Pre-Colombian Voyages to America

[Marja]

The Portuguese discovery of Brazil is an interesting case - they were trying to take advantage of the winds to speed the journey around Africa. But that's after exploration along the coast of Africa. And Roman exploration of West Africa wasn't as extensive as Carthaginian exploration, let alone Portuguese.

And is there anything in Roman literature to indicate knowledge of a continent across the Atlantic? Any wild rumors like those about India, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia? Aside from speculation and the bogus theory that storms can only begin over continents, so something must be out there?

[Flavivs Aetivs]

If the copy of Ptolemy's map is correct, we know the Romans had no clue the Americas existed in the 1st Century AD.

[Marja]

Ptolemy's known world starts with the Fortunate Islands, perhaps the Canaries or maybe the Cape Verde Islands, so he didn't have or didn't trust anything from farther west. But Ptolemy made enough mistakes with Gallia and Britannia, losing some tribes, duplicating others, moving cities from the coast into the interior, etc. that there are entire books trying to figure out how he got so much so wrong. Pliny is substantially more accurate. So no one source really reaches the limits of Roman geographical knowledge.

[Flavivs Aetivs]

Wouldn't copying errors be the most obvious assumption? City names changed, which could have confused copyists.

But yes, Pliny and Tacitus are two of my favorite sources for the principate, considering their mapping of tribes and nations.

[Sean Manning]

The Portuguese discovery of Brazil is an interesting case - they were trying to take advantage of the winds to speed the journey around Africa. But that's after exploration along the coast of Africa. And Roman exploration of West Africa wasn't as extensive as Carthaginian exploration, let alone Portuguese.

That is a good point. And the Portugese had a reason to want to sail around Africa: to avoid the Turks and Italians who controlled the eastern Mediterranean, for the purpose of obtaining South and East Asian goods and waging holy war. I can't think of any similar motive in the ancient world: the existing routes from China and India to the Levant and Egypt worked well enough.

There are plenty of interesting stories about ancient explorers which are still dubious but have more evidence to back them up than transatlantic voyages. Consider Darius' okapi for example ... (L. Sprague de Camp, Isis 1963 and a rebuttal which I can't find right now but may be Tuck and Valdez, Cryptozoology, 1989).

[Marja]

Ptolemy's errors are present in both the text and the maps. Now it's unclear when the various texts and maps begin to diverge, but I imagine copying errors would affect Ptolemy's Geography, Pliny's Natural History, and the Notitia Galliarum, et cetera, more-or-less equally, but afaik Ptolemy's is the odd one out.

That said, this shifts the question from what Ptolemy doesn't say to what Pliny and Strabo don't say... If only we knew what Marinus didn't say!

[Flavivs Aetivs]

Yeah the fall of the Roman Empire of the East meant the Italians no longer had their discounts for passing through the straits of Marmara, so prices went up and everyone tried to avoid the Italian merchants.

@Marja

That's a good point.

[C Crastinus]

I just discovered this thread which I apparently started. I guess I should stick my head in this section more often.

@Aetius

Thanks (somewhat belated) for posting the link about that alleged Roman ship in Brazil. When I hear of such things part of me really wants them to turn out to be true, but alas, the skeptical part of me always seems to have the upper hand. I think that's the case here as well.

In addition to the many good comments already made here, David Meadows has outlined a fairly cogent argument against its likelihood:

http://www.atrium-media.com/rogueclassic...02/08.html

[M. Demetrius]

That said, this shifts the question from what Ptolemy doesn't say to what Pliny and Strabo don't say... If only we knew what Marinus didn't say!

Kind of hard to categorize those things left unsaid, isn't it? :wink:

[P Sertorius Scaevola]

Of possible interest in this topic; when I visited the Dominican Republic in the previous century I paid a visit to the National Museum. The in the Salle de las Armas was a very nice example of a Roman helmet of a type close to the Port Agen and Imp.Gallic A on display. The explanation was that a Spanish family had brought it in from the ETO. The piece seemed genuine, what did I know, but I really don't see why Spanish high birth would bring such a temporarily uninteresting item to the Americas.
I never followed up on the research and at the time was high spirited that the Romans got there first. I must assume the helmet is still there at Puerto Plata.

[Cornelius A]

First two papers of this anonymous man try to convince the presence of the ancients in America. He shows a lot of 'evidence': http://independent.academia.edu/Anonymou...sWorldView