Customer Reviews

Across Before Columbus?: Evidence for Transoceanic Contact With the Americas Prior to 1492

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This book is a huge study (made up of different papers) that probes into the whole pre-columbian field of transoceanic contact prior to 1492. The evidence is ample that many different culture and peoples logically came over to the Americas whether due to religious persecution or trade. See for yourself. Educate yourself and see ancient history in a new light.

This is a huge volume of papers from the conference at 1992 Brown University with a group of interesting scholars. They try to tackle the question: Did civilization blossom in the Americas through independent invention or were cultural and physiological traits borrowed diffused from civilizations across the seas?
It is interesting to learn from this group of university professors and researchers who offer their findings in pottery, architectural style and brickmaking, symbols, glyphs and inscriptions, transport, language, botany and biology. Native Americans established themselves with magnificent legacy which was either ignored or diminished as primitive. Across after Columbus reduced natives by killings and diseases and their cultures were burnt and destroyed to confine to that of the conquerors.
It is no doubt that Natives were the people who came through Bering Strait from Asia and they were in this new world for a very long time. Americans only remember them in Thanksgiving turkey and pumpkin pies and Columbus "discovered" the new world.
These group of scholars shared their ideas and research in this book to challenge our conventional thinking by compare and contrast the new and old worlds.
Who had the most impact on Native American culture, Asia, Europe, Africa? Reading this book may not be able to give a conclusive answer but will stimulate to explore more for answer.
Secret Maps of the Ancient World
Pale Ink
The origin of ancient American cultures
The Asiatic Fathers of America: Chinese Discovery & Colonization of Ancient America

This book consists of 28 essays by different scholars promoting one or another trans-oceanic contact between the Americas and the Old World before Columbus. "Proving" Old World influence on the American Indians is a minor industry among scholars that has gone on for centuries and -- to make my prejudices clear -- I'm only aware of two persuasive proofs of pre-Columbian contacts: (1) The Vikings who left behind ruins in Newfoundland, but apparently had no other impact on native Americans; and (2) the export of the sweet potato from South America to the Pacific islands either by Indians visiting the Pacific Islands or Polynesians visiting South America then returning home.

About every known crackpot idea -- except invaders from outer space -- is proposed in these pages: Hebrews in Tennesee, Japanese in Arizona and Ecuador, Chinese all over the place, European watchtowers in Boston, links between Finnish and Uto-Aztecan languages, etc. If one half of these essays were true you would have needed traffic signals to prevent congestion of Asian and European ships heading toward the Americas hundreds of years before Columbus.

In addition, most of the essays are written in the most turgid style possible -- and to the non-specialists, e.g. yours truly, they may be incomprehensible.

"Across Before Columbus", however, has some virtues. First of all, it is possible that one or two of the alleged contacts took place. Once in a while a bizarre notion turns out to be true. I found the essays about language links between the Americas and Asia to be persuasive and I was introduced to the interesting speculation that corn (maize) conceivably found its way to India from the Americas before Columbus.

I also found it interesting and worthwhile for the editors to balance the arguments in the essays with some peer comments. For example, in a concluding essay, John Sorenson says in essence that most of the other essays in the book are pure BS and "nearly every writer can be faulted for selective ignorance of vital data." In other words, the authors are either ignorant or dishonest -- or both. So read the book, to the extent that it is readable. You'll encounter some interesting ideas, but be very cautious in believing any of them.

Smallchief