---
title: "Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories"
chunk: 6/11
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_transoceanic_contact_theories"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:37:53.813777+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

In 1996, Mark McMenamin proposed that Phoenician sailors discovered the New World c. 350 BC. The Phoenician state of Carthage minted gold staters in 350 BC bearing a pattern in the reverse exergue of the coins, which McMenamin initially interpreted as a map of the Mediterranean with the Americas shown to the west across the Atlantic. McMenamin later demonstrated that these coins found in America were modern forgeries.

=== Claims of ancient Judaic contact ===

The Bat Creek inscription and Los Lunas Decalogue Stone have led some to suggest the possibility that Jewish seafarers may have traveled to America after they fled from the Roman Empire at the time of the Jewish–Roman Wars in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE.
However, American archaeologists Robert C. Mainfort Jr. and Mary L. Kwas argued in American Antiquity (2004) that the Bat Creek inscription was copied from an illustration in an 1870 Masonic reference book and introduced by the Smithsonian field assistant who found it during excavation activities.
As for the Decalogue Stone, there are mistakes which suggest that it was carved by one or more novices who either overlooked or misunderstood some details on a source Decalogue from which they copied it. Since there is no other evidence or archaeological context in the vicinity, it is most likely that the legend at the nearby university is true—that the stone was carved by two anthropology students whose signatures can be seen inscribed in the rock below the Decalogue, "Eva and Hobe 3-13-30."
Scholar Cyrus H. Gordon believed that Phoenicians and other Semitic-speaking groups had crossed the Atlantic in antiquity, ultimately arriving in both North and South America. This opinion was based on his own work on the Bat Creek inscription. Similar ideas were also held by John Philip Cohane; Cohane even claimed that many geographical placenames in the United States have a Semitic origin.

== Claims of European contact ==

=== Solutrean hypothesis ===

The Solutrean hypothesis argues that Europeans migrated to the New World during the Paleolithic era, circa 16,000 to 13,000 BCE. This hypothesis proposes contact partly on the basis of perceived similarities between the flint tools of the Solutrean culture in modern-day France, Spain, and Portugal (which thrived circa 20,000 to 15,000 BCE), and the Clovis culture of North America, which developed circa 9,000 BCE.
The Solutrean hypothesis was proposed in the mid-1990s. It has little support amongst the scientific community, and genetic markers are inconsistent with the idea.

=== Claims of contact in antiquity ===

Claims have been made for contact in Classical Antiquity, primarily with the Roman Empire, but sometimes also with other contemporaneous cultures. Lucio Russo proposed that the classical idea of the inhabited world, from the Isles of the Blessed to the capital of the Seres, spanning 180° of longitude was based on the Isles of the Blessed being the Lesser Antilles.
Claims of contacts with the civilizations of antiquity have been based on isolated archaeological finds in American sites that originated in the Old World. For example, the Bay of Jars in Brazil has been yielding ancient clay storage jars that resemble Roman amphorae for over 150 years. It has been proposed that the origin of these jars is a Roman shipwreck, although it has also been suggested that they could be 15th- or 16th-century Spanish olive oil jars.
Archaeologist Romeo Hristov argues that a Roman ship, or the drifting of such a shipwreck to American shores, is a possible explanation for the alleged discovery of artifacts that are apparently ancient Roman in origin (such as the Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca bearded head) in America. Hristov claims that the possibility of such an event has been made more likely by the discovery of evidence of travels by Romans to Tenerife and Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, and of a Roman settlement (from the 1st century BCE to the 4th century CE) on Lanzarote.

In 1950, an Italian botanist, Domenico Casella, suggested that a depiction of a pineapple (a fruit native to the New World tropics) was represented among wall paintings of Mediterranean fruits at Pompeii. According to Wilhelmina Feemster Jashemski, this interpretation has been challenged by other botanists, who identify it as a pine cone from the umbrella pine tree, which is native to the Mediterranean area. The leaves shown in the depiction (as with stone carvings from Nineveh) make the pine cone identification problematic.
Roman and other European coins have been found in the United States. Jeremiah Epstein, an American anthropologist, rejected the suggestion that these coins can be cited as evidence of Pre-Columbian contact between Europe and the Americas, pointing out the lack of any pre-Columbian archaeological contexts relating to these finds, the lack of detail concerning the discoveries, and the possibility of forgery (at least two were clearly forgeries).
A possible explanation for many of the ancient European coins found in the Americas is that they were carried over by modern ships, mixed in with solid ballast. Ships leaving European harbors would often take aboard sand and gravel dug from the shoreline in order to add weight and stability in the absence of cargo. Upon arrival at New World ports, these ships would dump the ballast and load up on trade goods. It is likely that this ballast, dug from the shores of ancient centers of commerce, contained small artifacts such as coins.

==== Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca head ====