Inscriptions and carvings, supposed Phoenician or not, are almost always so brief and usually so questionable as to be unacceptable as dependable evidence of the presence of early explorers. No inscription of any Old World language in the New World, before 1492, is accepted by the majority of scholars today. Indeed, to give credence to any such inscription is, in the eyes of some, evidence of being ignorant. (1) Yet, some inscriptions, some stories, are fun to consider. They lead to interesting stories, whether one particular interpretation is taken as true nor not.

Seminole Canyon, Seminole Canyon State Park, Val Verde County. The overhangs of the canyon, that drains into the Rio Grande at Amistad Reservoir, are locations of many rock paintings and markings. Almost all are Native American in origin. Photographs courtesy of Two Dog Woman Graphics

And there the story should stop, but for the coincidence one researcher suggested (the records have never been confirmed) with an Italian sculptor called “Coni” who left the Mediterranean world in 1165 for parts unknown and did not return. (2) And there the story really does stop.

Naturally, this is a coincidence of name. It is the type of evidence that isn’t. And there are other mysterious carvings like this in Texas—such as the stone head found near Schulenburg decades ago—but they are unsigned and are surely only reminders that novice stonecutters needed practice.

These are instances of things found without any other records concerning them and with no associated evidence of where they came from. They are items without provenance—not found buried in datable sites nor capable of being independently dated by methods known at present. Some inscriptions, however, appear in groups, a factor that is occasionally counted as a kind of evidence.

North of the Red River, in Oklahoma, a bewildering array of short inscriptions has been found. Many stones examined by Gloria Farley of Heavener are thought to bear traces of Phoenicians or Libyans who visited and perhaps settled the land more than two thousand years ago. (3) Such thinking is again the belief of very few people.

Whether these Mediterranean peoples might have been near the Red River at that time is absolutely unknown. If they were there, what they were doing is not strange at all: exploring and planting colonies as they did on unknown African shores. Some of the inscriptions have been deciphered as Punic, the language of the Cadiz Phoenicians; and Ogham, a script of the European Celts; or Libyan boundary markers. If found elsewhere in the world, they would cause no raised eyebrows. Since related items include Carthaginian coins, a carved female figure identified as the Phoenician goddess Tanit, and a transcription of Pharoah Akhenaten’s Hymn to the Sun—and since these items relate to the history of two thousand and more years ago—eyebrows are raised indeed, most of them skeptically.

Yet the items do not appear to be part of a recently lost collection and are at least interesting, although there is no further evidence of authenticity. (4) Most scholars dismiss the finds as a hoax or as terribly misguided readings of unknown marks on rocks. The most liberal theories hold that these eastern Mediterranean peoples voyaged across the Atlantic, entered the Gulf of Mexico, and made their way up the Mississippi and Red rivers. The most conservative opinions are that the marks are those of recent settlers or accidental scratchings and that the translators of the marks are simply fools.

And marks can be misread.

Pictograph in Cave at Seminole Canyon Photograph by John B. Adams

Paintings and etchings on rocks (pictographs and petroglyphs) in Texas have excited the curiosity of many. Existing mainly in the drier climate of West Texas where rock overhangs and ledges provide convenient surfaces, the paintings and carvings depict events, religious ceremonies, hunting records, climate, and a variety of things only guessed at today. Their ages are not accurately placed. (5) And they are all presumably the work of Native Americans.

However, some of the designs could be from other hands or by Indians who had seen non-Indian things. And any picture can always be misinterpreted by an ignorant viewer. There is one possible representation of a Phoenician craft with raised, protected gunwales (6); lines that can be read as European Ogham script, but which are probably not (7); engravings which could be read as runes, but are usually interpreted as native “tally marks” (8); and some miscellaneous markings which seem translatable.

The most well known in the latter category is an inscription on the Rio Grande which has been read as a message in Libyan and Ogham attesting to a crew that took shelter under the rock overhang during a trip from the Mediterranean area about 800 B.C.E. (9)

Likewise, an alleged Ogham inscription in Stephens County has been claimed to be of Celtic origin, many centuries old, and to indicate a camping place arranged with the permission of the natives. (10)

All of these interpretations are simply sources of derision to most people.

Scores of rock overhangs still may contain messages, although today some of the writing is under the waters of modern Amistad Reservoir. The route up (or down) the Rio Grande is a logical one for exploration. One of the most common sailing routes from Europe—used by Columbus—drops down south in the Atlantic into the winds leading into the Caribbean. Once there, the route leads between Yucután and Cuba, then into harbors like Veracruz or to the major rivers: Pánuco, Río Grande, Mississippi.

And some stories attest that such a Caribbean route was followed—at times accidentally—to the New World before the modern era. One of the most interesting, recorded by Pausanias, concerns the Greeks. (11) He tells the story of a shipload of Greeks who sailed out into the Atlantic more than two thousand years ago. Caught in a storm, they were blown far to the west, where they sailed among islands of large size. On one of these they were surprised by the sudden appearance of men dressed only in tails similar to horses. These men naturally reminded the Greeks of their tradition of satyrs.

Greek trader Institute of Texan Cultures, 74-270

These strange natives immediately saw women aboard the ship. Pausanias does not state whether these women were passengers or servants. The “satyrs,” without uttering a sound, swarmed up to the ship and attempted to carry off the women.

Exactly how they did this, Pausanias does not make clear, but the effort was enough to scare the Greek sailors. Without further ado, they simply shoved a “barbarian” woman overboard onto the island and made good their escape while the “satyrs” outraged the woman in a variety of ways amazing even to the sophisticated Greeks.

In this case at least, it was the navigator who brought the story back to Greece. Euphemus was obviously watching more than the position of the sun and the coastline during the affray, but he lived up to his name by avoiding most of the unpleasant details of the story.

An interesting fact is that such a costume, a tail, was recorded in the later years of Spanish exploration in the Caribbean. Some writers cite natives attired with detachable horse-like tails, who were noted for satyr-like actions. (12)

But if travelers left any Greek inscriptions on Texas rocks, they are yet to be found.(13)

Stories about the Romans are cited also, although most of them concern early Christian Romans who chose to leave the empire. The Romans were aware of lands to the west; at least references are found in the literature. Plutarch, in the first century C.E., wrote of a continent a thousand miles or so to the west of Britain. (14) Men had visited the place, the Greeks had put a colony there, and it was quite possible to sail there. So he claimed. The account, laced with gods in residence and unlikely geography, nevertheless contains what may be evidence of an actual visit. The all-night summer twilight of northern lands is recorded, for example.

In C.E. 64, during the reign of the Emperor Nero, a great fire swept Rome. Although it almost died out a couple of times, it was kept going by agents of someone. Political rumor held that Nero himself wanted to burn the city so he could build anew in his own honor. Scapegoats had to be found.

The people who were eventually blamed were persecuted, but some managed to escape. And some who managed to escape were said to have gone far beyond the empire, to the west. Likewise, later, other Roman citizens had reason to leave. A few early Christians, infrequently but directly persecuted, were said to have left. And Rome, through the early fifth century, was strong in terms of trade. Most trade goods went or came east from Egypt and India and China, but some may have gone west. (15)

Roman merchant ship Institute of Texan Cultures, 74-271

In the Americas some evidence has come to light that would indicate accidental contact, not deliberate trade. A small terra-cotta head, identified as Roman, was found recently under undisturbed pre-Columbian pyramid paving in Mexico. (16) Evidence of ironworking has been found in Virginia, along with related artifacts that could be Roman, near the Roanoke River (17). Parallel ironworking sites have been claimed in Ohio that could be a thousand years old. (18) And apparent evidence of a Roman colony called Terra Calalus has been found in the vicinity of Tucson, Arizona. (19) The latter, labeled as a complete fraud by many investigators, is said to have been a colony of some seven hundred Romans who, after sailing through the Pillars of Hercules, were blown far across the sea. According to an inscription found at the site, they sailed for a long time to a new land. They landed and walked northwest through a wild and new countryside to a desert. This route would be across Texas, which is in accord with the idea that Texas is an eternal crossroads.

Romantic drawing of Roman galleys in harbor, set for sail Institute of Texan Cultures, 80-547

With such controversy, no proof is possible. Most scholars would say no serious consideration is required.

In Texas one unusual find concerns a coin—a Roman follis, minted in London in C.E. 313-314, and found in an Indian mound presumably undisturbed for at least the last nine hundred years. (20) The find is already called a “known and admitted hoax” by some investigators. Not by others. But even if such a find were genuine, it would actually have little significance.

Such a coin by itself would not indicate Roman-Native American trade or contact. It would not prove a band of wandering Roman colonists. Such a coin could have been found in the wreckage of a ship blown across the Atlantic—or the Pacific—and passed from hand to hand as a curiosity. A very possible shipwreck could have brought details of material culture from afar but otherwise have had no real effect on Native American culture.

Most finds of ancient coins in the Americas were certainly lost by later collectors. (21) A single coin found in an undisturbed native mound would be hard to explain, but in itself would lack archaeological significance.

And not a few curious things in Texas rise to the level of the fantastic and remain fun. Several peculiar “giant man tracks” are found in limestone rock, exposed by rivers—rock far too old for contemporary theories of the development of humans. (22)

One of the well-preserved series of footprints is in the bedrock of the Paluxy River in Somerville County. They are next to well-preserved tracks of a trachodon of the Mesozoic Era—thought to be much too early for the existence of any human-like animal. The humanoid tracks, all about twenty-one inches long, have a stride of seven feet, easily twice that of modern humans. Dr. Bull Adams, familiar with the dinosaur tracks of the Glen Rose area, argued in an earlier day that the humanlike tracks were those of a giant sloth. Later commentators attribute the marks to an unknown reptile. Others, such as Dr. C.N. Dougherty, call attention to the perfect form of the footprints, which would never be questioned if they were not so large and not preserved in limestone—limestone seventy million years old. (23)

Followers of certain strong religious beliefs have happily used the tracks as examples of humans at the start of the world, just as God made them. In answer, others have given assurance that they are not “man” tracks at all, but female ones—the prints of early “Amazons” or even the Goddess of Old Europe after she fled Christian invasion.

And these are stories for late-night campfires.

But aside from fossil footprints and myth, marks on rocks are interesting in two ways. First, their very existence is curious. There are strange and unexplained inscriptions in Texas which are either the messages or graffiti of earlier explorers, or the occasional occupation of recent travelers with a flair for old languages, or planned frauds, or coincidences.

Second, varying interpretations, even involving misreading, is interesting. The existence of several interpretations depending on a single set of data is a human trait. Occasionally, the least likely will win out. And even authentic inscriptions are often difficult or impossible to date and can mean, literally, different things. And chance markings can be misleading, and genuine inscriptions can remain unrecognized. (24)

Ambiguous, or multiple, interpretation of data is an interesting facet of human understanding. Such possibility is significant in human experience from fields such as information theory to forms of art. It is of critical concern when dealing with fragmentary data. One of the dependable tenets of western epistemology is that among multiple, possible interpretations, all things being otherwise equal, one should choose the more simple.