Did Ancient Romans discover America before Columbus or the Vikings? No, but it’s a fun idea.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 มิ.ย. 2024
- Did the Ancient Romans discover America before Columbus or the Vikings? Tantalizing evidence points in that direction. But does it stand up to scrutiny? Let me in the comments know after you see the video!
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Intro and outro music: Overture of Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) by Mozart
#ColumbusDay #Rome #AncientRomans
00:00 Intro
01:31 The Evidence
04:24 Reasons to be Skeptical
07:42 Is this worth investigating?
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It's a children's book about the odyssey of a duckling who wants to learn how to fly.
Roman numerals
Greetings from France.
Small correction, America is One continent, not two. And it is divided in three parts, North, Central and South.
But then why is there a greek myth about sunflowers if they're from the Americas?
Edit: I looked it up and found that in the original myth, it didn't refer to sunflowers, but turnsoles and it got replaced with sunflowers due to the french word "tournesol" originally only referring to sunflowers, so, it's a modern-ish substitution
If you're referring to the myth about the oceanid Clytie, that flower is not actually a sunflower but rather a heliotrope, with this word being pretty much a transliteration of the Ancient Greek name ἡλιοτρόπιον. Like the sunflower, the heliotrope supposedly turns to face the sun (hence its name literally comes from the Greek words for "sun" and "turn"), though in both cases this turning seems to be just an urban legend (albeit one evidently derived from Classical myth).
The confusion of the two flowers probably arises because although the archaic English word "turnsole" refers to and presumably translates from heliotrope, the equivalent word in French is _tournesol_ which primarily refers to the sunflower. At some point, English has switched to using an Anglicised rendering of the Greek name, possibly to avoid confusion with the divergent French word, but the historic use of turnsole in older texts has probably resulted in the propagation of "sunflower" for the English version of the myth by readers who were were only familiar with the ostensibly but falsely synonymous French word (because before the 20th Century, most people with a decent education in England could also speak French). Alternatively, modern publishers just thought that nobody would know what the hell a heliotrope was, and so just substituted it for the more popularly recognised sunflower, but I rather hope that's not the case.
@@michaelheliotis5279 yep, hence the edit to my comment
For the same reason Hobbits eat potatoes, which are also from the Americas.
When ancient people migrated, they took their words for plants, animals and fish with them and transferred them to whatever was similar in their new surroundings. For example, Englishmen arriving in "New England" chose to call maize "sweetcorn" or just "corn."
There's also the Brazilian mith of an ancient greo-roman settlement in the middle of the Amazon. Aparently in the xix century a xviii century manuscript was found reporting on a group of Bandeirantes finding a lost city by accident they could never return to.
I'm 67 years old, but I remember a college archeology professor talking to our 6th grade class, 1965, about his trips to Mexico to study the Mayans and Aztecs and how they found some small Roman coins at a site. I've never been able to find anything online about it, but it makes sense. The Romans, Greeks, and Phoenicians weren't stupid, they were capable of many things.
if the roman did find America and traded with the Mayan ( not the Aztecs as the Aztecs were after the roman era) you think they would write it down.
@@wellobush9022 Assuming they got back. I keep thinking that maybe Roman/Greek ships got blown off course, got caught in the Soutehrn trad winds and ended up the New World. In the long run, I don't know.
@@wellobush9022 What if it they thought it was India or Japan or some other land which was known to the Romans? Idk
@@Rotisiv Romans are not as dumb as Columbus. I don't know have you can mistake the Mayan for any other culture in the old world.
I heard the same story.
To the topic of the sunken roman ship near Brazil, wooden ships are known to sometimes resurface after sinking, and they can travel amazing distances, half-sunk, whiteout a crew, with the help of ocean currents. These "ghost-ship"sightings are all-over the history, but they certainly don't transport cargo like pineapple back to Europe.
And same currents can carry clever sailors. If memory serves, some guy once crossed Atlantic in an old style raft/boat as a test.
@@sulevturnpuu5491 thor heyerdahl
Its easy to cross oceans. This always frsutrates me go look at the polynesians. Half sunk ghost ships travelling across the atlantic is inventing miracles to explain mundane things.
@@KyleTremblayTitularKtrey not exacty what i would describe as easy, but its certainly doable, with the right equipment and know-how.
@@KyleTremblayTitularKtrey It's not easy. You would have to figure out the ocean currents, but how do you do it without reliable way to tell your direction or time? Most who lost sight of land died.
"That's not a pinecone." Now look up the Italian Stone Pine. Its cones look very much like small pineapples, and have edible nuts inside. Also compare the size of the "pineapple" to the much more recognizable fruit next to it. It's much too small to be a pineapple.
@Aurora Peace Any oil that smells or tastes unusual isn't popular for cooking in the US.
not really, I am familiar with that tree and the cone doesn't look like that.
@@cinemacritic9571 The cones actually do look like that when their scales are closed. If you ever look at an umbrella pine with cones that are still green, they have almost the same exact appearance as the fresco, pattern and all.
In Hawaii, when u grow them at home on the bush they are quite small. They don’t look like the supermarket pineapple 🍍
@Serendipity Vibe I love sun flower oil 🌻
My main objection to the pineapple is rather simple: it's a pandan fruit. They grow over a lot of South and South East Asia, and given the trade that happened through the Indian Ocean, it seems more likely that someone saw these in travels or tried to bring it back. It's a bit simpler since that contact was pretty intensely noted in history
I think that’s a great alternative explanation
If it's a pandan, it's a very lousy artistic interpretation.
The sculpture could be a pandan fruit. The mosaic seems more like a hawthorn, rose hip, or pomegranate to me.
@@rogergroover4633 it wouldn't be rare if the one that did the interpretation was not the one who saw the fruit
@@polyMATHY_Luke bullshit, rom means ruin in old language = modern hungarian magyar= tatar
tudor= who knows, has knowledge =thoth, god of thoughts
Tót is a magyar family name, very common
mr. Toth = Tóth úr = tatar
we magyars made Rome a ruin (Atilla the hun), but tell a different story, his story...
So idk how plausible this is, but Luke said something about “indirect trade” that got me thinking. We know for a fact that people like the polynesians were capable of cross-ocean travel at some point before the romans; is it possible that limited trade was actually happening between the Americas and East-Asia and working it’s way west? Hence the “from india” comment about pre-colombian maize?
I had this very same thought. But I come across one problem. Pineapples and maize go bad in about 3-5 days (at room temperature). I don't think these items can be traded that quickly over such vast distances.
@@Timmavid167 the mature hard corn seeds last a long time.
This was my thought as well. Hard Maizes like pre-Colombian Maize last longer than modern corn. I don't think it's a Pineapple in the mosaic though. Or a pinecone, either. The sunflower seeds, however, are quite damning.
I've also heard the theory that West Africa was having contact, and we know the Romans were trading deep down into Africa, as evidenced by their glasswork which must have been using imported rough diamonds from deep in Sub-Saharan Africa to carve. So it's possible the Romans could have been getting these super-exotic goods via two routes of indirect contact.
@@nuancedhistory west Africans had ships? Maybe I'm a eurocentric but I didnt know that
It looks odd to me that transatlantic (?) trade brought pineapples and sunflowers to Europe but did not take the wheel or iron to America. But then China was trading with the West for centuries before paper, printing and gunpowder technologies were transferred.
There’s a reasonable claim that the Basques were fishing off the coast of New England or Labrador, but kept the fishing grounds secret to prevent competition.
Also the fisherman of Bristol working off Newfoundland in pursuit of cod.
sure Jan
Back in the 1960's when I was attending a conference near the city Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on a yacht with friends, we noticed that for a time there was some underwater investigation going on. From our curiosity and inquiries, we found out that the divers were marine archeologists. It seems that a fleet of three Roman merchant ships had sunk adjacent to the harbor. When we asked how they knew they were Roman merchant ships, they answered that there was no indication of battering ram on the forward keel. But there were lots of large glass bottles and ceramic jars of varying sizes in the cargo holds. Further, when I checked no mention of this was even mentioned in the local newspapers. Not a word.
Very strange indeed
THEY don't want you to know!! what is the government hiding from us??
@@giga.s.o.p Who's they
@@giga.s.o.p - I seriously doubt there is a government conspiracy afoot (any government.) Since most people have no interest in the subject, the mainstream media ignore it. Most of those in government - whether elected/appointed politicians or technocrats - have no more knowledge or interest than the general public.
@@giga.s.o.p get treatment for schizophrenia
So what you're telling me is, pineapple on pizza might be ancient? ;)
You win
@@rioscordoba606 it doesn't
@@TwistedAlphonso1 before it did, but i'll delete my comment
🤣 👏
So stupid 🤣🥳👍 I love it
It is certainly an intriguing concept. However, I can’t help but agree with your feeling that there would be *more* if this were true. Like, we know corn grows very well in Northern Italy, so if it were maize that Pliny the Elder was describing, surely it would have caught on. That none of these hypothesised introductions from America survived through the ages before Columbus, when they became *massively* popular after his voyage, seems unlikely.
To be completely fair though, there is also not much evidence left of the contact and trade between India and the Roman Empire too, and we know for sure that India and the Roman Empire traded frequently. As stated in the video, any kind of voyage to the Americas, let alone back to Rome, would have been extremely difficult and sporadic at best. Any fruits, people or goods transported back to the Roman Empire would probably be scant, and it would have been almost impossible to maintain a trade network to bring back any kind of maize in quantities large enough to support widescale agriculture.
Just a disclaimer, I'm still agnostic about the theory that Rome discovered the Americas, I'm just playing devils advocate.
@@JamesTaylor-on9nz If there was only a small quantity of corn (or in fact any living thing) brought back to Europe from such a hypothetical journey, that would be part of the reason it did not survive or spread: not enough genetic diversity.
@@creativedesignation7880 Or simply not enough knowhow on how to cultivate New World crops. Even when old world powers managed to colonize the new world and cultivate maize, it took them centuries to figure out that the native practice of soaking maize in lime is essential to make maize nutritionally sustainable as a staple crop.
Don't forget, where corn displaced traditional crops, it lead to the deadly nutritional deficiency pellagra, because the niacin in corn isn't available if it isn't treated with an alkali first. Just because the finished product was brought back, doesn't mean the knowledge of how to grow and effectively use it has.
Further, just as some places will only sell one gender of their breed of dogs, and silk worms were kept a guarded secret, people knew there was a danger of things being grown elsewhere cutting out the need for traders. It wouldn't surprise me if savvy traders found a way to heat treat them or similar to render them unlikely to be viable.
@@TheBurningWarrior Thing is corn wasn't a trade secret. Everyone in the new world planted it. It isn't like some empires were hoarding the secrets of corn or anything like that
"So, there's a picture of a pinapple"
Me: "Possible"
"A type pf corn grain..."
Me: "Also possible"
"And a freaking physical shipwreck off of Brazil"
Me: "Hold up!"
Haha my mindset exactly!
@@johnharris5975 That 1 wreck doesnt show anything. In my mind its a ship that was going to Canaries (I think romans knew of the place), got lost (probably in storm) and carried over in a current (wasnt that the preffered route after Columbus?).
Pausanias the 2nd Century geographer, mentions in his description of Greece ,chapter XXIII, the existance of islands(the satyrides) way beyond the pillars of Hercules, where people have redish skin and have tails as long as horses. He holds that information from a sailor named Euphemos of Caria.
I JUST THOUGHT OF THAT WHILE WATCHING THIS VIDEO 🤣🤣
Deniers will sure say that Pausanias wrote a "fictional story", the same as Plato and Plinius...The same people that most likely will call the Viking settlements in America as "hoax"...
@@marciocorrea8531 Beyond the pillars of Hercules could mean Madeira, the Canary Islands or the Azores islands.
@@juanausensi499 The Romans were definitely aware of the Canary Islands. The Carthaginians were aware of them before the Romans. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were aware of the Azores.
Just look at how far the Greek explorer Pytheas traveled in north west Europe and the North Atlantic around 325 B.C.E. when Rome was still just a small town.
And the Romans were certainly familiar with his writings.
My hope is that someday a huge cache of scrolls, stories and documents will be discovered and new light can be shed this subject.
Yes
It was probably in the library of Alexandria before the fire
They weren't burned, they are locked up in the vatican.. how much you want to bet. That and the Smithonian.
Plenty of Aztec texts were stored there and when the govt asked for them back they said they all had burned, but then all of a sudden 30 years later these ancient artificats are being found in billionaires homes or being showcased for a limited time at vati as 'restorations' .
@@jaredkinney9239 Fire of Alexandria, destruction of Gundeshapur, sack of Konstantinopolis (by latins), sack of Baghdad.... why does this keep happening
got burned in library of alexandria
That transition to advertising Lingua Latina per se Illustrata caught me so off guard lol
He has become an expert in the ways of sneaking LLPSI into conversation
I wish YT didn’t censor everything. There used to be a channel that was all about Europeans in the americas, they talked about the ginger mummies they found in Florida, the questionable rune stone, and my personal favorite which I can’t find anymore…. There was a Greek or Roman scroll that described this place past the pillars of Hercules that only the most badass would travel too, and most didn’t come back. There was a crude map and it was basically Florida and the gulf region.
Yeah I doubt there was consistent cross Atlantic travel, but I personally have no doubt at least a few dozen voyages were made.
Lastly I don’t think the Romans would have been as blown away as later Europeans. I’m
Pretty sure they considered the world to be much bigger and filled with many mystical lost places. Evenn during the late republic they considered Britain to be an enchanted island. That’s during a time where they had contact with Celts and Gauls who knew it was a mundane place they went back and forth from.
TH-cam feel so soulless nowadays, I miss the times all that crazy stuff was all over the place :(
Yeah politics ruined TH-cam. It made them just take down everything they might slightly even consider as conspiracy. Sucks I used to have soo much fun learning about world and ancient history. Now it's just the same d Bible from the same sources blah!!!!!
I thought they were only censoring COVID stuff....
@@matthewdietzen6708 that’s just the latest thing. YT used to actually be a free uncensored platform.
@@matthewdietzen6708 anything that counters the out of africa theory really
Don't forget that Egyptians wrapped various herbs in the bandages around mummies. One of the herbs that has been discovered and identified is tobacco, another new world species. I remember a live unwrapping event on the BBC, featuring Dr Rosalie David of the university of Manchester, in which tobacco was found.
@Malcolm Sewell Also Egyptian cotton strains have been found in the Americas. They have been genetically tested to be Egyptian. It's proven that salt water would destroy those seeds. And the winds won't carry the seeds that far.
My fourth grade history book, written in, or at least read by me in, the early fifties, clearly describes the voyages of Eric the Red to Iceland and Greenland, and his son Leif Ericson to North America. No permanent settlement was made because the indigenous tribes were hostile and totally outnumbered the Norsemen.
As for the Romans, many hurricanes begin as tropical storms off the African coast. It is easily believable that such storms carried Romans, trading with African countries, across the Atlantic. Having survived such an event, the first thing a Roman captain would do was to repair his damaged ship, gather whatever foodstuff was available, and return home as quickly as possible. The idea of trying to establish a trade route across such a dangerous sea using the cockleshell boats available at that time would have been dismissed out of hand. All that would remain would be a sailor's story of a landfall somewhere out in the Atlantic, possibly dismissed as a description of the Canary Islands.
It was well known, and well proven, that the Norse had settled in Greenland. That was after all the basis for Denmark's claim to Greenland.
However, the story of Vinland was not proven. Nor was it known where Vinland actually was, if the stories were true. It was not until the archeological evidence was found, that it was more or less proven that Vinland was in Newfoundland.
Just read the opening chapter of any Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt books
I was aware of Leif Ericsson back in the mid 1950’s
I always loved history
@@hoponpop3330 That was about the time I was reading it in my history book.
@@Tjalve70 There is enough evidence to show that Leif Erikson and his Norse expedition were the first Europeans who actually landed in the New World in the year 1000. A
2:38 The other arguments make sense, but truth is pine cones bring pine nuts. Nuts in general are categorised as fruits. I don't know if they do in the botanical definition, but at least in all romance languages I can think of, they are categorised as fruits, "fruit à coque/fruit sec", "frutos secos"...
Hi! Ecologist here. In short - pines botanically do not have fruits because they are Gymnosperms. Fruits are produced by Angiosperms (flowering plants).
@Henrique Paes No way, Sherlock 👀
Nuts aren't fruits, both botanically and especially nutritionally: nuts are mostly fats, so they are extremely caloric, while almost all fruits are full of water, thus they have low calories.
@@yerbadeldiablo6751 The modern botanical category isn’t really the question though-the question is whether, in Roman society at the time of the fresco, a pine cone bearing nuts was considered sufficiently “fruit-like” such that its inclusion in a bowl of fruit wouldn’t seem unusual. Whether nuts in general and pine nuts in particular were commonly called “fruit” gives us some evidence of that proposition.
@@ngw03 I know, it was just a botanical fun fact, I decided to comment it since they said that they don't know the botanical definition
Very interesting. I wonder if the "Pineapple" in the art could be from a now extinct plant? We do know that there are quite a few plants that the ancients used that are now extinct. Thanks for the interesting content.
It’s likely an umbrella pine cone. The illustration matches perfectly with one, plus Romans often ate the pine nuts at banquets so it makes sense that it would be next to the fruits.
It's possible there are species of flora which exist in both Europe and America, certainly it could be the case it got extinct in Europe(or Africa) and its cousin survived in America.
Anyone ever read the books, "Clash of Eagles"...? It's about the Western Roman Empire not collapsing and then discovering the Americas in something like the 1260s-1280s where they make contact with various Native American tribes. What I found even more interesting was, the Romans were like "buddies" with Visigoths and Norsemen in the Roman army.. I can't remember what was said of Byzantium. I am ultra fascinated by fictional/alternate history-type stories.
This is why Luke is awesome. Paraphrase "Hey how about you go to the source material yourself and read it in its original context/language to see what is actually being said". You are great keep it up! "A text without a context is no text at all"
A text without a context is just a pretext for whatever you want it to say.
@Domingo Aguirre ok
Yes they did and they live in New Jersey
Where the biggest Roman American community is ahahah
The Greeks did it first, though. Ever heard of Sparta, New Jersey?
And the Romans, where are they now?
Youre looking at them asshole
its important to note that wooden ships do not really sink unless it was burned or broken on rocks. if a ship was capsized in a storm the crew might have abandoned it for shore but the ship would float off whereever the currents took it. it is totally plausable for a bronze age ship sailing around north africa to end up in the new world before it became totally waterlogged and swamped with water.
I doubt the pineapple thing. When pineapples were first "commonly" brought to Europe they spoiled very easily making them super rare and valuable. I remember one story where they brought a shipfull of them and only one made it and some king or whatever got to try it and declared it the king of fruit, and this was with far better ships. I don't think its likely a pineapple would have survived the time it would have taken romans to get back to Europe and even if it did, I imagine so few would make it that they'd hardly catch on enough to be depicted in mosaics
It's not implausible. The Romans were very opportunistic people, and their taste for rare and hard to find foods was legendary even in the day. If some enterprising Roman found a way to grow pineapples, he very easily could have kept his operation a secret to ensure a monopoly. Pineapples grow low to the ground, so concealment wouldn't have been that difficult. And the secret might have died with him. But I'm thinking from the standpoint of a writer of fiction. Making the Scenario Work isn't even remotely the same as Proving it Actually Happened.
They could have brought pineapple seeds or a small tree.
@@michaelfoulkes9502 pineapples grow on low bushes close to the ground, not trees. Jackfruit grow on trees, somewhat dangerously. they are quite small when home grown (as they are all over Hawaii), and when u pick then pre-ripe, they actually last quite along time. They don’t look like the supermarket one, more like a pinecone.
Italians:(discover America twice)
Also Italians: "Is this Asia?"
Boo.
The discovery of America was a Spanish enterprise. The Italians in Italy don't take credit for it nor is it even on their radar. It's only Italian Americans who have subsequently conjured up that narrative.
Socrates - eels come from rain hitting the water from high altitudes
@@based_prophet to be fair, we didn't know how some species of Eel reproduce until like a decade or so ago. some adult eels don't even have sex organs, so there were a lot of questions.
Italian as an ethnicity, country or lingua-franca didn't exist in the 1500s. They were separate kingdoms, empires and peoples. Hence, why they never led any expeditions west, just trade and small colonies within the Mediterranean region.
The Roman Empire weren't exclusively "Italian", and most were from outside the Italian Peninsula. If a theoretical American voyage took place, it most likely would include people from North Africa and Southern Iberia (due to Phoenician influence) and Greece. The Phoenician (originating in Lebanon) and Greek peoples were the two main naval powers of the region prior to the Roman Empire conquering them and genociding the former (Carthage).
Most of history was never written down and most we will never know.
If there was trade with people in the new world, surely something as major as that would be written down
@@user-ls8ks7kv8c what if it was a little more common than we think. So to them it was not note worthy to take account of those interactions. What if they actually lost contact. What if there is legitimate historical evidence hidden away. Why would it be hidden? History books would have to be retold and propagandas would have to be reworked. Just a theory of why we may not know a lot about this if it was indeed part of history. I believe the ancients were a lot smarter and capable than we think.
@Gary Allen What is History but a fable agreed upon? - Napoleon Bonaparte
Yes No Maybe So right. And an egomaniac like Napoleon just has to be 100% right about everything. Just because a guy says something doesn't make it true. Even if it's catchy and mmorable, it doesn't make it true
@@mahatmarandy5977 so quoting someone one time presumably means I believe that person is always right. On the contrary this is just a statement I agree with to a certain extent. At the end of the day we weren’t there. People have a habit of exaggerating a story or portraying themselves as the good guys when they in fact are the bad guys. History is provided to students in a format to manipulate and influence them into a way of thinking.
Hi, Mexican here. Probably many followers of this channel, because you are cultivated people, know about Quetzalcoatl, the main god of the civilizations in Mesoamerica. So, Quetzalcoatl is an ancient god that was being around for millennia. Originally was this serpent with feathers, serpent - earth (the womb is always touching the ground), feathers - sky, so was a god connecting skies and earth, mostly in a practical way: rain. Water elevates to the skies, then move there, then fall again on the crops. Snakes also were related to water, not just in Mesoamerica, but in many cultures, because they look like a fluid. So, as an ancient god, he was a regent of agriculture and rain. Later, Quetzalcoatl started to be more a god of civilization (agriculture brought that) and he was not anymore the feathered serpent, but human form (the water/rain deity took other face: Tlaloc). Wise god, always trying to care for humans, whereas the rest of the gods were skeptical of humans or wanted to clean the Earth of them. In fact, gods destroyed humanity 4 times, and Quetzalcoatl revived us 5 times till now, every time in a "better version" of humans. Previous humans were monkeys, giants, and so on. As in Christianity, Mesoamericans always waited for the come of the carer god to help us, Quetzalcoatl. And, as Jesus, in fact there was a man who was considered Quetzalcoatl itself presented to people in more human form. They made him king, not the Aztecs, because was centuries before, almost a millenium before Aztecs. They were the Toltecs, the equivalent of Greeks in this region of the world, the Mother culture. And this is the thing: Quetzalcoatl, the king, the real human, was a white skinned man, with beard!!! He came from the sea, the Atlantic!!! He was considered very wise and taught many practical stuff to the people. He sailed to the East after some time ruling, promising he will return. This is why Moctezuma, centuries later, thought Europeans, Spanish conquistadors, were him!! I don't know why this is not so known, it's amazing! Many think Quetzalcoatl was a viking, but, what if he was a Roman???
Actually, there is one Italian author from the 1340s who mentioned America in his writing. The name he gives to America is Marckalada.
The Vikings called it Markland.
The name of this Italian author from Milan is Galvano Fiamma.
I could easily see a roman vessel being blown off course, ending up in the Americas, and getting lucky to make it back. They show exotic goods, and tell their story, so a group sends a few ships over, less than half make it back and it ends up being not worth the effort and forgotten.
That seems the most likely it's doubtful that there was trade but maybe a couple ships that made it back and forth
Even in those days they would consider sailing across the Atlantic suicide. It is easy to sail across the Mediterranean and even then they sailed their ships in view of the shore. The Atlantic, not so much.
@@nicholassmith479 they didn't know how big the Atlantic was so at least a few people must have tried it. The moon landing was dangerous and expensive as well but there were still people who tried and succeeded.
@@TheBonecrusherz lmao u actually believe that?
@@TheBonecrusherz The moon landings and the Christopher Columbus voyages NEEDED government support. No records of an Emperor giving an adventurer money to sail to the unknown. The technology wasn’t there and no private citizen was going to risk money and ships to nowhere. It was easier to trade on the Mare Nostrum where you were nearly guaranteed a return. One would need to find sailors who were willing to sail over the edge of the world.
Well, it's tempting. Remember that both the Roman and early medieval ages were warmer than today ('Roman climatic optimum' and 'medieval climatic optimum'). The travels of Pytheas (sailing to Hibernia) and Necho (Africa circumnavigation) are also two hell of a journeys.
Yes... I also think that the modern vision on 'history' is pretty messed up. Especially the 'civilization began in Uhr and pretty much a straight line to now' stuff. However certainly the story of Columbus is too much glorified; he wasn't the first idd, Vikings were there before, and even before that the Chinese... and there is a document in the Brazil museum that talks about Spanish explorers finding a ruined glorious city in the Amazon that had Hellenistic/Roman/classical European architecture, the entire movie Lost City of Z is based on it as Faucet tried to find this city. Columbus is also too vilified as mainly lefty political zealots want you to believe that the natives were living benevolently and harmony in America.... yeah well that's not really the case; when Pizarro went to the Inca's for the 2nd time to conquer it; he found it just after a civil war where natives killed each other in the hundreds of thousands... as for Cortez.... yeah, well I guess if the Aztecs didn't suppress the other native tribes; they wouldn't have joined up with Cortez against the Aztecs.... so the story about 'benevolent natives' that the BBC etc. etc. always goes on about is just a load of crap.
@@stijnvdv2 - While Columbus was certainly not the first European to 'discover' the Americas, he definitely had the greatest impact - for good and bad. His explorations changed the course of world history.
For a pineapple to be included in a work of art from the Roman era, it would have to have been common enough and well known enough for the artist to have included it in their mosaic. Otherwise, what would have been the point. People would have just looked at it and wondered "What is that thing suppose to be?".
Haha, at first, I thought you were going to completely debunk this! Boy, was I surprised! I’ve been in Roman studies for a while and had no idea about this until now…
Its alot of miss guided bullshit look up the Metatron he debunks all of this
Given how "low-resolution" that "pineapple" picture is, and given the *enormous* variety of fruits, especially in the region, it could probably be one of several dozens of different fruits grown in the region at the time.
Definitely possible. I've been fascinated with the number of extinct varieties of fruits and vegetables found in Rome. I read a while back that Rome had a number of varieties of fresh snacking onions eaten like we eat apples (said to be different from modern onions).
@@gmchris3752 sounds interesting. Got a source?
@@winkleperiwinkle808 the prickly pear is native to mexico
@@gmchris3752 my family (bulgarian-ukrainian) eat green onion and regular onion raw. Regular onion you eat slice by slice
Anyone got a source of that variety of fruits native to Europe? I searched around a lot, but was unable to find any native European fruit that looks anything like the depiction. Looks like most fruits native to Europe are berries and from what I found it wasn't exactly an enourmous variety of them either...
If anyone could name just a single candidate, that would be helpfull, because without context this argument sounds to me like: "No idea what it is, but I don't want it to be a pineapple". (not saying it necessarily is one, but I'm not finding any alternatives either)
Pine cones are edible. In Russia they make pine cone jam.
They are, the Romans ate and depicted them and those depictions look nothing like the fruit in that picture.
Löwenzahn
St Brendan sailed west from Ireland and returned a decade later saying he'd found another land.
There are also stories of Native Americans in the Appalachians having a 'mens tongue' that is suspiciously similar to Welsh. And let's not forget the Melungeons. There is a LOT of history that we don't know and people are often too eager to underestimate our forebears, so such hints as given by St. Brendan and others do repay close study.
He likely landed in Iceland. Given the sailing technology of the Irish at the time the farthest he could get would be Iceland. It was also known to be home to irish monks who wanted to live in solitude before they were driven out by the Norse six centuries later.
@@MCKevin289 Perhaps not so. In 1976 a British explorer called Tim Severin made a replica of the ships of St Brendan's time and successfully got it to North America on the first attempt, using the Voyage of St Brendan as his 'map'. Regardless of whther the story is true, it was technically possible. I'll try to put the link below, but if it doesn't appear, just search "The Brendan Voyage' on TH-cam (the sound track is awful quality, though).
@@MCKevin289 th-cam.com/video/d0achCp3VZ0/w-d-xo.html
If the Polynesians could sail all over the place, why would you think the Romans could not? Why would they need to invent a fancy ship when others were doing it with a Kon Tiki raft?
This is a staggeringly stupid statement to make with such confidence. Staggering. The Romans could hardly sail across the English Channel
Years ago, when I was at university studying linguistics, and had my first contact with classical culture I started wondering about this theory. Since then I've researched about this subject in the internet and found out several legends about Fenicians and Romans coming to Brazil before modern europeans. I think it is plausible that something like that happened. Unfortunately there is little archeological research here in Brazil as such studies are deemed waste of money.
There's also a theory that ancient greeks travelled to america, there's reference to islands west of britain (thought to be referencing iceland and greenland) that get you to a large land (america). This only vaguely spoken about in greek academic circles so who knows.
Wouldn’t be surprised if there was a lost epic poem about some geezer who got lost on the way back from Trojan war and went to America
@@omegacardboard5834 LoL! Would his wife be offered many marriage proposals that she'd refuse?
I know what this is talking about, and this is a mistranslation. What they're talking about is Scandinavia, and the direction is EAST of Britain. Ancient Greek directional expressions can be a bit funky, hence the confusion. The discussion was more or less about whether Scandinavia was real or not.
in aztec culture there are a couple of coincidences with greeks, the word for god is also teos and some patterns used for decoration are very similar, who knows.
Some go as far as to say the bronze age Myceneans or Minoans went to Michigan. There's as much as half billion (an exaggeration but still a ton nonetheless) of copper that was excavated in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan from 2450 BC and ended abruptly around 1200 BC. It's a stretch but it holds some weight. A lot of local myths about in here in Michigan. Plutarch's navigation (or somebody I can't remember) leads to the Great Lakes so it makes sense also in that regard
The Romans did not have ocean going ships. So, it is highly unlikely.
However, the Celts may have.
In Caesar's writings on the Gallic Wars, he tells of his defeat of the Veneti.
The Celtic tribe, Veneti, ,were interesting.
They did NOT reside on land. They lived entirely on their ships.
According to Caesar's description of them having "walls of wood",
they were ships with a high freeboard, and were ocean going ships.
They were not like the low galleys used in the Mediterranean.
This was pointed out in the book, "America B.C."
I recommend it.
You are a hidden jewel of the US Army brother. One of the few I respect and admire and try to emulate a bit when it comes to your vast knowledge and dedication to the classics. God bless you brother Luke and hooyah. 🙏🏿👍🏿 I wish I could have studied under you.
You are very kind, sir; I’m proud to share my passions, especially with my brothers in arms like yourself. Hooyah to you too! Are you Navy?
@@polyMATHY_Luke Na just a guy whom used to be a huge fan of the military especially the army(metal gear solid! Lol!) unfortunately I was never mentally if physically fit for the army but I admire en and women of faith and scholarship whom served and bled for what they believe In. God bless you my brother for you are an inspiration to keep my nose in a book.🙏🏿✝️
The Pheonicians were excellent sailors, i'm sure they would have tried to investigate the ocean at some point.
Mexican historiography records contact with merchants who recall the Carthaginians. See, "The Blood Drenched Altars"
@@oisinofthefianna3246 I didn't know that, thanks very much.
@Gary Allen Bigoted ad hominem noted.
@Gary Allen Imagine simping for the MESO AMERICAN civilizations
@@oisinofthefianna3246 'bigoted' the favorite word of soy-perhuman left
When Alexander met Diogenes they spoke about a distant continent from the other side of the atlantic ocean
True, though the continent of Atlantis was a well known legend at this time.
@@polyMATHY_Luke i do not know where is the boundary between myth and history. When Apollodorus from Sicily visited the island of Samothrace in nothern Aegean, the priests of the cabeirian mysteries told him about an ancient disaster, when thw wates crossed the Hellespont and sunked the land, which is the way as we know that the sea was formed after the last ice age, at about 6-8.000 BC. Where do we put the myth and where the ancient tradition?
@@user-bo8sm4vq1o We know that Atlantis is explicitly fictional - Plato made it up. Further, early man first made their way to the Americas across the top of the Pacific, not the Atlantic.
@@user-bo8sm4vq1o
Myth doesn't serve as evidence of its own, but often serves as inspiration to go out and look for evidence. It barely even serves as corroborating evidence at the very most. The most it usually gets to is "oh look, this myth actually has an origin in real life".
@@user-bo8sm4vq1o Myths alway started out as stories about things to do/not to do.
Ancient tribes that did not have writing yet could only pass information on orally and whenever important information was passed down it got predictably warped over time. Most ancient mythologies, gods and legends have some core truth or fact behind them, with the caveat that these aren't often visible at first without extensive research.
Though it is not really clear which myths describe real events and which describe examples of how to act. So take them all with a lot of salt and dont blindly believe in them.
Just for the "sunflower seeds in a shipwreck" story, I did some research on it, and it looks like it could be a contamination from the close-by plantation
As a writer of fiction, I can easily imagine a scenario in which pineapples were brought back from an accidental voyage to the Americas, then cultivated in secret and sold to only very rich families throughout the Roman world. The type who would be inclined to commission mosaics such as the ones that depict pineapples. But without any evidence, that remains fiction. Now, if one were to discover the remains of where those pineapples were cultivated, that would be something concrete.
Yeah but pineapples spoil after a few days unrefrigerated
Could such fruit remain edible for long enough for such a long travel ? One argument used by Cato the Elder to declare war on Carthage, was bringing a fruit from Carthage to Rome and showing it was still fresh, implying Carthage was not a distant threat. Bringing fruits from America or South Asia would take considerably longer.
Exactly, and pineapples in particular rot really quickly. They're gone in a matter of days!
@@volimNestea And yet they were gifted to the pope when the journey still took months. They were transported as potted plants, and still growing.
@@volimNestea really? Takes atleast a month for it to rot outside of a fridge
@@BrickMediaStudios In my experience, it takes only about 2 or 3 days. Maybe it has something to do with the way they're stored and transported?
@@winterborn82 Haven't heard of that, though it does make sense. Still, imagine wasting fresh water for watering pineapples when you're stuck on the ocean for months!
This would make a great movie
Why are we so sure that, if the Romans reached America, they would be Italian Romans? :P
Also, we don´t know for sure where Colombus was from, they are carrying out genetic studies right now to determine it. Him being genoese is the most widespread hypothesis, but there are also other (serious) theories about him being from Majorca, Valencia, Galicia, Guadalajara (Castille), Navarra or Portugal.
We know Vespuccio was florentine, but also that both Colombus and Vespuccio legally were/became Castillian naturals (~nationals, keeping in mind there were no nation states at the time).
Regarding the technological advances of the Age of Exploration, it was not just the "invention of the caravel" (as a matter of fact, Colombus's flagship was probably not a caravel, but a nao (~carrack)), but also by the sailing techniques developed in the Iberian peninsula (not just in Portugal) notably their great ability to sail windwards and other developments which made the navigators of the Atlantic coast of Hispania world class when it came to open ocean sailing.
By the way, Colombus himself might give you more possible explanations for how a pineapple might have ended up in Europe. For instance, when in Madeira, he noticed that when strong winds blew from the west the seas carried a rare type of bean that was very common in the Caribbean, and there were stories of other washed out objects, such as strange carved wood, so maybe pineapples floated back to Europe, and someone could have even planted them.
I just adore your video and listen to you. Fantastic research and would like that to be proved true in the future discoveries. Magnifico ti adoro
The "pineapple" is probably just some exotic southeast asian fruit that looks like a pineapple mecause of the way the mosaic was created.
The evidence that stands out to me is the shipwreck off of Brazil, but that's only evidence of a single ship that somehow managed to end up down there, and it is believable that a ship from a maritime civilization can get lost like that.
what about the sunflower seeds? I've never heard that one before but I can't really see anyway to argue against it unless sunflowers used to be native to the Old World and died out
@@levilivengood4522 supposedly they were found in a doctor's bag in a shipwreck. I can see it being mistaken identity for seeds of some other plant in the Asteraceae family that Romans would have had access to, but if they are Helianthus seeds then that is a bit of a mystery.
@@ryanspencer6778 yeah. it sounds like they did a dna analysis and that turned up the traces of sunflower seeds. the test could have been mistaken. cross contamination could also be a possibility, similar to the situation where tobacco was found in an egyptian mummy.
What " South East Asian" fruit look likes a pineapple?
@@MrAmhara
Before long periods of selective breeding and standardisation, fruit existed in much greater variety and usually looking very different from today. Who knows what fruit it might have been, pandan perhaps? Also the question isn't if it looks similar to pineapple, but if it looks like it could be what the mosaic is trying to depict.
There’s a theory that Basques might have made it to North America before Columbus in search of whale-hunting grounds. They definitely made it to Iceland and it was said they had other hunting grounds further afield that they kept secret. Without any physical evidence, though, there’s no way to say for sure.
Indeed what you warn is an unsproving theory, but we must take into account what common sense tells us. Not only the Basques but any other fishing people through the Middle Ages could have set foot anywhere on the extensive eastern coast of present-day America.
Including the fishing people of the ancient age.
In any case, the fact that the Romans reached American shores or not throughout history has not had the slightest significance. Neither cultural, norsocial nor economic trascendence.
Did you know that a pidgin mix of MicMac (indian tribe of eastern Canada) and Basque was documented by the Jesuits as early as 1616.
@@Pianoscript You cannot just say this and just leave it at that. Where did you read about it? Ez dut inoiz ez irakurri ezer ez honi buruz.
The crossing Columbus took is around 6,000 km whereas the shortest crossing from Guinea to Brazil is less than half that distance at 2,800 km.
Too bad he didnt look at the map. By the way, he didnt want to go to Brazil, but to China (or Japan).
I'M Portuguese but my grandmother was born in Manaus 1908, and she told me stories about great cities that spread through the Amazon River, and that culture trade with other foreigners that came from the sea and where the sun was born, and they trade wine, olives and metals and took wood, fruits and lots of exotic birds in their ships. If this is true I cannot find out but its st least very intriguing changing our concept of human diaspora and showing us how complex is our past and makes wonder if we should be able to continue to tell our historical stories in such an Eurocentric way and the dogma that we have in our system of education. Greetings from Portugal and I'm sorry for my terrible English language. Obrigado
A lot of the images can also have other explanations, some more logical than American contact, so for me that doesn't really do it as evidence to point in the direction of (limited) trade contact. The parrots may well not be of the Ara genus, I don't think anyone can make a claim with full confidence & precision based on the given image. Similarly, while the leaves are a bit strange, the rest of the alleged pineapple looks a lot like a stone pine cone (one that hasn't opened), also in its colours (not to mention pandan plants, native to south-east Asia, also have fruits that can look quite a lot like pineapples, and certainly can look similar to what is depicted there).
Keep in mind the pineapple must have been locally grown, they can't ship that over the ocean without it rotting, so I'd wait for traces of that before jumping to any conclusions.
There are indeed finds of jars in Brazil, however I don't think it's even confirmed they are Roman in origin (seems they could also be Spanish from the 15th century). Even if they are, Romans built boats out of wood, and wood floats, so an abandoned or lost vessel can float a long, long distance before sinking. As far as I'm aware, no remains of a vessel or crew have been found. At best, we can say that Roman-looking jars have made it to the Americas, but that's it.
The problem with the evidence we have currently is that a lot of it can be explained with equally possible explanations that have nothing to do with the Romans. Additionally, there are people pushing historical theories based on little more than their beliefs or their politico-cultural agendas, and while I don't accuse any of those you mention of this (I don't know Italian so I can't really check for myself, and I would trust your judgement on this), it's important to always keep that in the back of your mind in general.
That said, the most important thing is to keep an open mind to these possibilities. Too often has close-mindedness hampered scientific discovery, as I was reminded of recently by reading up on the efforts to decipher the Mayan scrip. But I think we do need more compelling evidence than what's presented so far.
Yeah, I think people are agreeing with this because it sounds cool rather than any actual credibility...
"Keep an open mind, just not open enough to let your brain fall out." I agree with you. Nothing in this can't be explained in a vastly more mundane way.
Joseph Rohrbach people like conspiracy theories. Makes em feel special, makes em feel like they know the truth while the learned are fools. It's all about ego, not a bit about fact.
What about those sunflower seeds tho?
I don't know about these specific mosaics, but I know of other "Roman" mosaics featuring American birds that have been proven to be fake later. The vikings left written texts about their journey to Vinland. So I'm pretty sure the Romans, who left us much more written texts, would have at least mentioned it somewhere. And if they were trading pineapples, sunflowers and American birds with someone else, I'm pretty sure they would have mentioned that as well. So I'm not convinced!
Same. Also why there is no archaeological vestige in the Americas tho
And pineapples rot very quickly, there's no way they would have been edible by the time they arrived in Europe.
Yeah, this is simply not rational. The Romans were not good sailors, and really not much into exploring. Hanno was the best explorer the ancient world, traveling half way down africa, and he never got out of sight of land. Roman dscovery of the new world is nonsense
Between the peak of the Roman era and nowadays there are 2000 years, and a civilization collapse.
Between Viking peak and nowadays half of that, and civilization continuity.
The discovery of such land might have been less than relevant to them. No advanced civilizations to trade with and an excessively long voyage. Hence not many written records, none of which survived.
The written records from the late Empire are notoriously scarce anyway.
@@volimNestea How long would they last in ice? They might have used that.
Forgive me if somebody already posted this, but I remember reading an article a few years ago that a roman galley had been discovered off the coast of Nova Scotia. Unfortunately, from what I understand they have very difficult salvage laws up there, so I don't know if they've made any progress in excavating it. However, hearing that there was another ship found off Brazil makes this much more compelling. I figure one ship could be adrift, but two is pushing it for me. Please give me a reply if they ever find a third ship.
I remember having read quite some time ago that the Romans had factually circumnavigated the world, well ahead of the crew of Magellan. If so, they presumably approached the coast of either South or Central America and then followed the coastline southward and passed through the same straits that are now named for Magellan, continuing into the Pacific. I have since tried to have this account vetted one way or the other.
I'm always shocked also when I thought that also ancient greeks measured almost precisely the circumference of the Earth.
The Egyptians did that.
@@josephturner4047 if Egyptians did it would be aliens
There is allegedly also an arabian map (Pre age of exploration), copyed from ancient maps, wich shows the exact outlines of antarctica. But take this bit of information with a grain of salt, as i heard that from graham hancock who can go off into the fantastical sometimes. (Very interesting and entertaining though, and some of his ideas could turn out to be true imho)
@@josephturner4047 If you think about Eratosthene, he did his work in Egypt, but he was greek
The Africans taught the Greeks mathematics shipbuilding map hygeine etc etc
I recommend reading " L' America dimenticata " by Lucio Russo. In my opinion it contains very convincing elements in support of the hypothesis of pre-Roman contacts with the Antilles islands.
The book is only in italian, but the author has written a number of articles about this topic in english too. For example look for " Far-reaching Hellenistic geographical knowledge hidden in Ptolemy’s data".
@Henrique Paes You seem to be making the same comment, missing the point each time. No one is saying that the Romans were the first humans in the Americas. Rather that they may have been there long before the widely accepted time-frame of Viking and Colombian contact.
@@johnlove3505 True. But as far as the first Europeans into America, i'm going to bet on it being the Fino Uralics or Sami people as well as the Yenesians of Russians. Haplogroup Q was found in both groups meaning that Native Americans had already mixed with european(or eurasian) or descended from them long before the western european stated. I can already confirm to you that the iriqous were related to teh Finnish, as Iriqouis called them 'like us but lighter'.
But East Asia and North Russia have the first claims to the Americas.
Romans probably never landed in America, they just received objects in trade from an unkonwn source. This would prove that el vatikan0 knew about Americas before the 1500s. Mel Gibson hints at this in Apocalypto which is set in 1200-1300.
I will bet it was an unknown Indonesian or Southern Chinese group that was the intermediary.
However when the Ottomans sacked Constantanople it trigered the Western Europeans to go into America , and knowing there was a discease or flood that killed off lots of the population.. they went into colonization or crusading mode onthem.
It would explain why Squanto already spoke Italian and latin in Masachuesets when the English settlers arriived, they were confused by it.
Wow, your Latin is EXCELLENT! I only studied for 3 years, I have nightmares about declinations. Not a joke, I thought English was convoluted. Hmm, wonder what the etymology of "convoluted" is...
The standard Roman cargo ship could carry 150 tons. Some over 500 tons.
Columbus' largest ship could carry about 100 tons.
The largest Viking longships less than that.
It means that only a few voyages would have been sufficient to bring a huge deal of unknown stuff from America to Europe. No need for a properly established trade route.
In terms of seaworthiness, Columbus' ships were pretty much well refined Roman cargo ships. And if the Viking ships dealt with the Atlantic Ocean, i don't see why the much larger Roman ships couldn't have done the same.
In terms of experience, the Romans were used to sailing to India. At some point in history, about 120 of such Roman cargo ships would reach every year India (southern tip and beyond). An expedition to the Americas would have been of comparable distance (even though non-stop).
Why no written accounts? Possibly, exactly because no commercial route was established.
Why no route? Because it was just another far land without a civilization to trade with, like Sub-Saharan Africa.
Obviously, we now know they might have lost a big chance. But you need to see that from a contemporary perspective.
2:34 I don't think the leaves are attached to the pineapple/pinecone. it looks to me that the leaves are going under it. The thing behind the pineapple/pinecone looks the same, but has no leaves. I think these are pinecones over some herb or grass used as a garnish.
Could be; but the leaves are clearly attached in the other artwork. See the book
There could've been more roman records of pinnacles or sunflowerseeds but perhaps they have been lost to history or even intentionally destroyed or lost. Or let's not forget about roman coins found throughout North and South America. Like roman coins discovered under an Indian mound in Texas dated to around 800 AD
Wasn’t that a hoax?
@@cthulhutentacles4994 probably but there's been many roman coins found in the America's over the years and many historians always overlook the evidence saying it wasn't possible for the romans to voyage across the Atlantic. Well in my defense I believe the romans probably knew more than what we know but whatever they knew is lost to history.
@@diegoruvalcaba8150 They would have not needed to travel there themselves for the coins to appear in the Americas, the coins could have arrived there decades after they left Rome. Historians using the argument that the most direct travel route would have been impossible, thus all Roman coins in the Americas must have arrived well past the time of the Roman Empire makes me think we need way smarter historians...
@@creativedesignation7880 your right but I wouldn't see anyone in the 15th or 16th centuries to bring them over to the America's only to loose them. It could've been someone from long before not just romans but that could've traded with natives then traded with romans?
"Hundreds" is an exaggeration. Also, they're all recent (20th century) finds. No one ever claim to have found a Roman coin in Massachusetts in the 18th or 19th centuries. There was a guy in Tennessee Who claimed to have found roman coins, but only on his property. Then when he moved to texas, the coin finds stopped in tennessee and started in texas. And when he died, they stopped there too.
He was lying. People lie.
I read somewhere that portuguese fishermen were fishing just off the coast of the Americas for centuries before Columbus, so maybe there could well have been earlier trade through possible contact with natives.
Correct. They followed the cod. Do this for centuries and you end up off Newfoundland.
I would so love to hear Metatron weigh in on this!
5:38 My layman's thoughts on it are that it could be a situation similar to how merchants treated the origins of cinnamon as a secret. It could've been merchants who may have found the Americas and, in order to ensure the scarcity of the products they're bringing, kept it a secret, a trade secret.
This is one of those theories that I really hope is true, like the one that suggests that Japanese people made it to the American Southwest and left some words behind in the Zuñi language, or the one that has Phoenicians making it to Central America and possibly passing on the concept of writing to them. I hope they're true!
I mean it'd be nice if true but the 'Japanese' words in Zuñi are coincidence (see the Australian language whose pre-contact word for dog is 'dog'), and Central American writing has so little in common with the Phoenician alphabet that it is almost certainly not the case. Cool theory though. I prefer the one where the Phoenicians were the first people to circumnavigate Africa.
@@therat1117 to play devil's advocate, there is also contact diffusion (or something like that) where people hear of a technology and independently make their own.
Phoenicians are really distant chronologically to the born of pre colombian society, and so, their scripts.
@@furlan1743 distant chronologically to pre Columbian civilization?
That depends WHAT civilization we are talking about.
There is a Bronze axe found with a 1500 years old wooden handle in the amazonas region, the axe head shows an oxen with nose ring. I say it is possible that they got there. By accident or not, I don't know. Did they manage to come back to europe? I don't know.
I have also seen a pineapple atop what was supposedly one of the oldest fountains in Britain. I am sure that you can find references to it somewhere. Also, there are several Roman ships in the Gulf of Mexico, all lined up neatly. A real puzzle. No one really knew what to think about them, but it certainly adds more evidence. Something else to think about: spectrographic analysis of chocolate in certain mummies, and there is much more. I really am glad that someone is finally being brave enough to seriously put out these thought provoking theories.
Also,
In the book, "Cod", we find that when the English explorer, John Cabot,
discovered America in the area New England, he saw Basque fishermen.
It seems the Basque, in northern Spain, monopolized the salt cod trade in Europe.
They had a plentiful supply of Cod, and no one knew where their fishing grounds were.
The Basque kept it secret.
The secret cod fishing grounds of the Basque, used for centuries before observation by John Cabot,
was the Grand Banks, off of New England.
Good book, I recommend the book, "Cod".
Great book, indeed!
Galvano Fiamma, a Dominican from Milan, mentioned the Americas in his Cronica Universalis, written in 1345... 150 years before Columbus
Yeah, he wrote about the Vikings and their explorations to Canada, Greenland, and Iceland.
The issue is not who first arrived. But how Columbus' discovery changed the world.
The echo in that room is doing you no production favours... but your content is so good!
More videos of this nature, having to do with sailing and exploration, would be most welcome!
The Aztecs also had a legend of white skinned men with beards that came from across the ocean who said they would one day return. That’s why, when the Spanish came, they confused them with those people, Romans maybe?
No , those white people were their mythical gods ancestors , not visitors. Its part of their mythology , nothing to do with romans or anything like that.
@@khanusmagnus577 sometimes things that happen in history, with time become legend, and mythology. Other Caribbean and South American cultures had similar legends. If they were true or not is up to debate.
@@khanusmagnus577 but why did their gods have white skin and beards, if they've never seen a white man before?
Most Romans were shaved *. . .*
@@letoubib21 I had thought about that also, but after 3+ months at sea, with rations running low and just happy to have found land, I can imagine some didn’t mind not shaving, or keeping their beards.
I love the way you approach these themes. Your analysis is really interesting. And I really appreciate how much effort you put into pronouncing the names of the authors well, it’s really polite!
Grazie! Well, perhaps my approach here came off as insufficiently skeptical.
@@polyMATHY_Luke you *do* make it sound like it’s very plausible, when in reality I’d say it’s more of a remote theory. But still, maybe you’re right.
We positively know romans had visited Canary Islands and from there a drifting ship following the Atlantic south stream could have reached the north coast of Brazil. The problem is that ship, due maritime technology at the time, would probably never be even close to making the trip back to Europe
Interesting subject, thank you. Roman pottery and coins have been found in the Canaries, the very same archipeligo from which Colombus sailed from to go to the Caribean. Maybe an old Roman text was found telling of the route in one of the Arab librairies that were overrun in la reconquista. Who knows nice theory though.
Sunflower seeds is the most compelling evidence for me. The terracotta sculptures too
Idk why you're so allied to that pineapple
the sunflower seeds are indisputable evidence imo
Hi, As an Italian I would like to point out how in Italy many figures as Roberto Trizio and other romans-obsessed people are met with skepticism because they are often loosely related with far-right ideologies since fascism highlighted heavily (and superficially) the Roman world
This in itself means very little but it is just to give some context
Davvero? Ma si pensa che Roberto Trizio stesso è così? O solo che ha qualche follower del genere?
Io non conosco bene Roberto Trizio.
Ha mai dato motivo di credere che sia un "nostalgico", a parte la passione per l'antica Roma?
I don't believe that, I sometimes show his video to my students in high school and I never had to worry about the content.
@@happyslapsgiving5421 Io lo conosco pochissimo, ma non credo sia un nostalgico, semplicemente volevo rendere ai non italiani quello che è il ""contesto"" in cui purtroppo una parte della passione per la romanità si muove, ""contesto"" che potrebbe portare magari ad enfatizzare troppo scoperte ancora da chiarire bene, ho trovato davvero poco nel mondo accademico su quanto dice l'autore del libro, ma ammetto che è stato un controllo veloce, dare un giudizio su Trizio o l'autore è al di là dei miei obiettivi e delle mie possibilità
Tu credi veramente le diffamazione della stampa? Fai parte del problema!
There was even earlier possible contact, in the Bronze Age. The Phoenicians were suspected to have mined copper in the Great Lakes.
And you just made that up. Also there is no direct route to the Great Lakes from the Atlantic. Theory fizzled!
@@christianfreedom-seeker934 I did NOT " make that up" and you will notice that I made no claims as to it's validity. However somebody mined a LOT of copper out of at least one island pre-Columbian, more than can be explained by native copper artifacts, which are pretty rare.
This should just be a 1 second video of someone saying "No".
The real question is: why did it take so long to find such a big continent like that? A "new" world compared to other continents yet very mysterious it seems.
Recall that Columbus nearly starved on his journey there, in much more advanced ships.
Underdeveloped nautical technology, it wasn't until the late middle ages that Europe developed ships such as the caravel. Ships of the classical period were designed for the Mediterranean and tended to hug the shore, also they weren't large enough to contain supplies for such a long voyage. The Vikings reached America by island hopping, Iceland to Greenland and then Greenland to America. Also from @ 400-1050 the European economy was too underdeveloped for any significant overseas trade and when overseas trade expanded it focused on the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.
Set sail across the Atlantic with no map and navigation equipment in the kind of boat they had access to back then. Your question will certainly be answered once you're totally lost and dying of scurvy and dehydration.
@@patrickhows1482 Sorry, but it's partly false.
The average Roman cargo ship was some 50% larger than the Santa Maria. The largest ones over 5 times the Santa Maria.
They were ocean worthy, as the 120 Roman ships that each year reached India testify.
@@cronchcrunch What map did the Vikings or Columbus have of America?
And who says the Romans didn't have instruments? Stuff like the Antikythera Mechanism would have allowed excellent navigation.
As for boats, see above.
It's possible that there was some kind of sparse trade going on and travel by happenstance, but I don't think they could navigate reliably that far. It's also possible that maybe trade from Africa was making it across to South America off and on.
What navigation technology did later sailors have that they didn't? 0
@@greggordon680 from the 16th century onwards you get better precision from portuguese vessels. This means both in terms of heading and speed, sailing ships were better able to achieve, maintain and detect changes in their course, meaning the same methods of estimating your movement to apply back in a navigation chart worked better as a consequence.
From the end of the18th century there were a few solutions to the longitude problem comming about in different countries and transatlantic navigation became something else.
Moving across continents through the glacial shelves was always a possiblity to keep a steady route without those improvements mentioned above.
Otherwise, we have to assume there were two ports at the same latitude in both continents and they had large enough ships to carry the food needed regardless of delays.
Even though Amyr Klink managed to cross from Namibia (Africa) to Brazil (South America) in 100 days in 1984 in a powerless rowboat as a proof of concept, he used an oceanic stream to help him along the journey. Finding two of these to allow crossing both ways back then would be a fateful event indeed!
If the polynesians could navigate the oceans without the tools of the age of sail, the Europeans certainly could as well...
@@patnor7354 could in the sense of potential, yes. Any society could have developed general relativity in terms of potential, as the human brain hasn't changed much.
Could in the sense of readily available knowledge or a culture that had the necessary stepping stones in place? Then the answer is no, not realy. Cultura doesn't evolve always the same way in the same order of priorities.
The round trip took Columbus nine months, from west Africa to Brazil would be even less. Trade is responsible for the rest. Ptolemaic coins were found in Queensland, East African coins were found in the north of Australia. Clam shells are found in the desert. Trade is the mover of many goods and ideas.
There have been many unplanned crossings of the Atlantic, generally associated with storm or freak winds. In many cases using craft much smaller than what was available to the Romans and other Mediterranean people. It is certainly a possibility.
i learn alot of stuff here as a history student, you literally change my worldview :) thank you for this, great channel
I'm glad! Keep a skeptical view of this; it all needs better verification.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Hey, Luke!
Yesterday, I wrote quite a long comment under this video about the subject of Atlantic voyages in antiquity, which I think you will find very interesting. Today, I was checking if you had answered but I cannot find my comment anymore. I am almost sure that the comment is now being "held for review" by TH-cam because it contained an external link. Could you please read it (held-for-review comments should be accessible to you anyway, via Creator Studio) and let me know what you think? I would prefer not to write it again from scratch (but I will do if necessary). Thanks!
Thanks to Thor Heyerdahl, we know that ancient egyptians had the means to reach America. We also know the romans sailed to the Canary Islands, which were in later centuries the starting point for the routes to the west due to the atlantic currents.
Visst men norrbaggen hade ju fel, foliehatten!
@@michaelhammar2778 Haha, do you want to call me a tinfoil head for mentioning Thor Heyerdahl? Well, some of his ideas were too farfetched in my opinion. Crossing the atlantic with an old egyptian papyrus ship is still impressiv.
Besides, I don't think there were established trade routes between romans and the new continent. But the What-If point of view is actually good stuff for fantasy stories, I think I will use it in the future.
@@Drachenlabyrinth 👍😀
A very good and persuasive argument. You might also have pointed out the Polynesians at about this same time were traversing the Pacific Ocean in rafts. Their technology was well below that of the Romans, and their ships much less seaworthy, but they managed to do it anyway. It does not at all stretch the imagination to think Romans might have done the same thing, however unwittingly.
At 3 minutes, did this guy just casually reference a Roman shipwreck off the coast of brazil?!?!
10:25 Now, this sounds oddly similar to what That Japanese Man Yuta would say!
I see we share an algorithm lol
In before Yuta covers the idea that Japan discovered North America and influenced tribes linguistically lol
jk
Hola, se sigo desde Costa Rica. Te felicito por tu trabajo; este ha sido fuente de cultura para mi y familia. Me permito sugerir el siguiente video de J. J. Benitez que trata del "Secreto" de Colombo. Habla precisamente de otros europeos en América antes de él. Saludos y felicidades de nuevo.
Saludos. Bibliotecaria acá, con experiencia en investigación bibliográfica histórica.
Los libros de J.J. Benítez se clasifican en ciencia ficción o literatura/ficción, ya que no cumplen con los estándares requeridos para trabajos de historia. Sus libros no se consideran fuente confiable en el estudio histórico.
Le recomendaría que busque el tema de los contactos entre Europa y América previos a Colón en bases de datos de artículos de la especialidad, como Scielo o Dialnet. También en los catálogos en línea de las bibliotecas públicas de su localidad o universitarias que reciban público externo. En ambos casos, los colegas en Referencia lo pueden guiar al mejor material disponible del tema que le interese. ✌
@@MariaMartinez-researcher Estimada doña María, muchas gracias por su gentil sugerencia. Se que los libros de Benítez son de ficción; en mi comentario hice mención de un documental, en TH-cam, donde Benítez en su condición de periodista visita algunas localidades españolas que han documentado la presencia de cultivos originarios de América mucho antes de la visita de Colón. Precisamente por eso me pareció oportuna la recomendación a Luke Ranieri.
th-cam.com/video/gelZ_-EgKDc/w-d-xo.html
@@miguelacuna2496 Excelente. 👍
El secreto eran mapas portugueses pero para hacer la ruta a India
Great sound!
There have been trade secrets held tightly by merchant families since time immemorial. There is evidence for people from Northern Spain fishing cod well in advance of Columbus. The Polo family kept China a family secret after their first return from China to monopolize the trade. In contemporary times we are used to information circulating widely. In the past, information was esoteric. I’d bet on traders with exotic goods marketing Items of American origin in ancient Roman markets.
Very interesting. As a historian I find it highly probable that the Romans reached the Americas by ship. Thor Heyerdahl proved that the ancient Egyptians could have reached the Americas so why not the Romans. Roman coins have been reportedly found in such far away states as Texas and Maine. Who knows if the Romans ever did visit the Americas. It is a very interesting subject though.
Could you tell me more about your work as a historian?
@@polyMATHY_Luke I have a BA in History. I have read about Thor Heyerdahl journeys on both the Atlantic and Pacific. The Romans built trading ships that could carry over 300 tons of cargo. These were much larger ships than the vikings or Christopher Columbus fleet. So the question is obvious. If the Romans could cross the Atlantic (which they easily could) why would they cross the atlantic? Other questions. The Aztecs had toys with wheels but no carts? How come? How did roman coins end up in a mound in North America? How did sun flower seeds end up in the Mediterranean? How did the romans have murals with pineapples and S. American parrots in them? How come people in Pompeii and Herculanium had syphilis a century before the Spanish visited S. America? How did pyramids end up in S. America? The questions go on and on and on.
@@patrickwentz8413 Well, check the Roman "big trading ships". These were built for carrying grain in Mediterranean. Not suitable for long-distance ocean journey. Not only size matters.
Most funny of all your claims are Aztecs wheels. Yes, Aztecs (and Incas) knew the wheel, no doubt. What is the connection to Romans though? Did they trade them that "secret" but didnt sell them the carts with that? In fact, for Aztecs the wheel was useless for anything other than toy. You need some animal to drag the cart. They didn't have that. You need also the flat surface and Incas lacked that.
For Roman coins in America, there isnt any one of them that is not disputed. Just do Google search for some works at Jstor. These are probably souvenirs from 19-20th century.
My money is on Phoenicians. The artifacts could have been Roman booty in Carthage.
@@patrickwentz8413 the pyramid is not that difficult to understand, it's an extremely stable shape. From an engineering viewpoint, if you want tall structures and don't have access to modern building materials, a pyramid is the natural choice.
The pineapple, corn and sunflower might be pretty convincing but inversely I think it’s even more puzzling that if these commodities were that common they should been varieties cultivated in Europe to have survived up until today if not at least recent history… If our only references date from a specific time period and then end we might have to look elsewhere for answers. Still it’s really puzzling
If there was only a small amount of pineapples, sunfloweres ect transported (which seems reasonable that there wern't massive trage operations going on) that would be part of the reason they didn't survive in Europe, they simple lacked the genetic diversity for a sustained population.
The maize/corn is actually a description of sorghum, and the pineapple is a pine cone or another similar pine nut.
The only strange one is the sunflower seeds.
It is an interesting topic. There is another interesting Italian book discussing this themes, especially focusing on the Phoenician and Greek maritime knowledge. It's "L'America dimenticata. I rapporti tra le civiltà e un errore di Tolomeo" byLucio Russo. I found it interesting and not too pushy on the subject.
There is an island in the Great Lakes, that was mined out in prehistoric times of numerous tons of copper. This copper does not seem to be used locally. In the Bronze age, the sources for Tin are known, but not copper. I’m curious if the copper from America made its way to Europe and Asia.
Other way around: the sources of Bronze Age copper are known, but not tin.
Trade was possible, even probable. The locations of the trading places were most likely a state secret, like Venetian lace making, and death would come to those who tried to take it. This would have been the case throughout history, resources and technology are power, and in those days (and in ours still) not to be shared.
Yes! Another example would be cinnamon. Traded by ship all the way from Sri Lanka and china, and this was done around 2000 BC. No one in the Mediterranean knew where it came despite many attempts because the merchants who acquired it kept it secret.
What about Arabian Peninsula? Romans owned it and they could have access to commerce with India. And India may have had trade with people in the far east.
@@MrZxcvbnm22 Yes, and on and on. I know a guy who sailed alone to Hawaii on a 23ft boat. Our ancestors were braver and far more adventurous.. There was global trade but the information was held by tribes and families and if the few who held the secrets died, by war, disease et al, then so did the secrets. Archimedes was one powerful individual which is why the Romans wanted him alive and why his death echo's today.
@@MrZxcvbnm22 it wasn't until around the 1200's or 1300's that the Italians finally found out where cinnamon came from.
Man your voice is so soothing
I think you pretty much nailed it; contact was probably scant because of the long voyage, and they also probably reckoned they were on the opposite coast of India, as opposed to a new continent entirely. So, it probably wasn't considered 'mainstream' news in it's time, so to speak.