It'd be nice to get a piece that I could cut into and look at that weathering
01:12:53
profile.
01:12:59 And I'm just picking out a piece right here.
01:13:02 This one kind of has a similar look to it.
01:13:08 >> It looks very similar.
01:13:09 >> Yeah.
01:13:10 >> I see no carvings on it.
01:13:11 That would be the sample.
01:13:12 >> All right, thank you.
01:13:13 That'll work.
01:13:16 >> Narrator: Back in the lab, the moment of truth.
01:13:19 Can the inscription be dated?
Wolter compares the sample with the photos he took and with photos taken by
01:13:22 others many years ago in an attempt to use the weathering period of exposed
minerals in the inscription to date it.
19
>> Are there features that I see on this that would lead me to believe that it's
more likely of recent age as opposed to being old?
01:13:41 I would say no.
01:13:42 I don't think you can make a conclusion that way.
>> Narrator: The vandalism of the inscription is too severe for geology to
01:13:45
conclude when it might have been carved.
>> The fact that the stone has been cleaned and retooled and who knows what
01:13:53
done to it, that's not helpful.
>> People want to believe, and as soon as they want to believe, they stop
01:14:01
thinking.
>> Narrator: Another stone with a mysterious seemingly Hebrew inscription
01:14:08
was found here, along the Bat Creek in eastern Tennessee.
01:14:18 Some say the inscription translates to "for Judea," a reference to ancient Israel.
It was found 1889, along with wood fragments that were carbon-14 dated to
01:14:25
some time between the first and eighth century AD.
01:14:34 It was found in a Cherokee burial mound.
>> The artifacts that have been found in this area where the Cherokee people
01:14:37 live are very important to us because of our heritage going back to the same
people that became the Cherokee known today.
>> Narrator: Except family tree DNA says the results of Chief Sitting Owl's
01:14:55
tests are in, and they are problematic in proving Jewish ancestry.
>> As far as testing has been done with us, I see no connection to any ancient
01:15:05
Hebraic or Jewish populations whatsoever.
>> Narrator: Of all the members of the Central Band of Cherokee who were
01:15:17 tested, only 3% show any Jewish ancestry, not enough to prove an ancient
Hebrew heritage for the people in Chief Sitting Owl's Tribe.
01:15:32 >> Will we ever find the full bloodline of the Cherokee people?
01:15:38 Yes.
>> Narrator: Chief Sitting Owl’s tribe only represents what he says is a small
01:15:40
number of Cherokee, less than 1%.
The Central Band itself is not one of the three federally recognized tribes of
01:15:48 Cherokee, although the Bureau of Indian Affairs openly acknowledges there are
many people with Cherokee ancestry that's hard to trace.
01:16:03 >> We have a very unique situation here in the Central Band of Cherokee.
We were isolated from the main body of the Cherokee in North Carolina and
01:16:08
north Georgia.
>> Narrator: DNA testing of more members of the Central Band is just getting
01:16:15
under way in what's called the Abraham/Moses Project.
Some members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee, a tribe that is federally
01:16:23 recognized, are very interested in the results because they too suspect a Jewish
ancestry.
01:13:33
20
Even if they're not Jewish, Chief Sitting Owl says the test results for his tribe
01:16:33 are still very interesting in proving who came to America before Columbus and
how.
>> Our Cherokee DNA Project has proven that the Cherokee did not come
01:16:44
across the Bering Sea.
>> Narrator: 94% of those tested in the Central Band showed European ancestry
01:16:52
going back thousands of years.
01:16:59 Exactly how far back is unknown.
01:17:02 That could mean they aren't Cherokee at all.
It could also mean they mixed heavily with white settlers in the new world, or it
01:17:04 could mean they are descendents of Europeans who were here even before
Paleo-Indians crossed the Bering Strait.
In a bold new theory, a Smithsonian archaeologist suggests the people who
01:17:18 came from Asia learned to make their tools from Europeans who were already
here more than 20, 000 years ago.
01:21:51 >> Narrator: 22,000 BC, 23,492 years before Columbus.
It's the ice age, and much of the earth's water is frozen, making sea levels
01:21:58
worldwide 450 feet lower.
It's still thousands of years before Paleo-Indians will cross the Bering Strait land
bridge from Siberia into North America, but off the coast of Virginia, someone
01:22:06
was hunting a mastodon and left a clue that could mean Europeans really were
the very first to find America.
01:22:26 >> This is the oldest artifact in the Americas.
This artifact definitely goes with that mastodon, and we have a date on that
01:22:31
mastodon of almost 24,000 years.
>> Narrator: Smithsonian archaeologist Dennis Stanford says the artifact, called
01:22:38
a biface, looks just like the ones Solutreans made.
01:22:46 The Solutreans were hunter-gatherers in southwestern Europe in 22,000 BC.
Stanford hypothesizes the Solutreans used skin boats to reach America along
01:22:52
the polar ice front, which extended much further south during the ice age.
01:23:03 >> If you have a boat, it changes a lot of things.
It means that rivers, lakes, oceans are no longer barriers to human movement
01:23:07
but are the highways of human movement.
>> Narrator: The ice edge they followed would have been a place to camp and
01:23:17
hunt seal for their fat.
01:23:23 >> If you have fat, you have food.
01:23:26 You have waterproofing.
01:23:27 You have a source for fire.
01:23:30 It's really a key issue that you need.
>> Narrator: Stanford says once the Solutreans were in America, they
01:23:34
eventually converged with Paleo-Indians who did come across the Bering Strait
21
land bridge from Siberia.
01:23:44 Together, he says, the two groups formed what's called the Clovis culture.
He says their convergence is the only way to explain unique characteristics of
01:23:49
Clovis stone tools found throughout the Americas.
01:23:58 >> This is a blade core, a Clovis blade core.
01:24:02 It's made identically to those of the Solutrean time period.
There were many, many tools that were absolutely identical and unique to
01:24:07
Clovis and Solutrean but different than what you get in Siberia.
There is absolutely nothing in Asia that you could derive Clovis technology
01:24:18
from.
>> Narrator: While Stanford’s theory that Europeans really were the first
01:24:26
inhabitants of the new world isn't widely accepted, it might be someday.
>> I think it's very exciting, and whether we're right or wrong, it doesn't make
01:24:36
any difference, because we have people thinking about it.
>> Narrator: For archaeological studies from 13,000 years ago or more, stone
01:24:45
tools are some of the only things to compare.
Once pottery developed, it became a critical tool in learning about generations
01:24:54
of people and how their civilizations evolved.
01:25:02 Molded into this clay are clues of another pre-Columbian voyage to America.
01:25:10 Ecuador, 3044 BC, 4,536 years before Columbus.
Elsewhere in the world, Stonehenge is rising in the English countryside, and the
01:25:18
first writing system, called cuneiform, was recently invented in Sumeria.
In Ecuador, the coastline culture of the Valdivians is primitive, made up of
01:25:29
hunters and gatherers, but they're starting to make pottery.
01:25:38 The question is, where did they learn their sophisticated techniques?
>> We believe they were a very developed culture because they received some
01:25:43 influence from more advanced culture, as my grandfather said, perhaps the
Jomon culture from Japan.
>> Narrator: Emilio Estrada was Alexia Molina's grandfather, a local man who
01:25:56
collected fragments of pottery during hunting trips in Valdivia.
>> Bit by bit, he became very interested in what the meaning of these pieces
01:26:05
was.
>> Narrator: After noticing similarities between the shards he found and
01:26:10
Japanese Jomon pottery circa 4,000 BC
01:26:17 he saw in books, he was convinced of a connection.
01:26:21 But being no expert in archaeology, he contacted the Smithsonian.
>> He wrote us a letter and said, you know, "I just saw some pictures of pottery,
01:26:26
Jomon, that looks like Valdivia. What do you think?”
" >> Narrator: It was the beginning of a friendship and of what would become a
01:26:34 50-year push to prove that the Japanese made it to America some 4,500 years
before Columbus.
22
>> We took a big stack of Valdivia pottery, and we went from Tokyo all the
01:26:49 way down by train and stopped everywhere where there was a museum or
collection.
And when we got to Kyushu, we started seeing all kinds of things that looked
01:27:00
just like Valdivia.
>> [speaking Japanese] >> What distinguishes Kyushu’s pottery from others is
01:27:06 the fact that the design is not flamboyant and that they focus on patterns made
from lines.
>> Narrator: Kyushu is the third largest island in Japan and forms the southern
01:27:22
tip of the country.
Meggers and Estrada set out to find out how the pottery from Kyushu could
01:27:28
possibly be connected to pottery in Valdivia, some 8,000 nautical miles away.
01:27:39 Their findings were explosive.
[roaring and rumbling] 6,300 years ago the Kikai volcano in southern Japan
01:27:43
erupted with greater force than that of legendary Krakatoa in the 1880s.
Kyushu was coated in more than a foot of ash, as pumice rained all across the
01:27:58
region.
01:28:04 >> People would have jumped in their canoes.
01:28:07 We know they did deep-sea fishing.
01:28:09 They could catch rainwater, and they could catch fish, and they could survive.
>> Narrator: But could they have made it all the way to the coast of Ecuador in
01:28:15
boats like this?
A traditional Jomon fishing boat would have been very simple, some 20 feet
01:28:22 long and just 2 feet wide, with only oars, not even a sail to get them where they
were going.
01:28:35 >> [speaking Japanese] >> They would carve these boats out of logs.
01:28:41 It's difficult to say how many people would fit inside the boat.
01:28:45 It would all depend on the size of the log.
>> Even though traveling in a small tree boat was a risk, to this culture,
01:28:52
seafaring was a part of their lives.
>> It's entirely possible that within a short period of time, by hop-scotching
01:29:05 from island to island, working their way down the coast, they could have
reached Central or South America.
>> Narrator: The Kuroshio Current would have propelled the fishermen
01:29:16 eastward and northward, so they wouldn't have had to travel 8,000 miles of
open sea.
>> Little effort would be required to cross from subtropical gyre into subpolar
01:29:25
gyre, and then strong eastern boundary current would lead directly to Alaska.
>> Narrator: From Alaska, it would have been a relatively easy journey along
01:29:36
the California coast, along the edge of Central America, and on to Ecuador.
>> Obviously they made a landfall on Valdivia, and they found people living
01:29:46
essentially the way they were in Japan, but they didn't have pottery.
23
>> Narrator: Dr. Meggers is convinced the Japanese introduced it to them and
01:29:58 together with Estrada, found 26 similarities in technique and motif on pottery
from Japan and Valdivia.
They include dog bone shapes and hourglass figures, which Betty says aren't
01:30:10
found anywhere else except on Jomon and Valdivian pottery.
>> You're not going to get independent invention of all of these complicated
01:30:19
techniques and motifs.
01:30:27 >> Narrator: But critics disagree.
They think the Valdivians could have come up with their pottery designs on
01:30:29
their own.
It turns out, however, pottery isn't the only thing to suggest the Japanese made it
01:30:36
to South America in ancient times.
01:30:43 There's also evidence they introduced a deadly virus.
>> This virus is very, very interesting because of the very unique geographical
01:30:49
distribution.
>> Narrator: The virus is the human "t" cell lymphotropic virus type 1, called
01:30:57
htlv-1.
01:31:03 It's rare, and it causes leukemia.
Htlv-1 is only found in a small number of modern-day people from southern
01:31:07
Japan and mummified people in South America’s Atacama Desert.
01:31:18 At the base of the Andes, this desert is the driest place on earth.
01:31:24 Land parched and cracked, it looks like a lunar landscape.
01:31:28 Because of the climate, mummies like these were strikingly preserved.
01:31:35 >> But Andes people are similar to Japanese, especially southwestern Japan.
01:31:42 So not only type of the virus but also a genetic background similar to Japanese.
>> Narrator: Those anthropological similarities are what led him to the
01:31:51
mummies here, in search of more answers about htlv-1.
01:32:00 >> We collected dried-up bone marrow from the femur bone.
01:32:05 More than 100 samples we collected.
01:32:09 >> Narrator: From that bone marrow, he was able to collect DNA.
He found htlv-1 that likely originated in Asia was present in South America in
01:32:14 ancient times, and it had to have gotten there from contact with people who
already carried the virus.
>> This virus is transmissible through breast milk, from mother, and also from
01:32:27
husband to wife through semen.
01:32:35 So that's a very hard evidence that I believe.
>> These are the things you have to know about in order to say this is really a
01:32:40
contact and not just an accidental similarity.
>> Narrator: Dr. Meggers is still working to prove to mainstream academics
01:32:50
that there was ancient Japanese contact with the Valdivians.
01:32:58 The locals in Valdivia need less convincing.
24
01:33:03 >> The Valdivian people really don't think about what are their origins.
What we can see if we go outside, we'll see that they have a lot of Asian
01:33:08 characteristics on their faces, and that's very different from the rest of the
country.
>> Narrator: And in that lies the key to ultimately determining which of all
01:33:20
these voyages really happened.
01:33:27 It's not who holds the key but who is the key.
01:33:32 >> So in effect within ourselves, we have an entire encyclopedia.
>> Narrator: Now DNA becomes invaluable as one theory of pre-Columbian
01:33:37 contact has the chance to be proven with the ultimate test borne of bone and
blood.
01:37:56 >> Narrator: Who really discovered America?
01:37:59 Perhaps a lot of people.
01:38:01 Certainly the Native Americans were here before Columbus, the Vikings, too.
01:38:06 But who else?
There are even more stories of pre-Columbian voyages to America and back
01:38:08
than the ones shown on this map.
They're often the only way to explain things like cocaine and nicotine, new
world substances, found in Egyptian mummies from 1000 AD, the only way to
01:38:15
explain copper of a purity only found in Lake Superior being used in
Mediterranean boats around 1400 BC.
From the Chinese in 1421 all the way back to the Solutreans in 22,000 BC,
01:38:33
there is an alternate time line of history that is impossible to ignore.
01:38:45 >> I think we need to start looking at history from some different perspectives.
We need to take the glasses off that say we're going to look at this from the
01:38:49
perspective of Columbus and his ships.
>> I think we need to be open-minded because we're constantly having new
data coming in that can allow us to change our theories and our interpretations
01:38:55
even in cases where things might have happened in the past that we wouldn’t
have imagined.