There’s two main groups that support this theory: serious quacks and serious archaeologists. The verdict is still out, but the archaeologists continue to uncover evidence supporting multiple points of contact between peoples in the Americas with both Northern and Mediterranean Europe, AND Asia/Polynesia.
50 years ago, my anthropology professors thought Thor Heyerdahl was a bit of a showman who overstated his cases,
but that his work DID show what was possible. They openly discussed solid archaeological findings that supported contact. I was in California then, and these professors were on the cutting edge of work showing contact along the West Coast of North and South American with Asia/Polynesia. The body of evidence from language, blood types, pottery shards, architecture and other evidence of contact continues to grow.
My one caveat would be that most of these researchers believe in the contact and search for evidence that supports it. Not necessarily unusual or bad, but not a perfect way to do science.
Sorry for the long post. Thanks for your work, SunkenCiv.
Thanks all.
My one caveat would be that most of these researchers believe in the contact and search for evidence that supports it. Not necessarily unusual or bad, but not a perfect way to do science.
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Somewhat OT but I suspect this is how most science actually works in real life — i.e. that most scientists are not dispassionate Platonic speculators but rather are passionate advocates for their theories which they believe to be true prior to having all the evidence in hand. There’s a philosopher named Michael Polanyi who developed a theory of science that sees the scientific method as a flawed ideal and holds that promoting the notion of the dispassionate scientist over the reality of scientific passion actually threatens science by making it susceptible to politicization. He’s a contrarian for sure but is also a serious guy with a distinguished scientific background who has some illuminating, or at least interesting, angles on things. Just tacking on a little side note here FWIW...