America BC

So, Columbus discovered the New World in 1492, right?

Wrong. For a start, we know that the Vikings had settled in Newfoundland - though it does seem that there weren’t many Norse settlements and they were occupied for only a short period of time.

Photo: Norse settlement a Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland.

But what about the possibility of more ancient visitors to the New World? Although the evidence is tantalisingly sparse, it does seem to exist and points to a much more complex history for the Americas than you’ll find discussed in most text books.

Of the various advocates for early visitors to North America, by far the most convincing for me is Dr Barry Fell, who researched and published in the 1970s. He started with so-called ‘root cellars’ in New England. According to Fell, many of these seemed to have inscriptions written in Ogham script - an early Celtic form of writing, in these cases most likely from Ireland, Spain and Portugal.

Among the other evidence he put forward were occasional finds of Roman coins on beaches along America’s east coast. Fell argued that these were being washed-up during storms from as-yet undiscovered Roman shipwrecks lying out to sea.

But perhaps most convincing was the hieroglyphic writing used by the Mi’kmaw people of Canada,. Fell believed that the Mi'kmaw had learned their alphabet from visitors from the Old World.

Fell gathered loads of evidence for America’s complex pre-history, all of which is summarised on this drawing from his book “Saga America.”

Fell’s research was heavily criticised and in some areas it does look like his critics had a point – maybe Fell took the evidence too far on occasions - but his work refuses to go away. In 1990 one of his harshest critics wrote “We need to ask ….. where we have gone wrong as archaeologists in not recognizing such an extensive European presence in the New World.”

It seems like Dr Fell was onto something and maybe one day, someone in academia will be brave enough to take a proper look at American pre-history.