Conference tecrus::mormonism

'Naive to deny pre-Columbian navigators'

By Clark H. Caras, Deseret News correspondent
Church News, October 6, 1985, p. 7

Provo, Utah

Two non-Mormon experts on ancient America both agree that the physical evidence
of transocean migrations to this continent is overwhelming.

Speaking at the book of Mormon symposium Sept. 28 [1985] at BYU, George F.
Carter and Norman Totten said it is naive for historians, archaeologists and
others to continue denying transocean travel could have happened before the
time of Columbus in 1492.

Carter of the Department of Geography at Texas A & M and Totten, chairman of
the History Department at Boston's Bentley College, said it doesn't matter
what religious beliefs one adheres to, the fact remains that ancient world
migrations of people made their way to the Americas.

Carter is a Catholic and Totten is a Methodist minister.

"Everyone on the Asiatic side of America and Mexico--the Japanese, Hindus and
Vietnamese--came into contact with America," said Carter.  "Some only touched
the shores and then left and some actually stopped and established colonies.
And it was the same on the Atlantic side.  In essence what I'm saying is
that everyone discovered America."

The major contacts between the Americas, Asia, and the European and
Mediterranean worlds began between 3,000 and 3,500 B.C., Carter said.

"And it wasn't just the occasional craft that was blown off course," he
continued.  "Many of those who came did so purposely and set out for a land
they knew and had heard about."

Totten said, "Crossing the ocean in 3000 B.C., may have been no harder nor
easier than crossing in 1500 A.D.  In modern times we've seen craft as small
as a kayak cross the Atlantic."

Carter bases much of his belief in the migrations to America from Asia on
physical evidences such as plants and animals in the region along the Pacific
coasts.

"We can prove the contacts by the plants and animals.  There are plants here
that couldn't easily be carried by the wind or birds or the currents.  In the
plant world alone there are oceans and mountains of evidence for the contacts,"
he declared.

Saying that the breed of chicken that was very common in Mexico and South
America is not native to the area, Carter said it is his belief that the birds
came along with migrations of peoples from Asia.

"Chickens along the west coast of Mexico have a Japanese name.  And the name
of the chicken in the Amazon Basin is Hindu," he reported.

Totten said some of the dramatic physical evidences that point to contact
between the Atlantic side of the Americas and Europe and Africa come in the
form of artifacts that are often found in North and South America.

"I have in my collection," he reported, "some pottery with faces on them that
resemble those of North African Berbers.  Even the clothing on the figures on
the pottery resembles that of the North African Berbers.  this pottery was
found in Bolivia.

"And on one pot I have from Bolivia is writing in Greek script, and it bears
the name of a North African Berber king."

Totten said in the traditions and storytelling of some American Indian tribes
is evidence of transocean travel.  "Many Indians of North and South America have
oral traditions that tell of their ancestors arriving by sea.  And many also
tell of peoples who came into their presence and visited them, leaving things."

Physical similarities between the tribes of this continent and those of Asia,
Europe and Africa point to possible contact made, Totten declared.

John L. Sorenson made the following observations about oceanic migrations to
the new world in his book "An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon".

    Dr. Betty Meggers of the Smithsonian Institution, in a major article
    published in March 1975, proposed that the Olmec development originated by
    direct transmission of key elements of culture across the Pacific Ocean from
    China during its Shang period (1750-1100 B.C.), when the Chinese tradition
    first took on its characteristic pattern.(13)  Earlier, Meggers and her
    husband, Dr. Clifford Evans, had discovered that certain pottery fragments
    from Ecuador on South America's west coast were indistinguishable from
    ceramics found in Japan before 3000 B.C.  They proposed that voyagers
    had reached Ecuador from Asia by boat.(14)  In another article they
    discussed possibilities of sea travel across the north Pacific, where the
    Japan current sweeps up near the Aleutian Islands and Alaska before
    paralleling the California coast on the way south.(15)  Historical accounts
    from the last century report many Japanese fishing boats being blown out 
    to sea, with survivors landing on the west coast of North America, so a
    crossing was possible.  Meggers and Evans concluded that purposeful
    voyaging would have been feasible thousands of years ago.  The rate of the
    current is such that a trip from Japan to west Mexico could have been
    made by a rather simple vessel in approximately a year.(16)  (The voyage
    of the Jaredites across the ocean, which seems to me to have been the
    north Pacific, in sailess "barges" took 344 days--Ether 2:16; 6:11.)
    Furthermore, the earliest pottery we know of in Mesoamerica, which may
    date as early as 3000 B.C., is located on the west Mexican coast, near
    Acapulco.(17)  Various researchers have challenged Meggers and Evan's
    interpretation, but it remains a serious possibility to prominent students
    of the subject.  Robert Heine-Geldern, David H. Kelley, Paul Tolstoy,
    and George F. Carter are among those who have argued in professional
    circles that we should look to transoceanic sources in order to explain
    fully how civilization originated in Mesoamerica.(18)  Indiana University's
    Harold K. Schneider has most recently argued that any explanation for the
    rise of America's high civilizations that fails to involve the movement
    of cultures across the oceans is weak theoretically.(19)  Increasingly,
    some anthropologists and archaeologists--though still a minority--are
    mustering evidence to show that early voyagers from the Old World could,
    and probably did, cross the ocean and settle in the New.  Mormons have
    been saying that since 1829.  (pp. 110-111)

    Despite mounting evidence of significant transoceanic influence on
    Mesoamerica, there is no doubt whatever that many--perhaps most--aspects
    of culture in both the First and Second Traditions [the time of the
    Jaredite civilization] clearly did not come from the Old World.  A unique
    configuration of distinctive, ancient patterns of life and thought
    characterizes this area at a fundamental level; no later introductions by
    diffusion would have changed those much.(21)  But this is like saying
    that early Egyptian culture was unlike that of Mesopotamia.  Though that
    is true, it is also clear that Egyptian life was affected significantly
    by Mesopotamian ways and ideas, and the two areas were in communication
    in early times.(23)

    We cannot demonstrate at this time that Mesoamerica's civilizations 
    originated because of influence from across the ocean, but in recent
    years the idea, once laughed at by the professionals, first became a
    half-respectable hypothesis and now is argued as plausible rather than
    merely possible.  A trend is clear.  (p. 112)

Sorenson discussed the "ships" in use in Mesoamerica.

    There is concrete evidence that sea travel along the Pacific coast of
    not only Mexico but all the way to Ecuador in South America was an
    ancient, though probably not a regular, practice.(49)

    The "ship" of Hagoth, if it was like craft known later on the Pacific
    coast, was either a very large dugout canoe with built-up sides or a log
    raft with sails. Whatever its form, it could hardly have been a complex
    planked vessel at all resembling European ships.  There is no evidence
    so far that such ships were constructed or used in the New World until
    after the Spanish conquest, and it seems unlikely that so important a
    technological item would have left no evidence, even in art.  Still, the
    large dugout canoe sighted by Columbus on one of his voyages off the
    coast of Yucatan was of very respectable size, capable of carrying
    scores of people for days at a time.(50)  And with so much cultural
    evidence of coastal voyaging between South America and Mesoamerica, we
    may yet find that the large sea-going rafts known off Ecuador or Peru,
    and which were able to reach the Galapagos Islands off South America,(51)
    were also made and used off Mexico, although this has not yet been
    demonstrated.  (pp. 268-269)

    There is a small blurb in this weeks issue of the Church News talking
    about the person who built the Kon Tiki and sailed from the Philipines(?)
    to the American continent to show it could be done.  The person
    who organized that and another similar event apparently has kept
    up a correspondence with a faculty member at BYU or something like
    that.  If anyone is interested I can post it tonight when I get
    home.
    
    scott

    From the April 29, 1989 Church News
    
    Thor Heyerdhal's voyages support Book of Mormon, he tells professor
    
    NY, NY
    
    Explorer Thor Heyerdahl says his famous ocean drift voyages prove that
    voyages recounted in the Book of Mormon are possible, according to a
    BYU professor emeritus.
    
    Paul R. Cheesman, BYU professor emeritus now living in St. George Utah,
    attended the Explorers Club Conference in New York April 8, at which
    Heyerdahl was keynote speaker.
    
    Cheesman said the conference gave him the chance to renew a 20 year
    association with Heyerdahl.  The two have conversed and exchanged
    letters and photographs relating to their respective studies.
    
    During their conversation at the conference Cheesman said he asked the
    explorer if he had ever received a copy of the Book of Mormon.
    
    "His response was: 'I have received hundreds of them!  I don't
    understand why your people work so hard at trying to convince people
    that the Book of Mormon is a correct record.  I have already proven to
    the world that such a voyage as described in this book is perfectly
    possible,'" Cheesman reported Heyerdahl as saying.
    
    Cheesman said he asked Heyerdahl ifs he had read the book, and the
    explorer replied:  "I always read the parts that are underlined."
    Cheesman said he jokingly promoised to send him a copy with everything
    underlined.
    
    Heyerdahl drew worldwide attention in 1947 with his 101 day drift
    voyage aboard the balsa raft, Kon-tiki from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands
    in eastern Polynesia. 
    
    In 1970 he led an expedition in his papyrus reed ship, Ra II (built in
    Egypt), from Morocco, across the Atlantic to establish that
    Mediterranean vessels built before Columbus could have managed a
    one-way drift to ancient America.
    
    The Book of Mormon tells of oceanic voyages by Lehi's family and other
    groups of people many years before the birth of Christ.
                           

================================================================================
Note 302.65               Mound Builders: Of Interest?                  65 of 72
SLSTRN::RONDINA                                      33 lines   8-MAR-1990 13:16
                             -< Jews in Tennessee >-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    I would be glad to, if time permits.  There is an excellent book, House
    of Israel, by Whitehall, which is unfortunately out of print.  If
    anyone has it, they, too, could put in notes.  Other places in these
    notes present some of the "Parallels and Evidences".  So reading these
    notes is a good place to begin for the reader.  But in the meantime,
    here's something I collected from Cyrus H. Gordon, professof
    Mediterranean Studies at Brandeis, about an inscription found on a
    stone in burial mound found in Tennessee in 1885.
    
    The inscription was found on a stone under one of nine skeletons in the
    mound, but when the instription was photographed and published by the
    Smithsonian Institution in 1894, it was printed upside and down and its
    gsignificance went unnoticed.  The five letters are in the writint
    styles of Cannan.  The fifth letter of the inscription correspond to
    the style of writing found on Hebrew coins of the Roman period.  The
    inscription translates to read "for the land of Judah."  The
    archeological circumstances of discovery rule out any chance of fraud
    or forgery and the inscription attests to to a migration of jews,
    proably to escape the long hand of Rome after the disastrous Jewish
    defeats in 70 and 135 A.D. The stone was found in a burial mound at Bat
    Creek, Tenn in 1885 by Cyrus Thomas who worked for the Smithsonian. 
    Various pieces of evidence point in the direction of migrations from
    the Mediterranean in Roman times.  The cornerstone of the historic
    reconstruction is at presen thte Bat Creek inscription because it was
    found ian an inimpeachable archeological context under the direction of
    professional archeologists working for the prestigious Smithsonain
    Institution.
    
    Gordon, later, also discovered a stone on the coast of Brazil which
    contained Phonecian inscriptions from the 4th Century BC.
    
    Paul
    

New Publication Asks: "Was Columbus the First across the Ocean?"

More than three years of research will culminate this month [November]
with the appearance of 'Pre-Columbian Contacts with the Americas
across the Oceans: An Annotated Bibliography', by John L. Sorenson and
Martin H. Raish.  Prominent scholars are enthusiastic about this 1250-page,
2-volume set....

"You may have fired the shot heard round the world," said Dr. George
f. Carter of Texas A&M.  He refers to the "revolution" necessary to open
this controversial subject to reconsideration by scholars.  A large
majority of them have long denied that any significant early voyages
reached the New World.

"Diffusionists," who believe that voyages were made before Columbus,
typically cite slim evidence, which has been easy to brush aside by those
with minds already made up.  "Average anthropological professors still are
totally firm that no evidence of diffusion to America exists," notes
Carl L. Johannessen, University of Oregon geography professor, applauding
the ground-breaking new work....

The bibliography has over 5600 entries.  It covers a huge range of
publications by all types of writers--popularizers and scholars, pro, con, and
on the fence.  Descriptions sketch what most of the books and articles have
to say.  Works are drawn from a dozen languages (all foreign titles are
translated to English) and from such diverse fields as anthropology,
archaeology, art, botany, folklore, geography, linguistics, and the history of
sailing.  Relevant pieces by LDS scholars are included.  A 100-page index
quickly locates references to any topic.

"Your great bibliographical project...will enhance the quality of discussion
in the field." Joseph Needham, history of Asian science, Cambridge University.

"Impressive bibliography and monumental effort." Betty J. Meggers, anthropology,
Smithsonian Institution.

"A magnificent contribution...amusing, enlightening, and unbelievably useful.
I am one of the better-informed people on this subject, but I had not seen
ten percent of the papers cited."  George F. Carter, geography and anthropology,
Texas A&M.

"Nobody can afford to offer an opinion on this subject from now on without
having carefully considered this essential volume." David H. Kelley,
archaeology, University of Calgary.

"this jewel of a work amazes, awes, and pleases me." Mary Ritchie Key,
linguistics, University of California, Irvine.

"Extremely complete." Walter Gardini, anthropology, Universidad del Salvador,
Buenos Aries.

"Monumental accomplishment." Hasso von Winning, archaeology, Southwest Museum,
Los Angeles.

"Incredible...An extremely important compilation." Stephen C. Jett, geography,
University of California, Davis.

The new publication is from F.A.R.M.S. (see note 125.1)