An Academic Journey to a New World

Part II Part III Part IV Part V

(Republished from a previous blog: here and here)

When I was an undergraduate student, I took a class called "History of the American Indian." It was taught by a professor who went on to become a dean. When I returned for graduate school; he remembered my academic prowess and helped me not just get in, but become a graduate assistant.

Back in those days, the history faculty's approach to homework was mostly no-nonsense. You did a paper, and two tests. Depending on the professor, you might have a couple other minor projects or homework besides that. I like that philosophy - it doesn't waste anyone's time, and at the end of it all, if you paid attention and did your work, you had something pretty impressive you could show people. (Which is what I'll be doing shortly.)

I have my own approach to homework - I don't want to bore my professors. In my World War II class, I wrote my term paper on Pink Floyd's "The Final Cut" because I was pretty sure the professor had read a million papers about Hitler and the Holocaust and the Battle of Stalingrad already. There was nothing I could say on that score that hadn't already been said by someone a whole lot smarter than me.

But I could do unique, so I did. In this case, I chose to examine pre-Columbian contacts between the Old and New Worlds. There's several candidates to choose from. The Viking landings are proven, between the Icelandic sagas and L'Anse aux Meadows, so I didn't bother with those. A fairly mainstream case was being made for the Chinese at the time; Gavin Menzies' book 1421: The Year China Discovered America had just come out, and hadn't been substantially refuted yet. The Polynesians have a fairly strong case: their word for "sweet potato" is suspiciously similar to the Quechua word for "sweet potato," and the Chumash tribe that lived near my childhood home of Vandenburg AFB, California are suspiciously culturally similar to what a Polynesian society would look like if it landed in California. My professor suggested I limit my inquiries to only one possible pre-Columbian Old World society, so I chose what seemed to me at the time to be the likeliest unproven candidate: the Phoenicians and Carthaginians.

This is something I'd read up on a bit. I'd always been an avid fan of Phoenician and Carthaginian history. When I was a little kid, I learned the Phoenician alphabet - it was probably my first act as a linguist. When I was in high school, I did a presentation on the Battle of Cannae, still studied in military colleges and considered one of the most brilliant military victories of all time. Also in high school, I drew that picture up top; it was supposed to be a representation of Carthage. I drew it from written descriptions and not pictures or maps; it has the Bursa and the two harbors connected by canal, and a statue of Dido. With the advent of the internet and in particular YouTube history channels, I have a better idea what ancient Carthage really looked like, and it's not that. But for a kid without the benefit of actual city plans to go off of, it's not so bad.

Point is, I knew a lot about the subject. And I was fairly familiar with the arguments advanced in favor of Phoenician contact with the New World. I grew up watching TV shows about cryptids and UFOs and the like with my mother. While I didn't grow up to agree with much of what that credulous world believes, I did retain its daring and intellectual curiosity. So putting my academic reputation on the line for a theory outside the scholarly mainstream was no real issue for me, so long as I could make a solid case. I think I did. I'm reposting my paper from that class, so you can judge for yourself after the jump. Note: a lot of the links I cited back then in formal footnote style are now dead, but I'll insert new ones directly into the text that link to active sources saying the same thing.

Continue reading my homework in Part II