Chapter One Notes:

(1) Or Shan-hai-king (Leland) or Shan Hai Ching (Shao), etc. A transliteration of is, like all such, actually impossible. The word forms in the Roman alphabet used in this text, although they represent inconsistencies even in the use of the hyphen, reflect the most common, older forms used in the indices of the major references-most commonly the Wade-Giles system. But times are changing. Peking is already Beijing; Fa Hsien becomes Faxian; Shan Hai King becomes Shanhai Jing; but Fu Sang seems to shift only to Fusang (see Fang Zhongpu or Luo Rongqu).

(2) See the general Chinese references, note 11; for climate, see McGregor, Jannings, Wendorf, Bryant, Schoenwetter, and Flint; for methods of writing, see Loewe, “Wooden and Bamboo Strips,” 13, and Young, 27. Ink sticks, brushes, even the strip notebooks may be anachronistic. Scholars do not agree. The National Palace Museum, Taipei, dates ink and brushes before 1100 B.C.E. Western references (Lowe, for example) say brushes do not date before 201 B.C.E.

(3) Vining, 669 (quoting de Rosny from La Civilisation Japonaise, Paris, 1883).

(4) Vining, 643, 669. See also note 9.

(5) Vining, 451-52, for a discussion of other “errors” in European accounts. The most obvious reason for accepting a lapse of truth or supernatural content is secondary support for most of the source. When this happens, reasons for the lapse are usually sought, rather than rejecting the entire source.

(6) If one accepts the list of earlier rulers . . . see the comments of M. Bazin Sr. in an article from the Journal Asiatique reprinted in Vining, 670f, which summarizes earlier accounts.

(7) Leland, 12.

(8) Chang, passim; Creel, passim.

(9) Fang Zhongpu citing his own opinions and those of Jia Lanpo and Frost.

(10) Fang Zhongpu, 66, believes in their authenticity. For the other side of the story, see the examinations by Frost and Luo Rongqu. Although resembling older “oriental” ship anchors, the Palos Verdes stones are almost certainly not.

(11) General statements on Chinese history are based on Ho, Chang, Needham, Watson, Dun J. Li, Creel, Hopkins, and Breuer. See the excellent book-length entry in the Macropædia of the recent edition of The New Encyclopædia Britannica. See Chang, Shang Civilization, particularly for the advances in dating.

(12) Vining, 669, discusses this (quoting from the Catalogue des Livres Chinois, Paris, 1873).

(13) See Appendix 1 for the text; the li is perhaps about 1/3 mile, 486 yards (Quatrefages, 203).

(14) Vining, 670f; Mertz, passim.

(15) The translation of T'ai as “bald” is questionable. The speculation used here is largely that of Vining with help from Dr. Roger Bailey, San Antonio College, San Antonio. Vining's citation is Williams's dictionary, which does not give “bald” as a translation, but does give “slippery” and “smooth” as possible readings. The character can also be read as “large” or “extensive” (Wieger, 643). The etymology of the character T'ai seems to be water held inside of both hands with “great” added. This would be slippery indeed. Some rocks in the Davis Mountains are very slippery after a sudden rain, but this seems to be going too far afield. Perhaps it is best to stay with Vining's interpretation that the intended meaning is a smooth, bare, slippery mountain, analogic to “bald” as used geographically in the west. See Williams's dictionary, 848, 991, 962, lxxiv, and lxxi (1874 edition).

(16) Author's field work; Johnson and Maxwell, passim; Mertz, passim.

(17) Mertz, passim; U.S. Army maps; USGS topographic maps; author's field work.

(18) Mertz, 112.

(19) Mackenzie, passim.

(20) Vining, 193. On mounds, see Silverberg, passim. But the mounds-more than likely indigenous or influenced by central American ideas-have been attributed to everyone from pre-Christian Danes who wandered south to become Toltecs (Barton as quoted in Silverberg, 30f) to extraterrestrials.

(21) Creel, 46, discusses origin of blades in China; Krieger as quoted by Mertz, 99.

(22) Li, Chi, 31.

(23) Mackenzie, passim.

(24) Vining, 184.

(25) Epstein, passim, on the nature of evidence not only concerning coins but also the conditions under which coins are lost.

(26) Note how the stories creep into the contemporary press, e.g., Noorbergen. See also Riley, sec. 15: 293, on “Pre-Columbian Contacts.”

(27) Or Hui Shen, Huishen, etc.; see note 1. His monastic name may have been Huiji (Fang Zhongpu, 65).

(28) From the Liang-shu; see Hwui Shan and Vining in the bibliography.

(29) The text speaks also of Hwui Shan as being from Fu Sang, but this reference does not imply he was a native of the New World.

(30) Vining, 448, for a further discussion.

(31) Shao, 6.

(32) Vining, passim, for the best summary; supporters are Leland and Mertz, examples of opponents of writers like Mertz are Shao and Wauchope (102, especially); Henning, 34-41.

(33) McGregor, passim.

(34) For a compilation, though not to the Americas, see Mills (particularly his preface-bibliography, 3-4); Chapman, 21-30. For an earlier, general reference to the area, see Coxe.

(35) Bancroft, vol. V, 51-53; Beazley, 502; Davies, 112.

(36) Vining, 81.

(37) Heine-Geldern, “The Problem of Transpacific Influences,” 278; see also Waters, 116; Mackenzie and Shao passim.

(38) Gomara, saying that ships laden with merchandise-and strange to the Spanish-were seen off California (Quatrefages, 205).

(39) Meggers, “Early Formative Period,” passim; Lommel, 74, 137.

(40) Shao, passim.

(41) Heine-Geldern, “The Problem of Transpacific Influence,” 293, and Shao, passim.

(42) Meggers, Prehistoric America, 66f.

(43) Beazley, 468; Shao, 10.

(44) Giles, introduction; Leowe, “Spices and Silk,” passim, for other aspects of trade.

(45) Kennedy, 219f.

(46) Beazley, 475f.

(47) Beazley, 472; Needham, sec. 7, “Travel of Ideas and Techniques,” 176-80, 206-11, 223-25.

(48) Giles, passim; Beazley, 479; Legge, passim.

(49) Beazley, 486.

(50) Larson, 109.

(51) Meggers, Prehistoric America, 4-5; Gladwin, passim.

(52) The anthropological “schools” of “independent invention” and “contact” theories of cultural advance (parallel evolution and diffusion) have argued the point for generations. See Taylor, Morgan, Boas, Schmidt, and Lowie.

(53) Davies, 103f.

Chapter Two Notes:

(1) Definitions of truth and validity have shifted over the years nearly as much as historical interpretation. No one definition fits all. Thank goodness. Think how boring it would be if everything could be run through a formula.

Still, methods of thinking that distinguish verification from something like belief are useful. Logic and the nature of proof, the balance of reason and intuition, have been considerations since the earliest recorded utterances of humans. This text is a colloquial examination of logic; it mixes some terms and quantifies none to the satisfaction of all logicians.

The literatures of epistemology, the philosophy of history, historiography, logic, and the character of language are now almost endless. The following books are a good few with which to begin (and from which much of this section is drawn): Ayer, Language, Truth & Logic; Barzun, The Modern Researcher; Carr, What Is History?; Gottschalk, Understanding History; and Walsh, Philosophy of History. Walsh and Carr are good beginnings; Gottschalk and Barzun are practical handbooks; and Ayer gives a most incisive analysis of language, truth, and logic-exactly as his title indicates.

Epstein's “Pre-Columbian Old World Coins” is a good example of the handling of data. For fun, see Lamb's “Science by Litigation.” Concerning the phenomenon of “cult” science, see Cole.

The question of what evidence is admissible in scientific reasoning is quite heated in some areas, e.g., archeology, education, even history on occasion. Charles J. Cazeau and Stuart D. Scott Jr. in Exploring the Unknown examine the “pseudoscientist” and provide a good discussion of the scientific method-with examples. They include a section on “ancient mariners” (21f).

William Sims Bainbridge's “Chariots of the Gullible” is a statistical look at von Daniken believers in extra terrestrials as well as a good comment on who is likely to believe what. For another side of things, see Fell and Totten.

Always remember that more people read the National Enquirer than the Skeptical Inquirer.

(2) For a wonderful discussion of the relation of all human knowledge see Consilience by Edward O. Wilson (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1998 and Vitage Books Edition, 1999).

One of the best works on "scientific" doubt and certainty is Richard P. Feynman's The Meaining of it All (Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1998).

And for one of the best examinations of clear thinking, read Beyond Feelings: a guide to critical thinking by Vincent Ryan Ruggiero (Mayfield Publishing Company, California, Fourth Edition, 1995).

Chapter Three Notes:

(1) Bancroft, vol. V, “The Native Races,” 134-35

(2) Ibid., 153.

(3) Ibid., 154.

(4) Ibid., 154-55.

(5) For secondary collections, see Fiske, Boland, Fell, Crone, Gordon, McKern, Weuchope, Trento, Cohen, Riley, and Marschall.

(6) Benitez, 1-14; “Ancient Explorers,” by J.V. Luce in Ashe, 53f; Plato's Timaeus and Critias present not only the Atlantis myth but also the former speaks of the continent to the far west; Herrmann, 156-62.

(7) As an example, see Plutarch (Goodwin's translation, Loeb), vol. V.

(8) Ashe, 15-21.

(9) Crone, 2.

(10) The “common people” did indeed see maps-in churches, for example; see Crone, 2-3.

(11) Diodorus (Oldfather translation, Loeb, 19), I. V. 19; Crone, 3.

(12) And she was also mapping. Only one traditional story has her accompanying the voyagers a part of the way. Marx, “Egyptian Shipping,” passim; Anon., “The Queen Who Would Be Different” (a romanticized version, but fun); Ashe, 71; Robins; and Sølver, “Egyptian Shipping of about 1500 B.C.”-by far the best.

(13) Benitez, chap. I, for a romantic picture of exploring and the dependence of exploration on myth. And, at present, there is apparently no longer any question that there have been ships capable of sailing oceans for at least forty-five hundred years or that they could sail to windward. See Verwey on the last point, who quotes Aristotle's Mechanica, 8.

(14) Al-Idrisi, passim; Galvano (Galvão), passim; Morison, Portuguese; Riley, eds., particularly sec. 14, 274.

(15) Herodotus, iv. 41.

(16) Babcock, 1-10; King, 38-40; Herodotus, i. In spite of numerous stories, the Carthaginians, at least in literature, held that no one had taken a ship across the Atlantic. But perhaps they were hiding a secret. See Heeren, i., 178.

(17) Crone, 8.

(18) The peculiarities on some maps had very specific purposes, such as political display. Herodotus, v., 49; Cassidy, 37-39; Babcock, Harrisse, and Brown, passim.

(19) Among map decorations, the wind roses were perhaps the most helpful. These were eight- and sixteen-pointed designs that set the style for compass cards. Often highly colored, they radiated a set of lines over the chart surface before latitude and longitude were common. Of more use to mariners who navigated by dead reckoning, the lines were mildly useful for estimating compass bearings.

(20) Morison, Portuguese, 18; Collier, passim.

Chapter Four Notes:

(1) Anon., “Was Hanno Discoverer”; Boland, They All Discovered America; Johnston, passim.

(2) Strabo (Loeb, I, 9 and I, 177), I.1.6 and I.3.2.

(3) Herodotus, i. 1 and iii, 113.

(4) General: Moscati, Herm, passim. Herodotus, Diodorus, and Strabo along with the Old Testament are some of the older secondary references. The Loeb edition is well indexed, and the later references provide subject citations to general Mediterranean history.

(5) Diodorus (Oldfather translation, Loeb, I: 145f), v. 19-20; Kan, “De Periplous”; for the ships, see Anderson, Romola, and Harden.

(6) Herodotus, i. 5.

(7) Todd, “Cats and Commerce.”

(8) See Appendix 2. <<better yet, attach as a pop-up here>>

It is notable that the Greeks were fond of pointing out that not all women aboard Phoenician ships were there by choice. The Phoenicians (and others of the eastern Mediterranean) did not strictly refute this statement but did claim that most women in whatever category were loath to leave once aboard.

(9) Herodotus, v. 58.

(10) Herodotus, iii. 136.

(11) For supposed Phoenician finds on the east coast of the United States, see Lossing, 632-35; Boland, passim.

(12) But see Johnston for a defense of their discovery of the Americas-from the west; Mallery, 211f.

(13) Herrmann, 211f.

(14) Williams and Pepper, 22-26. For an alleged transcription, see Perkins, passim, who maintains the writer was Greek. Recent, perhaps more scholarly, comment can be found in the Occasional Publications of the Epigraphic Society: “The Los Lunas Inscription,” vol. 10, no. 237; “The Los Lunas Stone,” vol. 10, no. 238; and “A Decipherment of the Los Lunas Decalogue Inscription,” vol. 10, no. 239. Los Lunas, from which the New Mexico inscription takes its name, is a small town on the Rio Grande, some eighteen miles south of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

(15) McGee, passim.

(16) The Rio Grande (from at least the Big Bend area south to Ciudad Acuña) is bordered by a number of hot springs, arising from some geologically unspecified source, many large enough to accommodate a party of fifteen or so, others only large enough for two tired feet.

(17) Fell, personal communication with author; also Saga America, 164-65.

Chapter Five Notes:

(1) Cole, all articles cited.

(2) Such was the local story told in the past, personal correspondence, Jim Wheelis, 1968.

(3) Fell, passim; Farley, personal correspondence with author.

(4) Fleming, 16.

(5) Those with Puebloan influence are tentatively dated from C.E. 900 to 1500 and are thus considered relatively recent. Kirkland and Newcomb, 217.

(6) Pecos River cave 1, Kirkland and Newcomb, 76.

(7) Panther Cave, author's examination; Kirkland and Newcomb, 66; and Lehmann Rock Shelter, Kirkland and Newcomb, 159. The question of misreading brief inscriptions is a thorny question. Ogham is one of the hardest since when written it may phonetically express many languages. Some markings, demonstrably not Ogham, can be read as Ogham. Thus, authenticity sometimes depends on where something is found, not what is written. See, in addition to Fell's America B.C., Greene, Kelly, and Fraser.

(8) Paint Rock site and Panther Cave, author's field work; also examples in Kirkland and Newcomb, 62.

(9) Fell, America B.C., 185.

(10) Fell, “Stephens County,” 107.

(11) Pausanias, 1, 23.5-6; and there are even stories of the Phoenicians and Greeks approaching the Americas from the Pacific side, Gladwin, passim; and note the enthusiastic support by Texas Greeks, in Anon., “Greeks First to Discover America.”

(12) Hyde, 162; Lafitau, I:105; I:1-2, 31f.

(13) Although rumors do exist of “Greek” inscriptions-author's field work and interviews in Pine Springs and Marathon, Texas.

(14) Plutarch, “Of the Face Appearing within the Orb of the Moon,” Plutarch's Morals, 281f. The distance given is five days' sail plus five thousand stadia.

(15) Heine-Geldern, 118.

(16) Ibid, 117.

(17) Boland, 47f.

(18) Mallery, passim.

(19) Williams and Pepper, 13f; Covey, passim.

(20) Watkins, passim; Epstein, passim.

(21) Epstein, passim.

(22) Tolbert, “Track of Man-like Giant.”

(23) Dougherty, passim.

(24) Indeed, it is more than just a matter of humor perhaps that a recent computerized bill received from a leading gasoline credit company bore strange marks curiously like written Ogham down one side. This accidental Ogham could be phonetically transcribed to make good nonsense statements including one rather ribald comment about a goddess. If this had been cut in rock, it might have been taken as a message done some centuries ago.

Chapter Six Notes:

(1) Ignatius Donnelly, in his Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, says that (in the 1880's) there were over five thousand works concerning Atlantis in twenty languages. Probably twice this number exist today. They include ideas as specific as the supposed similarity between Atlantis's presumed capital city and the Cortés map of Mexico-Tenochtitlán (Spence, The Problem of Atlantis) to the general speculation that the southeast United States is actually Atlantis, mostly still high and dry (Mertz, Atlantis, Dwelling Place of the Gods). A tie to Texas is possible, but remote: Donnelly claims that Atlanteans “populated the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.”

(2) Ashe, 9: Silverberg, 88-96.

Chapter Seven Notes:

(1) See Ashe, 21-47; Chapman and Severin are the most liberal interpreters of the voyage.

(2) The western “Great Ireland” or “white men's island” is mentioned in the Landnamabok, the Saga of Erik the Red, and in the Eyrbyggia Saga as well as in the works of Al-Idrisi, the Arab geographer. Unlike some references in these works, “Great Ireland” appears to refer to a literal continent somewhere west. Whether it was a land settled by the Irish, or occasioned by Irish monks, or pure fiction is unknown. The thread of reference runs through many a record. See also Crone, 10f. For the Brendan manuscript and comments on his life and the propensities of Irish churchmen, see Selmer, Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis.

(3) Severin, passim; for the boat construction, 27f. For the history of the somewhat related coracles, see Hornell.

(4) Irish writers were also aware of the classical Greek and Latin references to western worlds.

(5) Interpreted by some (Crone, 16) as water in a Norwegian fiord, however.

(6) Ashe, 39-40.

(7) Pohl, 261, for a summary of this voyage; see text chapter 8.

(8) Other early English explorations or claims include the journeys of Thomas Croft to North America in 1481 (Quinn, 278) and the better-known John Cabot in 1497 and 1498 (Hartwig, 335). These, however interesting and early, have little to do with the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean exploration. See also Eden's The First Three English Books on America.

(9) Deacon, passim.

(10) Powel, 226 and 193f.

(11) Southey, Madoc, or Fitzgerald, ed. In Fitzgerald's edition, the work runs a turgid one hundred forty-eight pages.

(12) Powel, 222f.

(13) Ibid, 228.

(14) Ibid, 229.

(15) Hakluyt picked up his entry almost entirely from Powel but changed the “Mexico” reference to “West Indies.”

(16) Hakluyt, in the “Third and Last Volume” of the Principall Navigations, 133-35 in the convenient Glasgow edition of 1904.

(17) If all this sounds unlikely, it is. The English traded with the Spanish (illegally, of course) as well as making Spanish ships the subject of plunder. However, any port in a storm, as the old saying goes, was occasionally true. Actually, the English were not entirely without resources. Hawkins notes that they had three hostage ships and passengers which they planned to exchange for food and time to make repairs. It was nevertheless a perhaps brave and somewhat reckless move. Trouble developed after the arrival of the Spanish fleet, and a fight started later.

(18) Miles Philips in Hakluyt's Principall Navigations.

(19) Hakluyt, Principall Navigations, 560.

(20) Deacon, 66.

(21) Deacon gives a collection of the stories, as well as a fine outline of the controversy. See also the collected documents by Burden which do support the existence of spoken Welsh, or something very like it, among Native Americans in the eighteenth century.

(22) Deacon, 207f.

(23) Few English were aware of the walk of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, whose account was published in 1542

Chapter Eight Notes:

(1) Jones, for a good general history.

(2) For a close translation of the sagas, see Anderson's The Flatey Book. On later charts, see Kohl. See Pohl, 238f, for the questionable North American artifacts and 299 for a Norse chronology. Wallace, 155f, gives evidence that the North American artifacts are not authentic.

(3) Or 985 or 987. See Taylor, 253; Mowat, 873.

(4) Bruun, Mowat, passim; Pohl, 276f.

(5) The Norse sagas are available today in many translations such as the admirable Penguin series, but see The Flatey Book for facsimiles of the Flatey manuscript, the Hauksbook, the Saga of Erik the Red, and the Vatican manuscripts; Mallery, 60f; Jones, 255; and Mowat, passim.

(6) Bolton, Terra Nova, 46; Ingstad, 88; Schmidt, 276, 283.

(7) Bolton, Terra Nova, 33, gives a good summary; see also Pohl, 308, for a list of Vinland localities, according to about fifty authorities, ranging from Greenland itself to Florida.

(8) Pistilli, Holland, Pohl, Bruun, Fischer, and Jones.

(9) Tornöe gives a mariner's estimate of the ships, warships and merchants, saying that a square-rigged vessel could sail two hundred miles a day and operate at fair angles into the wind. See Sølver for Viking navigation.

(10) One source for the rewritten story is Herrmann, 165f.

(11) Landsverk, Farley, passim. See also Pohl, Atlantic, 45f. Wyckoff, state archaeologist for Oklahoma in 1971, gives facts on both sides and states his opinion that Viking presence in Oklahoma is “premature and unjustified” as a finding.

(12) Long, passim, quotes an Oklahoma City man, Lester Shipley, who said he carved most of the stones about 1937. He did not do the Heavener stone (although he said he saw someone working on it), which was observed much earlier. See Farley, passim.

(13) Then there is the ephemeral story of the “Viking Boot” discovered in Montague County-a semi-fossilized boot with a leg and heel bone protruding from within. (McGee, “Runestones,” 65-66.) Whether the boot was Norse, or even a boot, was not determined.

(14) See Krause, 71, 74; cf. Kirkland, 84, 141, 152.

(15) Whipple, 37-38; Kirkland, 205. The observer noted that the series of paintings containing the ship were “dim, and many of the details obliterated, giving room for Imagination to fill up the details to her own satisfaction.”

(16) Richardson, referring to Cleng Peerson, and in fact relating him to Erik the Red, called the “first Norse immigration agent for America,” 1. The memories persist.

(17) Anon., “Visit of the Vikings,” 515

Chapter Nine Notes:

(1) Van Sertima, passim. Chapter 3 of Van Sertima's book is his narrative treatment of Abubakari's story. But the dates and even the name of the ruler are in question. The best reference (Al 'Omari) does not give the name of the mariner king and does not connect the name of Abubakari with a voyage. The mariner is known as Kankan Musa's predecessor (also Davidson, 74). “Abubakari” is simply an honorific title.

This section is based on Van Sertima to some degree but directly on Al 'Omari's Masalik Al-Absar; Henning, Eines Neger-Sultans, passim; and Davidson, 73-75, 89-95.

The medieval Mali kingdom, largely Moslem in faith, is best known for the ruler after “Abubakari,” one Mansa Musa who took the throne sometime between 1307 and 1311. Considerable division of opinion about the actual year exists (Davidson, 90f). The kingdom itself, a Mandingo state known as Melle or Mali, was traditionally founded in 1213, almost two centuries after the Almoravid (reform Moslem) expansions south had brought Islam, trade, conquest, and Arabic to trans-Sahara Africa.

The initial date of the university at Timbuktu is not known, but it existed throughout much of the Mali kingdom. Its existence, and the presence of many learned scholars in town, gives rise to a curiosity. Timbuktu, of course, was a merchant city of spectacular trade goods. European glass and sword blades, North African copper and salt, moved south; slaves, beautiful or strong, and gold moved north. In spite of this, Leo Africans curiously noted that the trade in manuscript books was more profitable than any other product (Davidson, 93).

Leo Africans wrote a couple of centuries after the founding of Songhay-the next kingdom, but he also referred to earlier trade under Mali kings. Whether he meant profit in terms of unit items or absolute value is not known. The importance of such learned trade was direct upon the history of the New World. It is probable that any geographical knowledge of continents to the west across the ocean gained by African sailors might have come to the attention of people in Spain or Portugal (Davidson, 72f). The hints of the coasts of the New World and Gulf of Mexico that appear on some European maps before any known European sailors visited there may be shadows of Arabic manuscripts taken to Spain by the Moslems. Since the Spanish were efficient in burning Arabic manuscripts after the expulsion of the Moors, all traces of this connection may be destroyed. As a sad example, Cardinal Ximenes destroyed some eighty-four thousand Arabic documents in the public squares of Granada (Jeffreys, Pre-Columbian, 26).

(2) See, however, the opinion of Al-Masudi who, although knowing the shape of the earth before C.E. 956, thought that the Green Sea of Darkness was impassable (Bovill, 61, and Hennig, “Arabische,” passim).

(3) Davidson, 74. See also Jeffreys [Jeffreis] in Scientia, 207.

(4) Al 'Omari, 69.

(5) Robinson, 16; this writer follows the usual “It has been proven beyond all doubt . . .” and “This remarkable information has been known for a number of years by the close inner circle of archaeologists and anthropologists who have been very reluctant to divulge it.” Concerning such phrases, see Cole, passim.

(6) The cattie is a unit of weight of about one and a half pounds.

(7) An alternate, plausible reading is given by Hui-Lin Li, 115 (cited below as Li), who suggests (following Dr. Lien-sheng Yang) that the reference could be to the increasing length of a sundial shadow.

(8) Mostly from Hirth and Rockhill, 142-43, and Li, 114-15.

(9) Hirth and Rockhill, passim.

(10) Li, 115.

(11) Li has made the only earlier guesses, 123.

(12) Li, 116; Hirth and Rockhill, 119.

(13) Li, 121, speaking of the Shu-i-chi attributed to Jen Fang (C.E. 460-508).

(14) Hirth, 27-34; Davidson, 181f.

(15) Li, 117; Hirth, 33-34.

(16) Hirth, 27; and the narrative of Fa-Hsien.

(17) Li, 117.

(18) Hirth, 28-29. But see Beazley, I: 490, who claims the Chinese used the compass in the third century C.E. Another speculation is that the compass was known in the first century C.E. (Hirth, 28). South was, often, the primary orientation for Chinese maps and compasses.

(19) Quatrefages, 200-202.

(20) Martyr, III: 1; Wiener, II: 13; Wright, 325. See also Galvano (Galvão), 48, for accounts of the “curled haire” of these New World blacks.

(21) F. Gomara, LXII; Wiener, II, 13.

(22) Wiener's opinion, passim.

(23) Wright, 326.

(24) Ibid., 329.

(25) Ibid., 328. Blacks assisted in the building of the first European vessel on the American coast with Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón's colony in Virginia and with Vasco Núñez de Balboa on the Pacific in 1513.

(26) Quatrefages, 199-201.

(27) Hill, 50, 78.

(28) Ibid., 50.

(29) Ibid., 78-79.

(30) Benavides, passim.

(31) Van Sertima, von Wuthenau, passim.

(32) See von Wuthenau, passim, e.g., Unexpected Faces, xv, 18-21. Von Wuthenau also includes examples of European and Levantine physiognomies, e.g., Art includes a charming “Phoenician” bride, 180.

(33) E.g., Jeffreys, Scientia article, 231, which is a misreading of Hooton.

(34) Hooton, 168, 181, 183; Jeffreys, 213.

(35) Flores, 14.

(36) Schwerin, 8-9.

(37) Ibid., 18f.

(38) Ibid., 4-5, 27.

(39) Schwerin, 23, thinks that more work is necessary at the species level before this can even be claimed.

(40) Jeffreys, 214f.

(41) Ibid., 216; Wiener, III: 359, 369.

(42) Wiener, passim.

(43) Ibid., III: xi.

(44) Wiener uses Sahagún as a primary reference, working from the French edition of 1880: Histoire générale des choses de la Nouvelle-Espagne (much from Book IX).

(45) Wiener, III: 257.

(46) Ibid., III: 237-38.

(47) Ibid., III: 249.

(48) Ibid., III: 260f.

(49) Ibid., III: 296f.

(50) Ibid., III: 298.

(51) Ibid., III: 268f; Holmes' Art in Shell, 286f.

(52) Fell, Saga America, 248, 314f.

(53) Cole, passim. In fact, some archaeologists simply call Fell a “looney.” Fell, during the years of his publishing, remained patient. (Personal correspondence, author)

(54) Sahagún, passim; Jairazbhoy, 8.

(55) Jairazbhoy, passim.

(56) Ibid., for instance.

(57) Ibid., 13; Breasted, 1906-7, IV: 203.

(58) Jairazbhoy, 15.

Chapter Ten Notes:

(1) Arciniegas, 154; Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance; Sauer, Part I.

(2) La Cosa, on his return, mapped Cuba as an island, not the mainland of Asia. Jane, 222; Gould, 2; Oldham, “The Importance,” 101. Columbus may have thought that a new continent lay to the south of his voyages. He said that the coast of South America was a mainland, and one unknown till then-if Las Casas's transcription of the log is to be believed (Historia, II: 264). However, he still placed the “earthly paradise” in a land to the south and still said Asia was just to the northwest (Castañeda, Our Catholic Heritage, I: 1).

(3) The general controversy over whether Amerigo made any voyages, or some voyages, is a splendid example of historical inquiry. And feelings run high (see the Washburn review of Arciniegas in 1956 and the most humorous statement in Zweig, 101). The tone of this chapter itself would have been grounds for academic argument-and quite possibly ad hominem attack-not too long ago. Ranged generally on the side of Vespucci, or at least neutral and still in the minority, are Angelo Maria Bandini, Francisco Adolpho de Varnhagen, Henry Harrisse, John Fiske, and Germán Arciniegas, among others. Vespucci's chief detractors are Las Casas, Antonio de Herrera, Fernández de Navarrete, Baron Humbolt, Viscount Santarem, Duarte Leite, Alberto Magnaghi, and Frederick Pohl, to name a few, although most of these agree with some of the voyages, the South American ones, but not if they detract from Columbus's first attaining the mainland. Most texts today cite Pineda as the first European to sail the Texas coast, even when mentioning the possibility of Vespucci or other unnamed voyagers. The best statement may be that, at present, Vespucci's first voyage can be neither disproven nor proven-unless one believes the few early maps that exist both show the Gulf of Mexico and were based on Amerigo's reports. And those coastlines appearing before Pineda's map can always be called theoretical guesses.

(4) Amerigo's grandfather bore the name, which may come from Amalaric (Arciniegas, 3). It is not a saint's name, so the infant, upon baptism, was called Amerigo Mateo. The Mateo was soon dropped. Vespucci comes from vespa, wasp, used on the family coat of arms. After Vespucci settled in Spain, he was commonly known as Amerigo.

(5) Arciniegas, 226-27; Zweig, 38. Amerigo was not the first to use the term Mundus Novus. Even Columbus once had told the Spanish sovereigns they had another world, and Peter Martyr used the terms Nova Terrarum, Novo Orbis, from 1493-but Columbus clung to the claim that the land was Asia, thus confusing things in some minds. Amerigo made the term refer literally to a new, unknown land, and his letters popularized the idea. Vespucci letters, Ann Arbor, 88.

(6) Botticelli painted most of the Vespucci family (as portraits or using them as models), including young Amerigo.

(7) Vespucci was born on our March 9, 1454, but very near the end of the Florentine year 1453; Pohl, 207; Arciniegas, 3. For his life, see Pohl and Arciniegas.

(8) Arciniegas, chaps. IV, VIII.

(9) Ibid., chap. XI.

(10) The names of most captains have been lost . . . guesses for this voyage include Vicente Yánez Pinzón, Juan Díaz de Solís, and Juan de la Cosa. At the time, the identity probably mattered little. Arciniegas, 160.

(11) Vespucci letters, preface, Ann Arbor, 87.

(12) Presumably. The trip was twenty-seven days in duration if the right figure has been preserved in manuscript. Pohl, 26; Arciniegas, chap. XI; Vespucci letters, Ann Arbor, 89. See also Arciniegas, chap. XIII; Lowery, 125f.

(13) Pohl, 118-19; Arciniegas, 192f.

(14) And at other times, missed completely, as when he said he had been 150⁰ from the meridian of Alexandria. Yet, if the remark has been preserved without error, it is a strange one: “I was 150⁰ from the meridian of Alexandria, which is eight hours from the equatorial hour.” Alexandria is eight hours (120⁰) east of the Gulf of Mexico, the westernmost Amerigo may have been, but not 150⁰ west.

(15) Apparently the most serious technical objection to the first voyage is suggested by Roukema, who applies the figures of traverse tables (“diff. lat.” sailing) to rather colloquial remarks in letters intended for general readers-the implication being the routes were simply traced off a map. (See also Harrisse, 357.) In Roukema's article Vespucci advocates are simply “hopelessly bedazzled.” The article does point out that the “torrid zone” ends at the first climate (12⁰ 45' N) and the second climate's boundary is confused. The interpretation of Vespucci's first voyage as an impossible, or fictional, voyage taken from other accounts is based on taking the directions in the letter as actual sailing instructions, which they were probably not meant to be. Roukema, passim; see also Levillier, passim; and Batalha-Reis, 197f, on the evaluation of data in general for the period.

(16) Quotations are from the Ann Arbor edition of Cosmographiae Introductio, translated by Joseph Fischer and Franz von Wieser-an edition that should be read in full. (See pp. 90, 102, 112-13 for the subsequent quotations.) The entire account gives Vespucci's feelings as well as the first impressions of this land. As a reporter, Vespucci not only gives a favorable impression of the lands of the New World but also records pleasant and unpleasant encounters with the natives. He frankly titillates his readers with accounts of the unbridled sexual practices of the natives and describes how he and others (at least on one occasion) were most generously offered women for the night. He pointed out that the women were graceful and beautiful of body, and naked, and “showed a great desire to have carnal knowledge of us Christians” (Arciniegas, 169). He includes brutal tales of cannibalism which influenced European engravings of Native Americans for generations (Mostra Vespucciana, Tav. XII, XIV). He describes iguanas, hammocks, warfare, bathing, and almost endless wonders to catch the reader's attention. Some of the warfare between sailors and natives may have been fictional. At the time, it was illegal to take slaves unless they were captured in war. Vespucci makes it clear that this was done, except when he makes it equally clear that natives volunteered to go to Europe. Both certainly could have happened and did on many a voyage to the New World.

(17) Valentini, 299. A curious point, however, is that Valentini, although accepting Vespucci's voyages, assumes that Vespucci gave the data of the first voyage to the Portuguese while sailing for the Spanish. Vespucci did, on later voyages, sail for the Portuguese. Apparently there were no hard feelings in his lifetime, for he was Pilot Major for Spain until his death. The map Valentini considers, of course, might not be Portuguese.

(18) Harrisse, 167-68.

(19) Ibid., 354. Any exact estimate of the league is impossible. The distance would be at least over eighteen hundred miles.

(20) Although he waited several years, well after his official reports to the court. He wrote most often to Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de'Medici and Piero Soderini. After becoming a Spanish citizen and as Pilot Major, Vespucci never again wrote to Florence (Arciniegas, 282).

(21) Zweig, 32, 75.

(22) Zweig, chap. 4; Arciniegas, chap. XXII.

(23) Waldseemüller, adding a New World map to a “Ptolemy” edition some years later (Strassburg, 1513), included an inscription crediting Columbus with the discovery.

(24) Arciniegas, 259f; Zweig, 79.

(25) Arciniegas, 159. Columbus's letters to his son Diego show he was hoping for aid from Vespucci. Also see Arciniegas, 258; Zweig, 98.

(26) Harrisse, 353f.

(27) Pohl, 149f. The letters may have been changed also for political reasons. Also Arciniegas, 222-23.

(28) Arciniegas, 235.

(29) See Batalha-Reis, 198f, on the danger of drawing conclusions from silence or a lack of documents; Zweig, 92.

(30) Harrisse, 354-55.

(31) Mostra Vespucciana, 73f; Lowery, 129; and the fine short article by Dixon, “Maps and the Discovery of Texas.”

(32) Arciniegas, 161; Dixon, “Texas History in Maps,” 5.

(33) Arciniegas, 160, quoting López de Gomara (Historia general de las Indias, chap. liii) who says that many set out to the new-found lands, some at their own expense, but as most made no immediate gain, no recollection of them remains; Harrisse, 360-61; Lowery, 130.

(34) “Almost all the historians of geographical discoveries consider it their absolute duty to arrive at a radical conclusion in the study of problematical questions, answering with a yes what only deserves a perhaps, or, more frequently, dismissing with a no what ought to be held as probable.” Batalha-Reis, 210. See also Oldham, passim.

Chapter Eleven Notes:

(1) Efforts in Spanish archives to confirm Pineda's name have come to nothing. The name could be Pinedo, but recent researchers find no support for the spelling Piñeda. The famous sketch map of the Gulf, probably done by someone on the voyage, is in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville. But the primary report of Pineda, presumably a log, and Garay's direct report to King Ferdinand are lost. No primary records for this voyage exist, as for many Spanish voyages, but secondary accounts do: the comments by the contemporary historian Bernal Díaz del Castillo, letters of Cortés, and summary statements about Pineda's voyage in the 1521 royal grant to Garay of the territory called Amichel. Chipman, Spanish Sea and “Alonso Alvarez”; see also Castañeda, I: 1-3; 6-11; Lowery, 149-53; Farmer, passim; Harrisse, 163-73 (citing Bernal Diaz); Jackson, Flags along the Coast; Weddle, Spanish Sea; and Weber.

Even though Pineda's observations do not exist (and even though he is not named in Díaz and is not connected by name to the sketch map), Pineda is usually accorded the title of the first known European to sail and map the Texas coasts. In addition, many historians, earlier and now, equate the Río de las Palmas (and the Pánuco) with the Río Grande. But if the secondary records of the voyage are reliable (as accurate, say, as the records concerning Vespucci), neither Pineda nor Carmago nor Garay ever established settlements on the Río Grande or anywhere on the present coast of Texas.

(2) Casteñada, I:13f.; references, note 1.

(3) Permission could be royal or could be authorized from delegated governing bodies such as the Priors of the Order of the Hieronymites (Harrisse, 166).

(4) Lowery, 123-71; references, note 1.

(5) Ascribing the map to Pineda is convention. The map could have been done by one of the pilots on the voyage who returned to report to Garay. Pineda may have stayed at Pánuco and died there. See Farmer, 111.

(6) Some of this area, and perhaps part of future Texas, was known as Amichel and, under Garay, soon became La Provincia del Río de Pánuco y Victoria Garayana. The northern limits of these names were defined neither then nor now. For locations and dates, see Chipman, “Alonso Alvarez” and Casteñada I: 21f.

(7) Castañeda, I:28 (Cortés, Cuarta Carta de Relación, October 15, 1524, in Barcia, Historiadores Primitivos, I: 129-65); Cortés, Hernando Cortés, Five Letters.

(8) See Skeels for maps showing many of the routes of exploration.

(9) Interpretations, in abundance, exist on explorers after 1520 in the Texas area. E.g., Bolton's Coronado; Bolton, ed., Spanish Exploration; Horgan, Conquistadores in North America; Lummis, The Spanish Pioneers (includes Docampo, “the man who walked further on this continent than any other,” 102); Hodge, ed., Spanish Explorers (collection of narratives, cf. Bolton's Spanish Exploration); Bancroft, Works, particularly the History of Mexico, vols. IX-XIV, and the History of the North Mexican States and Texas, vol. XV; references, note 1.

Chapter Twelve Notes:

(1) See Bermant, 82 (chap. 4) for comments on Rawlinson's work translating cuneiform. This paragraph does not attempt to reproduce the actual thought arriving at the present understanding of the language's phonetic transcription.

(2) Parry, Discovery, xii.

(3) The source of this mostly stolen sentence is largely from a NASA symposium of a couple of decades ago (Cousins). The best comments were those of Captain Cousteau's.

See also Andrews for the classic, early-century attitude toward exploration: accept hardship (for the love and advancement of knowledge), admit no nonsense (except dry humor), perform no heroics (unless necessary), and take along no women (absolutely).

Time changes all things, however.