Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories

Rare card · No. 71292

Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories, many of which are speculative, propose that visits to the Americas, interactions with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, or both, were made by people from elsewhere after the initial peopling of the Americas by migrants from Siberia across Beringia at least 15,000 years ago, but before Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Caribbean in 1492. Maritime explorations by Norse peoples from Scandinavia during the late 10th century led to the brief Norse colonization of Greenland and a base camp L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, which preceded Columbus's arrival in the Americas by some 500 years. Recent genetic studies have also suggested that some eastern Polynesian populations have admixture from coastal western South American peoples, with an estimated date of contact around 1200 CE. Scientific and scholarly responses to other claims of post-prehistory, pre-Columbian transoceanic contact have varied. Some of these claims are examined...

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