Transcript of the History Channel’s Ancient Voyages: Who ...



Transcript of the History Channel’s Ancient Voyages: Who Really Discovered America?

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|00:02:36 |>> Narrator: At the bottom of the sea lies a maritime mystery. |

|00:02:40 |These large round stones, some weighing nearly 300 pounds, bear a striking resemblance to stone anchors used on |

| |Chinese ships as early as the time of Christ. |

|00:02:53 |Bob Meistrell, an avid diver and cofounder of Body Glove, was the first to find 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. |

|00:03:14 |We brought this one up, and then we started looking around, and we found more, and there's a total of 35 or 40 |

| |stones out there. |

|00:03:21 |>> I have no doubt that the stones in Palos Verdes, the Meistrell stones, are in fact anchors of various forms, |

| |both weight anchors and compound anchors. |

|00:03:34 |>> Narrator: Archaeologist Larry Pierson was among the first to examine the stones and perform what's called a |

| |lithological analysis. |

|00:03:43 |>> It's a comparison of microfossils from known sources with the microfossils in the stone samples from the anchors|

| |themselves. |

|00:03:53 |We were trying to identify specific quarries that the stones may have come 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. |

|00:04:09 |The style extended back to an early period, perhaps as early as the Han dynasty, about the time of Christ. |

|00:04:18 |>> Narrator: Anchors that looked like the stones Meistrell found were used during the time of Hui Shen, but they |

| |were also used on Chinese junks from the 19th century. |

|00:04:30 |Now there may finally be a way to learn if these are ancient Chinese anchors or modern ones, thanks to a science |

| |called forensic petrography. |

|00:04:41 |Forensic petrographers like Scott Wolter are geologists who do autopsies on rocks. |

|00:04:49 |>> Hopefully we'll be able to come up with something, but it starts by taking a look at it. |

|00:04:54 |>> We're gonna drop down the anchor line and see if we can find some of these stone anchors. |

|00:04:58 |>> Narrator: Ray Ortiz has seen and filmed the stones before, but in recent years, kelp has been taking over the |

| |area. |

|00:05:07 |Whether or not he'll be able to see well enough to get another anchor is uncertain. |

|00:05:13 |>> What you're looking for, basically, I guess, would be the hole where they run the ropes through and stuff. |

|00:05:20 |>> Narrator: Nonbelievers in the Chinese anchor theory insist the holes in the 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. |

|00:05:35 |And sea urchins live to be 100 years, but that's about as deep as I've seen any of them go. |

|00:05:40 |>> There is no doubt in my mind that the Palos Verdes stones are anchors and 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. |

|00:06:00 |That plus the forest of kelp rising high above the seafloor makes the dive 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. |

|00:06:30 |>> Narrator: It’s a disappointment, but Wolter will try testing one of the original anchors pulled out years ago. |

|00:06:37 |>> This is one of the samples that we prepared of the ship anchor. |

|00:06:42 |And what we're looking at here would be the outside surface of the anchor, and this curved surface here is the |

| |inside. |

|00:06:51 |>> Narrator: The stone is dolomite. |

|00:06:54 |Shells left embedded in the rock prove these small holes were made by sea 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. |

|00:07:25 |Maybe--maybe one or two might show up in some natural environment, but 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. |

|00:07:40 |The burden of proof, I guess, is on somebody who wants to try to prove that that's not man-made. |

|00:07:50 |>> Narrator: Man-made or not, nautical archaeologist James Delgado says there's no way these are anchors from any |

| |fifth-century Chinese ship. |

|00:08:00 |>> At the time the Hui Shen voyages were supposed to have happened, the only way he could have sailed to the new |

| |world was to have hitched a ride on an Arab boat. |

|00:08:09 |The ancient Chinese built magnificent vessels that navigated on the rivers, but they didn't build seagoing craft. |

|00:08:16 |The Arabs were the great seafaring power of that time. |

|00:08:20 |>> Narrator: And you wouldn’t find Chinese-style ship anchors on an Arab boat, if that is what Hui Shen took to get|

| |to America. |

|00:08:29 |>> The Arab dhow is a long sleek vessel built of wood that carries lateen sails 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. |

|00:08:44 |>> Narrator: Arab dhows could reach speeds of 8 or 9 knots and were fixtures in and around the Indian Ocean in |

| |medieval times and beyond. |

|00:08:54 |So if these are Chinese ship anchors and they're not from Hui Shen's voyage, when were they lost? |

|00:09:01 |>> The Palos Verdes stones probably represent accidental anchor loss from 19th-century Chinese fishing vessels. |

|00:09:13 |>> Narrator: In the second half of the 19th century, Chinese junks did fish off the coast of California, offering a|

| |reasonable explanation for the dozens of doughnut-like stones left on the seafloor. |

|00:09:28 |There is evidence for and against the theory that the Chinese reached the new world before Columbus, but the search|

| |goes on for who could have discovered America even earlier. |

|00:09:40 |Dotting the American landscape, clues that colonization of the country began not hundreds but thousands of years |

| |ago. |

|00:09:49 |From the east and the west, in all manner of craft, who came, who went, and who stayed? |

|00:13:42 |>> Narrator: Wales, 1150 A.D., 342 years before Columbus. |

|00:13:49 |Elsewhere in the world, the temple of Angkor Wat is completed in Cambodia, and the University of Paris is founded |

| |in France. |

|00:13:57 |In Snowdonia, Wales, Prince Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd is born. |

|00:14:01 |Legend says, 20 years later, he set sail from Rhos-on-Sea in search of land to call his own. |

|00:14:11 |>> The legend of him leaving from here to go to America originated in mythology. |

|00:14:16 |In a way, the story was handed down from generation to generation. |

|00:14:22 |>> 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 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. |

|00:14:42 |>> Narrator: The idea that Madoc discovered America didn't become part of the legend until the mid-1500s. |

|00:14:48 |Its sudden inclusion came at a time when Queen Elizabeth was trying to prove the British, not the Spanish, made it |

| |to America first. |

|00:14:58 |>> As things are passed on through the generations, there's a chance that there will be embellishment and change. |

|00:15:05 |>> Narrator: Today the legend has grown even more. |

|00:15:08 |Some believe Madoc and a party of colonists left Wales in 1170 on a ship called 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? |

|00:15:23 |Most likely a Saxon ship, very much like a Viking ship, a large rowboat, heavily fastened and built. |

|00:15:31 |>> Narrator: Saxon ships were clinker built, meaning built with heavy wood planks overlapping each other. |

|00:15:37 |Though the legend suggests Madoc used stag horns for nails, iron rivets would have been more conventional. |

|00:15:44 |A Saxon ship would have had a steering oar and an estimated 15 sets of rowlocks and 30 oars to help battle an |

| |unfavorable wind. |

|00:15:54 |In the 1950s, the Daughters of the American Revolution placed a plaque in Mobile commemorating Madoc's discovery of|

| |America. |

|00:16:03 |It's since been removed to the chagrin of the Alabama Welsh Association. |

|00:16:09 |>> We don't want to take away from Christopher Columbus discovering America in 1492, but we do want to know our |

| |real heritage. |

|00:16:20 |>> They began their trek inland along the Alabama River to the Coosa River, up to this location here, Desoto Falls.|

|00:16:29 |And this is one of the places where the Welsh built a fortification. |

|00:16:33 |>> Narrator: These half-buried stones above what's nicknamed the Welsh Caves are all that are left of one of |

| |Madoc's alleged forts. |

|00:16:43 |Believers say its layout bears a striking resemblance to the footprint of 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. |

|00:16:59 |>> 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. |

|00:17:09 |>> There is no early evidence or local tradition that Madoc was born in Dolwyddelan. |

|00:17:14 |There is a local tradition that his nephew Llywelyn Fawr was born here, certainly not in this castle because |

| |Llywelyn Fawr built this. |

|00:17:22 |If he was born anywhere, it would have been on the small hillock in the valley bottom there where there was a small|

| |tower. |

|00:17:32 |>> Narrator: Madoc also gets credit from the locals for this site in Fort Mountain, Georgia. |

|00:17:37 |Legends of the Cherokee natives in the area say blonde-haired, moon-eyed people built it, although accepted |

| |archaeology suggests the natives themselves are responsible. |

|00:17:49 |Whether or not Madoc made contact with the Cherokee, his Welsh party is most 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. |

|00:18:06 |If Madoc's Welsh party continued traveling northwest from the Fort Mountain site in Georgia, the two groups could |

| |have met. |

|00:18:14 |Artist George Catlin, who spent time with the Mandan, thought they did more than just meet. |

|00:18:21 |He thought they intermingled. |

|00:18:23 |Catlin was struck by the Mandans' European features while painting their portraits. |

|00:18:29 |He also noted similarities in boats both the Mandan and the Welsh used for navigating the river system. |

|00:18:36 |>> George Catlin drew pictures showing the boats that they used, which were very similar to the Welsh coracle. |

|00:18:43 |>> Narrator: The legend of the Welsh Indians was popular even before the time Catlin lived and worked among them in|

| |1833. |

|00:18:51 |President Thomas Jefferson had heard of them 30 years prior and, in 1804, 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. |

|00:19:07 |>> If Madoc had actually lived and mixed with the Mandans, it's quite feasible that the language would have passed |

| |through. |

|00:19:14 |>> Narrator: At first glance, some words do appear similar. |

|00:19:18 |In Mandan, the word "ti" means house, and in Welsh, the word "ty" means the same thing. |

|00:19:25 |But that's far from enough to convince linguists of a connection. |

|00:19:30 |>> There's no linguistic evidence. |

|00:19:32 |There's claim to be linguistic evidence. |

|00:19:34 |In fact, I've analyzed most of what there is, and it's what we would call spurious. |

|00:19:40 |>> Narrator: While DNA testing of Mandan blood could be valuable in determining if there is a Welsh connection, |

| |it's not possible. |

|00:19:48 |In 1837, a smallpox epidemic wiped out all but about 150 of the 1,600 member 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. |

|00:20:23 |Our model shows that for a slowly moving boat, it's nearly impossible to move westward between Florida and Cuba. |

|00:20:34 |Shows Prince Madoc would have had a hard time reaching his alleged docking point in Mobile Bay. |

|00:20:39 |A boat like the Gwenan Gorn likely couldn't have crossed the powerful gulf stream between the southern tip of |

| |Florida and Cuba. |

|00:20:47 |That means Madoc would have had to go all the way around Puerto Rico, 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. |

|00:21:05 |>> Narrator: That’s 300 days each way--twice-- for Madoc is said to have made it to America not once but two times.|

|00:21:15 |>> There's certainly no archaeological or hard fact evidence to support that, but it is certainly a big part of the|

| |story. |

|00:21:22 |>> Narrator: Right now, the Madoc theory is viewed as a legend by most archaeologists. |

|00:21:28 |>> American archaeologists really find that it's part of what we do to debunk those theories and to keep those |

| |things at bay, because they have no-- most of them have no credible scientific basis. |

|00:21:41 |>> Narrator: Terry Jones has spent years studying what he says is a much more 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. |

|00:22:00 |>> Narrator: Across the Pacific , a new group of contenders emerges in the quest to learn who really discovered |

| |America. |

|00:22:10 |And back in the North Atlantic, one of the most legendary sailors ever chronicled leaves on his own quest. |

|00:26:42 |>> Narrator: Polynesia, 492 years before Columbus. |

|00:26:50 |Elsewhere in the world, China is inventing gunpowder, and a very important journey by Norseman Leif Eriksson is |

| |taking place in the North Atlantic. |

|00:27:00 |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. |

|00:27:14 |We know that they reached every distant island in the pacific, and they did it in a short amount of time. |

|00:27:20 |>> Narrator: Spread out over more than 7 million square miles of ocean, Polynesia covers more area than any nation |

| |in the world. |

|00:27:28 |There are 1,000 islands; Polynesian voyagers managed to travel to and colonize 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. |

|00:27:44 |I would argue that the Polynesians were the only culture that were purposely voyaging, exploring, and navigating |

| |the largest ocean on earth at a time when other cultures weren't. |

|00:27:54 |>> 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 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. |

|00:28:14 |Their double hulls were made from logs of the koa tree, hollowed out by a traditional tool called an adze or made |

| |from smaller wooden planks sewn together. |

|00:28:23 |Their crab claw sails were woven together out of lauhala leaves, and some 1,500 feet of hand-wound coconut fibers |

| |were used for lashings. |

|00:28:36 |>>Hokule'a, we believe with an awful lot of research, is kind of a design-accurate replica of the deep-sea voyaging|

| |canoes that was the main tool that was used to explore and colonize all of Polynesia. |

|00:28:49 |>> Narrator: This is the Hokule'a built using some of those ancient specifications. |

|00:28:54 |It does have a modern sail and other modern touches, but the basic hull design is the same. |

|00:29:01 |>> At the time that hokule'a was being constructed, there was no other physical deep-sea voyaging canoe on earth, |

| |and so it had to be reconstructed from both modern science as well as culture and oral histories. |

|00:29:17 |>> Narrator: The Polynesian Voyaging Society first launched the hokule'a in the 1970s to challenge the idea that |

| |Polynesia was settled from east to west by the Inca from South America. |

|00:29:29 |That theory was first proposed by notable adventurer Thor Heyerdahl in the 1940s, who suggested statues like these |

| |on Easter Island were Incan in origin. |

|00:29:40 |To help prove the voyage was possible, he built and successfully sailed his own raft called the Kon-tiki from South|

| |America to the Tuamotu Islands in Polynesia in 1947. |

|00:29:52 |Even though the sail was successful, academics balked at his theory. |

|00:29:57 |>> The South Americans aren't known for having seaworthy canoes or for having high voyaging capabilities, so it |

| |really makes more sense that the Polynesians made it to South America. |

|00:30:10 |>> Narrator: Polynesians were able to island-hop across the pacific because they knew what to take with them to |

| |survive, like plants and chickens, chickens they may have introduced to South America. |

|00:30:22 |>> We have a very good case for chickens moving from Polynesia to South America. |

|00:30:29 |The discovery of chicken bones from Chile has turned out to be very exciting. |

|00:30:33 |>> Narrator: When these chicken bones with Polynesian traits were unearthed in South America, they were immediately|

| |controversial. |

|00:30:40 |While many scientists originally thought chickens were introduced to South America by Spanish explorers in the |

| |1500s, the radiocarbon date of these bones would prove otherwise. |

|00:30:52 |They're pre-Columbian. |

|00:30:56 |>> Polynesians made it to South America, probably dropped off chicken while they were there, picked up the sweet |

| |potato, and then made the two-way voyage back to Polynesia. |

|00:31:07 |>> Narrator: Sweet potatoes are not believed to be native to Polynesia, but they are native to South America, a |

| |possible clue. |

|00:31:17 |>> The sweet potatoes are these low, viny plants, and you can see that they're flowering here. |

|00:31:26 |>> Narrator: Studies on charred sweet potato remains found in Polynesia 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. |

|00:31:53 |And linguists had looked for a long time to find out where the word kumara came from, and it's actually been linked|

| |to an Ecuadorian tribe that are intensive sweet potato producers. |

|00:32:04 |>> It is absolutely certain that we have pre-Columbian sweet potato, pre-European sweet potato, in Polynesia, and |

| |that it was transferred by people, not 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. |

|00:32:26 |>> Narrator: There’s even evidence the Polynesians made it farther north, to what would become the United States. |

|00:32:33 |Near Santa Barbara, California, a tribe called the Chumash has been building 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 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. |

|00:33:02 |>> Narrator: The Chumash are thought to have started using the word tomolo'o 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. |

|00:33:22 |We have holes on opposing edges of the planks that were sewn together using this vegetable product-based cordage. |

|00:33:32 |That's a common technology throughout all of Polynesia, and it's only seen in two places in the entire native new |

| |world: The coast of southern California and the coast of Chile. |

|00:33:43 |>> Narrator: Common words, common engineering, and there's more: fishhooks. |

|00:33:50 |Yosihiko Sinoto, a veritable expert on fishhooks, who's studied them all over the pacific. |

|00:33:57 |He has a collection of primitive fishhooks found off Catalina Island near Los Angeles. |

|00:34:08 |>> Narrator: The Catalina fishhooks seem to match fishhooks made in Tahiti around 1000 AD. |

|00:34:14 |Fishing for food is one way they could have survived a 4,000-mile voyage from the center of Polynesia to |

| |California. |

|00:34:22 |Maximenko's maps of ocean currents say about all of this? |

|00:34:28 |>> For a Polynesian voyage from Cook Islands to Santa Barbara area in California, the path would require nearly 300|

| |days. |

|00:34:39 |That voyage would imply a lot of paddling, and if they were able to do that, they could make it. |

|00:34:50 |>> We know for a fact that the Polynesians made voyages of 2,000 to 3,000 kilometers across open water not knowing |

| |whether there was something to be found, to be discovered. |

|00:35:02 |>> It's important to realize that their voyages were explicit voyages of discovery. |

|00:35:08 |This isn't a matter of lost canoes or people running away from wars or anything like that. |

|00:35:15 |If you think about the movement across the South Pacific into the trade winds 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 back. |

|00:35:38 |So going east is actually a safer direction to go knowing that you can come home. |

|00:35:44 |>> Narrator: What Polynesian adventurers illustrate is a concept that's at the 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. |

|00:36:01 |You can get very isolated populations if you have mountains between them, 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. |

|00:36:12 |>> Narrator: And there was always one surefire way for these early mariners to find land: Just follow the birds. |

|00:36:35 |[seagulls cawing] >> I think it's important that we recognize that some of the pre-contact people had tremendous |

| |capabilities. |

|00:36:48 |>> Narrator: Even if the Polynesians didn't find North America in 1000 AD, someone else did. |

|00:36:56 |A settlement in Newfoundland proves that's when the Vikings made it to Canada, but did they reach the United |

| |States? |

|00:37:03 |And was the U.S. itself already the new homeland for ancient Israelites who really discovered America centuries |

| |before? |

|00:41:06 |>> Narrator: 1000 AD Turns out to be a very important year for pre-Columbian 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. |

|00:41:30 |It was only a matter of time before one of them sailed all the way to North America. |

|00:41:39 |>> According to the sagas, Leif Eriksson is the one who traveled from Greenland over to the new world to explore |

| |the new land. |

|00:41:48 |>> Narrator: Leif Eriksson was the son of Erik the Red, who started the first Norse settlement in Greenland. |

|00:41:55 |A voyager like his father, Leif was intrigued when another Viking told him there was land west of Greenland, land |

| |glimpsed from afar but never explored. |

|00:42:05 |Leif quickly gathered a group of 35 men and women and set sail after buying the Viking ship owned by the man who |

| |told him the tale. |

|00:42:15 |>> Viking ships were built like a strong rowboat, clinker built, that is, with 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 over 20 tons of cargo. |

|00:42:34 |Depending on the length, knars could reach a speed of about 13 knots. |

|00:42:39 |Leif's party of 35 likely had a relatively easy time making a journey to America following subpolar currents in the|

| |North Atlantic. |

|00:42:48 |>> All that you need to do is just to cross from Europe to Greenland, and then you can follow the coast. |

|00:42:56 |I think that would be around 250 days. |

|00:43:02 |>> Narrator: This is the Viking settlement in Newfoundland Leif gets credit for 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. |

|00:43:17 |But according to the Norse sagas, they eventually went further than that to a land called Vinland. |

|00:43:23 |>> So L'anse aux Meadows is actually a--you could see it as a gateway into what would be Vinland. |

|00:43:30 |>> Narrator: "Vinland" means either land of grapes or land of pastures, neither of which accurately describe L'anse|

| |aux Meadows. |

|00:43:38 |That implies a larger settlement that has never been pinpointed lies elsewhere, which would explain a curious |

| |finding at the settlement site. |

|00:43:47 |>> Butternut husks and butternut wood was found, and that's not something you find naturally at L'anse aux Meadows |

| |or in this area. |

|00:43:56 |>> Narrator: Butternut is native to southeastern Canada and the east coast of the United States. |

|00:44:03 |It's on the east coast that a critical clue to where Vinland might be turned up in 1957. |

|00:44:11 |>> The only evidence we have that the Vikings made it to the United States is a 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. |

|00:44:35 |But we at least acknowledge that it is an honest-to-god authentic Norse artifact from an archaeological context on |

| |the Maine coast. |

|00:44:44 |>> We don't know if the United States could be Vinland. |

|00:44:46 |We know that L'anse aux Meadows was a base camp, and we know that the Norse went inland somewhere. |

|00:44:54 |>> Narrator: The east coast is home to some other artifacts thought to be Norse. |

|00:44:59 |These stones carved with some runes from an early Scandinavian alphabet called the futhark were found partially |

| |buried near Spirit Pond in Maine, some 150 miles from where the penny was found. |

|00:45:11 |While academics agree the penny is Viking age and genuine, these stones are widely regarded as frauds because they |

| |don't resemble traditional runestones found throughout Scandinavia. |

|00:45:22 |>> Runic carvings are generally on prominent stones where people can see them. |

|00:45:26 |They are not obscured by being on small stones and buried in the ground. |

|00:45:30 |So that's why I think that whoever created these stones was trying to put one over on someone. |

|00:45:39 |>> Narrator: Other stones with runic inscriptions have turned up even further into the United States. |

|00:45:44 |The most famous is the Kensington runestone, unearthed by a farmer in Minnesota in 1898. |

|00:45:52 |It details a voyage by 8 Goths and 22 Norwegians on an acquisition journey far to the west of Vinland in the year |

| |1362. |

|00:46:03 |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 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. |

|00:46:26 |>> Narrator: Another problem: There's no trace of the ten dead voyagers referenced on the stone. |

|00:46:31 |Archaeologists spent time looking for their remains in the 1980s. |

|00:46:35 |>> One of the things that bothered us when we were doing our archaeological research was that as we looked all |

| |around, we couldn't find any evidence of burials. |

|00:46:44 |It would have been interesting to have found some evidence of graves or to 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. |

|00:47:00 |>> Narrator: Geologist Scott Wolter says he did find proof the stone is no 19th-century hoax. |

|00:47:06 |In 2000, he analyzed the weathering of minerals in the stone's inscription to determine when it was carved. |

|00:47:15 |>> The weathering study proves that whoever carved this did it at least 200 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. |

|00:47:31 |>> Narrator: Regardless of when the stone was carved, most academics question Norse voyagers' ability to make it so|

| |far inland. |

|00:47:41 |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 Montréal and portage over Niagara Falls before making it into the Great Lakes |

| |and on to Kensington via a series of rivers. |

|00:47:57 |>> Certainly some types of Viking ships were small enough that a group of men could lift them and carry them |

| |overland in a portage. |

|00:48:05 |If the Vikings came over in a large enough force, towing smaller vessels behind 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? |

|00:48:19 |>> 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 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. |

|00:48:40 |Could a missionary with a motive have blazed the trail 500 years earlier, finding 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. |

|00:52:53 |The Vikings definitely made it as far as Canada, maybe as far as Maine, but could those Vikings have been following|

| |the Irish? |

|00:53:04 |Ireland, 530 AD, 962 years before Columbus. |

|00:53:11 |Elsewhere in the world, the Roman Empire has fallen to Germanic tribes, and Europe is entering the Dark Ages. |

|00:53:20 |In Ireland, atop a mountain on the Dingle Peninsula, Saint Brendan the 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. |

|00:53:43 |>> Narrator: Born near Tralee in County Kerry, Ireland, Brendan was ordained a priest at age 28. |

|00:53:51 |He is said to have spent time sailing the North Atlantic spreading Christianity. |

|00:53:56 |He's even said to have beaten the Norse to Greenland, which was populated at the time by Paleo-Eskimo whale |

| |hunters. |

|00:54:03 |When Saint Brendan supposedly found America, he was allegedly looking for terra repromissionis sanctorum, or the |

| |land promised to the saints. |

|00:54:13 |>> He anticipated that there was a world outside of this island, and hence ultimately crossed the Atlantic to |

| |America. |

|00:54:25 |>> Narrator: The tale of Saint Brendan's voyage is recorded in a text called the Navagatio. |

|00:54:30 |It details his journey with a number of other monks to a land rich in fruit, flora, and fauna he'd never seen |

| |before. |

|00:54:39 |Along the way, he had many unbelievable adventures that make some question the legitimacy of his tale. |

|00:54:46 |>> Brendan and his monks had landed on the back of a huge fish, possibly a whale, and even attempted to light a |

| |fire on his back, which of course, woke the animal up, if he was asleep. |

|00:54:58 |>> Narrator: Most modern scholars consider the Navagatio a literary legend along the lines of Welsh Prince Madoc. |

|00:55:07 |But the descriptions of things like sheep which are found on the Faroe Islands 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. |

|00:55:26 |>> Under extremely favorable ocean current conditions, it would require, as a 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. |

|00:55:45 |>> Narrator: Saint Brendan is said to have sailed a skin boat called a curragh made of cowhides softened by butter |

| |and sewn together. |

|00:55:54 |>> The Irish were building skin boats, skin boats capable of taking extended voyages. |

|00:56:00 |They have a framework, a skeleton. |

|00:56:02 |You build a basic frame, and then you stitch and sew skins together to create a watertight covering to keep the sea|

| |out. |

|00:56:10 |>> Narrator: Whether Saint Brendan reached America or not, cartographers began including his alleged paradise on |

| |maps in the 1200s. |

|00:56:18 |Christopher Columbus himself was supposedly very interested in where Saint Brendan had been. |

|00:56:24 |His alleged trip to Ireland to learn the details of Brendan’s voyage has been part 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. |

|00:56:39 |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." |

| |>> 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. |

|00:57:04 |What isn't in question is the fact that Columbus did find land in 1492, and it was the Bahamas. |

|00:57:10 |But what Brendan found almost 1,000 years earlier may have been modern-day Connecticut. |

|00:57:21 |>> This site here at the Gungywamp has all of the kinds of evidence that we would expect to see in an Irish early |

| |Christian site of Brendan’s time. |

|00:57:30 |>> Narrator: Spreading out over 100 acres, the Gungywamp archaeological site 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. |

|00:57:49 |The stone chambers at the site don't look sophisticated at first glance, but they have undeniable features that |

| |suggest they served a religious purpose. |

|00:57:57 |On the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, sunlight shines through this window, illuminating the chamber. |

|00:58:05 |>> The dates that the sun shines into this chamber are of significance to the Irish early Christian liturgical |

| |cycle. |

|00:58:13 |It's the occurrence of the sun's position on the vernal equinox which heralds the approaching date for Easter. |

|00:58:20 |>> Narrator: Between the sixth and tenth centuries, solar alignments like the ones found at the Gungywamp site were|

| |a component of small Irish churches, like the Gallarus Oratory on the Dingle Peninsula. |

|00:58:34 |>> It has an east-west alignment, the east window and the west doorway over here, and the stones have been very |

| |carefully selected to build such a perfect building. |

|00:58:47 |>> Narrator: Solar alignments and stone masonry alone can't prove the Irish 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. |

|00:59:05 |>> They are fully consistent with the Irish early Christian tradition, that is to say, roughly 500 to, let's say, |

| |900 AD. |

|00:59:15 |>> Narrator: A chi-rho is an ancient religious symbol. |

|00:59:18 |It's made by superimposing the first two Greek letters, chi and rho, used to spell Christ. |

|00:59:24 |Believers think the Irish left these here at the time of Saint Brendan, but they can't prove it because the etching|

| |on this type of stone can't be accurately dated. |

|00:59:35 |There are charcoal remnants, so someone made fires that far back, but there's no proof it was the Irish. |

|00:59:44 |If they were here, they didn't leave behind any of their written language, called 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. |

|01:00:01 |>> Narrator: Ogham looks to most people like a series of nonsensical hash marks, but the lines translate into |

| |letters of the alphabet. |

|01:00:10 |>> These marks are found all over North America, the United States and Canada. |

|01:00:14 |>> Narrator: These were found at Buckhorn State Park in Kentucky. |

|01:00:19 |>> In the middle panel, there were things that I could grasp in old Celtic, and it 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. |

|01:00:52 |>> 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. |

|01:01:01 |>> Narrator: With no hard evidence, no undeniable remnants of sixth-century 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. |

|01:01:19 |We try to find evidence to suggest whether a myth is just that or if it tells a fundamental truth that's been |

| |forgotten. |

|01:01:26 |We haven't found that evidence for the Brendan voyage. |

|01:01:31 |>> Narrator: Saint Brendan died in 577 AD, leaving behind the mystery of his paradise. |

|01:01:39 |At the root of his journey was religion and a desire to spread his beliefs. |

|01:01:45 |In that way, he was like others who may have come to America even before him. |

|01:01:52 |A voyage by ancient Hebrews to America before the time of Christ is the foundation for an entire religion. |

|01:01:59 |Now, could blood evidence prove not only that they were here but that they're the ancestors of modern day Cherokee?|

|01:06:32 |>> Narrator: Israel, 600 B.C., 2,092 Years before Columbus. |

|01:06:38 |Elsewhere in the world, Pompeii is founded in Italy, later to be destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, and |

| |the Mayan culture is flourishing in Mesoamerica. |

|01:06:49 |In Israel, Jerusalem will soon be taken over by the Babylonians and the Temple of Solomon destroyed. |

|01:06:56 |Ancient Hebrews are fleeing but where to? |

|01:07:03 |>> The thought of early Hebrews coming to the new world has been a topic of a great deal of discussion going all |

| |the way back to the 19th century. |

|01:07:12 |>> Narrator: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is based in part on 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. |

|01:07:26 |Artistic renderings often depict it as a type of ark with sails, but there was another type of ship Israelites were|

| |using at that time. |

|01:07:36 |>> 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 ribbed, carrying a square sail with a high-elevated bow and stern, capable of|

| |carrying all sorts of cargo and people. |

|01:07:53 |>> Narrator: Lehi’s alleged route would have taken him from Oman through the 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. |

|01:08:13 |A vessel can make it with dead people. |

|01:08:15 |The question is whether people would make it in that voyage if it took a great deal of time or they had no way of |

| |knowing where they were going. |

|01:08:22 |>> Narrator: Lehi isn’t the only ancient Israelite thought by some to have made it to America. |

|01:08:28 |There is other lore that one of the ten lost tribes of Israel exiled by the Assyrians in 700 BC |

|01:08:34 |also ended up in the new world. |

|01:08:37 |Either scenario ends with the same assumption, that ancient Jewish people are the ancestors of some Native |

| |Americans. |

|01:08:46 |>> We are a Jewish people by race and by culture. |

|01:08:53 |All of our ceremonial days are exactly the same time as the Jewish people, and that cannot be of any accident or |

| |any coincidence at all. |

|01:09:03 |>> Narrator: Light-skinned members of the Central Band of Cherokee don't look like many Native Americans. |

|01:09:09 |Cherokee started mingling with white settlers much earlier than other North American tribes, as early as the 1600s.|

|01:09:17 |That's one possible explanation for their skin color. |

|01:09:20 |But could another be that they don't have origins in Asia like most Native Americans do? |

|01:09:26 |So strong is the Central Band's belief that they have Jewish ancestry and origins 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. |

|01:09:59 |We're also able to determine someone's deeper ancestry, what we call their anthrogenealogical information. |

|01:10:08 |And what that does is, that tracks the individual back not hundreds of years, as we do in genealogy, but thousands |

| |or tens of thousands of years. |

|01:10:21 |Everybody needs to suit up. |

|01:10:24 |>> Narrator: Chief Sitting Owl’s blood was tested along with the blood of 89 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? |

|01:10:59 |When it comes down to archaeology proving an ancient Hebrew migration to 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 Lunas Desert |

| |to look at this stone etched with the ten commandments in what appears to be Paleo-Hebrew. |

|01:11:20 |It's just one of several stones in the United States people claim is evidence of an ancient Israelite migration. |

|01:11:28 |>> There are many theories about what the stone is, all the way from extraterrestrials carving a message for |

| |humanity to lost tribes of Israel wandering the deserts of the American southwest. |

|01:11:40 |>> Looking at this thing, one of the things that jumps out right away is these characters look relatively fresh. |

|01:11:49 |>> Narrator: Practically since its discovery in the early 1900s, the stone has been subject to vandalism, people |

| |scratching the inscription, even adding to it in some cases. |

|01:12:01 |>> This mark has been altered. |

|01:12:04 |As far as I know, no work has been done trying to date the inscription because 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. |

|01:12:19 |>> Narrator: The state agreed to allow forensic petrographer Scott Wolter to 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. |

|01:12:39 |>> Narrator: Wolter photographs the stone with a camera outfitted as a portable microscope. |

|01:12:45 |>> By nature, my work is invasive, but in this case, it has to be totally noninvasive. |

|01:12:50 |What I would like to do is, you see this weathered surface? |

|01:12:53 |It'd be nice to get a piece that I could cut into and look at that weathering 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? |

|01:13:22 |Wolter compares the sample with the photos he took and with photos taken by others many years ago in an attempt to |

| |use the weathering period of exposed minerals in the inscription to date it. |

|01:13:33 |>> 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. |

|01:13:45 |>> Narrator: The vandalism of the inscription is too severe for geology to conclude when it might have been carved.|

|01:13:53 |>> The fact that the stone has been cleaned and retooled and who knows what done to it, that's not helpful. |

|01:14:01 |>> People want to believe, and as soon as they want to believe, they stop thinking. |

|01:14:08 |>> Narrator: Another stone with a mysterious seemingly Hebrew inscription 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. |

|01:14:25 |It was found 1889, along with wood fragments that were carbon-14 dated to some time between the first and eighth |

| |century AD. |

|01:14:34 |It was found in a Cherokee burial mound. |

|01:14:37 |>> The artifacts that have been found in this area where the Cherokee people live are very important to us because |

| |of our heritage going back to the same people that became the Cherokee known today. |

|01:14:55 |>> Narrator: Except family tree DNA says the results of Chief Sitting Owl's tests are in, and they are problematic |

| |in proving Jewish ancestry. |

|01:15:05 |>> As far as testing has been done with us, I see no connection to any ancient Hebraic or Jewish populations |

| |whatsoever. |

|01:15:17 |>> Narrator: Of all the members of the Central Band of Cherokee who were 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. |

|01:15:40 |>> Narrator: Chief Sitting Owl’s tribe only represents what he says is a small number of Cherokee, less than 1%. |

|01:15:48 |The Central Band itself is not one of the three federally recognized tribes of 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. |

|01:16:08 |We were isolated from the main body of the Cherokee in North Carolina and north Georgia. |

|01:16:15 |>> Narrator: DNA testing of more members of the Central Band is just getting under way in what's called the |

| |Abraham/Moses Project. |

|01:16:23 |Some members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee, a tribe that is federally recognized, are very interested in the |

| |results because they too suspect a Jewish ancestry. |

|01:16:33 |Even if they're not Jewish, Chief Sitting Owl says the test results for his tribe are still very interesting in |

| |proving who came to America before Columbus and how. |

|01:16:44 |>> Our Cherokee DNA Project has proven that the Cherokee did not come across the Bering Sea. |

|01:16:52 |>> Narrator: 94% of those tested in the Central Band showed European ancestry 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. |

|01:17:04 |It could also mean they mixed heavily with white settlers in the new world, or it could mean they are descendents |

| |of Europeans who were here even before Paleo-Indians crossed the Bering Strait. |

|01:17:18 |In a bold new theory, a Smithsonian archaeologist suggests the people who 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. |

|01:21:58 |It's the ice age, and much of the earth's water is frozen, making sea levels worldwide 450 feet lower. |

|01:22:06 |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 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. |

|01:22:31 |This artifact definitely goes with that mastodon, and we have a date on that mastodon of almost 24,000 years. |

|01:22:38 |>> Narrator: Smithsonian archaeologist Dennis Stanford says the artifact, called a biface, looks just like the ones|

| |Solutreans made. |

|01:22:46 |The Solutreans were hunter-gatherers in southwestern Europe in 22,000 BC. |

|01:22:52 |Stanford hypothesizes the Solutreans used skin boats to reach America along 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. |

|01:23:07 |It means that rivers, lakes, oceans are no longer barriers to human movement but are the highways of human |

| |movement. |

|01:23:17 |>> Narrator: The ice edge they followed would have been a place to camp and 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. |

|01:23:34 |>> Narrator: Stanford says once the Solutreans were in America, they eventually converged with Paleo-Indians who |

| |did come across the Bering Strait land bridge from Siberia. |

|01:23:44 |Together, he says, the two groups formed what's called the Clovis culture. |

|01:23:49 |He says their convergence is the only way to explain unique characteristics of 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. |

|01:24:07 |There were many, many tools that were absolutely identical and unique to Clovis and Solutrean but different than |

| |what you get in Siberia. |

|01:24:18 |There is absolutely nothing in Asia that you could derive Clovis technology from. |

|01:24:26 |>> Narrator: While Stanford’s theory that Europeans really were the first inhabitants of the new world isn't widely|

| |accepted, it might be someday. |

|01:24:36 |>> I think it's very exciting, and whether we're right or wrong, it doesn't make any difference, because we have |

| |people thinking about it. |

|01:24:45 |>> Narrator: For archaeological studies from 13,000 years ago or more, stone tools are some of the only things to |

| |compare. |

|01:24:54 |Once pottery developed, it became a critical tool in learning about generations 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. |

|01:25:18 |Elsewhere in the world, Stonehenge is rising in the English countryside, and the first writing system, called |

| |cuneiform, was recently invented in Sumeria. |

|01:25:29 |In Ecuador, the coastline culture of the Valdivians is primitive, made up of hunters and gatherers, but they're |

| |starting to make pottery. |

|01:25:38 |The question is, where did they learn their sophisticated techniques? |

|01:25:43 |>> We believe they were a very developed culture because they received some influence from more advanced culture, |

| |as my grandfather said, perhaps the Jomon culture from Japan. |

|01:25:56 |>> Narrator: Emilio Estrada was Alexia Molina's grandfather, a local man who collected fragments of pottery during |

| |hunting trips in Valdivia. |

|01:26:05 |>> Bit by bit, he became very interested in what the meaning of these pieces was. |

|01:26:10 |>> Narrator: After noticing similarities between the shards he found and 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. |

|01:26:26 |>> He wrote us a letter and said, you know, "I just saw some pictures of pottery, Jomon, that looks like Valdivia. |

| |What do you think?” |

|01:26:34 |" >> Narrator: It was the beginning of a friendship and of what would become a 50-year push to prove that the |

| |Japanese made it to America some 4,500 years before Columbus. |

|01:26:49 |>> We took a big stack of Valdivia pottery, and we went from Tokyo all the way down by train and stopped everywhere|

| |where there was a museum or collection. |

|01:27:00 |And when we got to Kyushu, we started seeing all kinds of things that looked just like Valdivia. |

|01:27:06 |>> [speaking Japanese] >> What distinguishes Kyushu’s pottery from others is the fact that the design is not |

| |flamboyant and that they focus on patterns made from lines. |

|01:27:22 |>> Narrator: Kyushu is the third largest island in Japan and forms the southern tip of the country. |

|01:27:28 |Meggers and Estrada set out to find out how the pottery from Kyushu could possibly be connected to pottery in |

| |Valdivia, some 8,000 nautical miles away. |

|01:27:39 |Their findings were explosive. |

|01:27:43 |[roaring and rumbling] 6,300 years ago the Kikai volcano in southern Japan erupted with greater force than that of |

| |legendary Krakatoa in the 1880s. |

|01:27:58 |Kyushu was coated in more than a foot of ash, as pumice rained all across the 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. |

|01:28:15 |>> Narrator: But could they have made it all the way to the coast of Ecuador in boats like this? |

|01:28:22 |A traditional Jomon fishing boat would have been very simple, some 20 feet 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. |

|01:28:52 |>> Even though traveling in a small tree boat was a risk, to this culture, seafaring was a part of their lives. |

|01:29:05 |>> It's entirely possible that within a short period of time, by hop-scotching from island to island, working their|

| |way down the coast, they could have reached Central or South America. |

|01:29:16 |>> Narrator: The Kuroshio Current would have propelled the fishermen eastward and northward, so they wouldn't have |

| |had to travel 8,000 miles of open sea. |

|01:29:25 |>> Little effort would be required to cross from subtropical gyre into subpolar gyre, and then strong eastern |

| |boundary current would lead directly to Alaska. |

|01:29:36 |>> Narrator: From Alaska, it would have been a relatively easy journey along the California coast, along the edge |

| |of Central America, and on to Ecuador. |

|01:29:46 |>> Obviously they made a landfall on Valdivia, and they found people living essentially the way they were in Japan,|

| |but they didn't have pottery. |

|01:29:58 |>> Narrator: Dr. Meggers is convinced the Japanese introduced it to them and together with Estrada, found 26 |

| |similarities in technique and motif on pottery from Japan and Valdivia. |

|01:30:10 |They include dog bone shapes and hourglass figures, which Betty says aren't found anywhere else except on Jomon and|

| |Valdivian pottery. |

|01:30:19 |>> You're not going to get independent invention of all of these complicated techniques and motifs. |

|01:30:27 |>> Narrator: But critics disagree. |

|01:30:29 |They think the Valdivians could have come up with their pottery designs on their own. |

|01:30:36 |It turns out, however, pottery isn't the only thing to suggest the Japanese made it to South America in ancient |

| |times. |

|01:30:43 |There's also evidence they introduced a deadly virus. |

|01:30:49 |>> This virus is very, very interesting because of the very unique geographical distribution. |

|01:30:57 |>> Narrator: The virus is the human "t" cell lymphotropic virus type 1, called htlv-1. |

|01:31:03 |It's rare, and it causes leukemia. |

|01:31:07 |Htlv-1 is only found in a small number of modern-day people from southern 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. |

|01:31:51 |>> Narrator: Those anthropological similarities are what led him to the 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. |

|01:32:14 |He found htlv-1 that likely originated in Asia was present in South America in ancient times, and it had to have |

| |gotten there from contact with people who already carried the virus. |

|01:32:27 |>> This virus is transmissible through breast milk, from mother, and also from husband to wife through semen. |

|01:32:35 |So that's a very hard evidence that I believe. |

|01:32:40 |>> These are the things you have to know about in order to say this is really a contact and not just an accidental |

| |similarity. |

|01:32:50 |>> Narrator: Dr. Meggers is still working to prove to mainstream academics that there was ancient Japanese contact |

| |with the Valdivians. |

|01:32:58 |The locals in Valdivia need less convincing. |

|01:33:03 |>> The Valdivian people really don't think about what are their origins. |

|01:33:08 |What we can see if we go outside, we'll see that they have a lot of Asian characteristics on their faces, and |

| |that's very different from the rest of the country. |

|01:33:20 |>> Narrator: And in that lies the key to ultimately determining which of all 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. |

|01:33:37 |>> Narrator: Now DNA becomes invaluable as one theory of pre-Columbian 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? |

|01:38:08 |There are even more stories of pre-Columbian voyages to America and back than the ones shown on this map. |

|01:38:15 |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 explain copper of a purity only found in Lake Superior being used in |

| |Mediterranean boats around 1400 BC. |

|01:38:33 |From the Chinese in 1421 all the way back to the Solutreans in 22,000 BC, 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. |

|01:38:49 |We need to take the glasses off that say we're going to look at this from the perspective of Columbus and his |

| |ships. |

|01:38:55 |>> 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 even in cases where things might have happened in the past that we wouldn’t |

| |have imagined. |

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