Fairer-skinned people in the Andes? Must be Vikings. Or Atlanteans

[muriel_volestrangler]

:banghead:

In LBN. No, non-Europeans can't have built some buildings that had stood for 600 years; it must have been someone with blue eyes for whom there's no evidence they were within 3000 miles. Or people who never even fucking existed. :sarcasm:

I swear some of them do this just to raise our blood pressure.

[Orrex]

1. I just figured that the Nazca aliens built them

Or those aliens that were proven in the recent documentary Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

[mr blur]

2. It WAS Atlanteans, everybody knows that.

Jebus was an Atlantean too, which is why he was blue-eyed and white. And spoke English, which is an ancient Atlantean dialect.

[Orrex]

3. No doubt his webbed feet helped in the walking-on-water department

[Odin2005]

4. Nothing like Atlantis woo and noble savage BS to expose the racism of normally progressive people.

My god that shit is annoying. :puke:

[edhopper]

5. This isn't

too say that the Meso-Americans didn't create their civilization themselves. But there is some tantalizing evidence that a Viking or two made their way to Central America. Stories of tall red-haired men with large noses.

[semillama]

6. Yeah, I think the Greenland Norse got around a bit

but they weren't very good at founding lasting societies.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

8. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And there's tantalizing evidence a feathered servant from Venus invented maize and gave it to mankind.

[cosmik debris]

9. I think you are confusing Maya woo with Inca woo

They are thousands of miles apart--geographically.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

10. There's tantalizing evidence that Mayans were Incans blown off course.

[cosmik debris]

11. No, that's Zapotec

See my genuine (fake) pre-Columbian blow job artifact from Monte Alban Oaxaca.

That proves that it was the Zapotecs that got blown off course.

[edhopper]

12. You're right

this is something from Mayan areas, not Incan, which makes sense since the Incans were closer to the Pacific.
Here is a link that discuss this Norse - Mayan connection.
I don't think this is woo. It's far from established and highly speculative at this point do to lack of good evidence. As I said it's merely tantalizing. But it's not some improbable or illogical event.

http://archaeology.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_vikingmaya_connection
"A red-bearded man’s likeness appears on many stone carvings in the Mayan ruins of Chiche?n Itza in the Yucatan, Copan, Honduras, and other places in Latin America. There are also murals depicting bearded warriors dressed in armor and helmets which could be relating an account of a foreign invasion by some ancient people."

[cosmik debris]

13. There is also the tall tale

that you hear from the tour guides, that the Japanese language is almost the same as the Mayan language.

They'll also tell you that the stone carved motifs in Mayan palaces at Chichen Itza and Palenque are the same as those from Rome and Egypt.

Meh.

[edhopper]

14. I'm not trying to convince anyone that

this is true. I just don't see enough either way to completely disregard it as a woo. At this point it is merely speculation. I just find it an interesting idea. I probably read too much Conan as a teen. :-)

[cosmik debris]

15. Have you heard about the archaeological evidence

that Polynesians reached Chile 16,000 yrs ago?

I wonder if we are not grossly underestimating the ability of people to get completely fucking lost and wind up where they are least expected.

I hope Mitochondrial DNA will shed some light on this some day.

[edhopper]

16. I haven't seen that.

Though Thor Heyerdahl showed that earlier civilizations could have reached South America.
I think there is some recent evidence for Pre-Clovis settlements in the Americas.

As I said a visit from a wayward Viking isn't beyond possibility. As opposed to the idea of the Norse creating or greatly influencing Mayan civilization, which is silly.

[Orrex]

21. Possibly, but...

It would be quite remarkable to think that a Viking had made it much farther south in the "new" world than he'd made it in the "old" world so much closer to home.

[moggie]

22. I was born 16,000 years too late

Given my talent for getting completely fucking lost just driving around within a 10-mile radius, I'd have been awesome with a balsa wood raft. It's rather reassuring to think that some aspects of human progress have depended on total losers.

[Orrex]

23. Hey, if you play your cards right...

You just might sire a line among a hidden pretechnological civilization.


If I were you I'd check New Jersey, to start with.

[semillama]

25. Chickens and Sweet Potatoes!

here's a good overview link about that:


http://archaeology.about.com/od/transportation/a/trans-pacific.htm

May I also recommend the book "Controversies in Archaeology" by Alice Beck Kehoe? It has a great chapter on cultural diffusion vs. independent invention that covers this topic.

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. Can you trust the colours of pigments after 1000 years?

Just because they look red now, doesn't mean they did before. And I'm not impressed by:

Was such a Voyage Possible?

The likelihood that Vikings may have touched upon Caribbean shores was not given much credibility because it was believed such a voyage would not have possible. Then, in 1947, Thor Heyerdahl tested the possibility by recreating a reed boat using materials such as the Vikings, Phoenicians and other cultures would have used at that time. The Kon Tiki’s voyage of over 4,300 miles proved that ancient navigators could have sailed much farther than originally believed.

A link between the Vikings and the early cultures of the Yucatan and Central America has never been proven. If Viking artifacts ever existed, they have been lost with the passage of time. If the Vikings ever did visit Central America, the only traces left are the curious images of a red-bearded man caved in stone.

But he didn't sail from Norway, Iceland or Newfoundland to central America. The nearest to that he got was sailing from Morocco to the Caribbean. Neither did he show that people could get lost and get that far. He showed they could have done it on purpose. It's a real stretch to hang it all on the colour of hair on a stone carving.

[semillama]

24. My high school history teacher brought up the 'bearded man' -quetzalcoatl myth in class

and the kids who were part of our local flavor of religious fundamentalism (Apostolic Lutherans) immediatedly chirped out "Jesus!!!" in response.


Because, you know, the only person with a beard prior to the era of photography was Jesus.

[onager]

7. An Egyptian non-woo variant...

The inhabitants are light-skinned and fair-haired (supposedly because Mansura's women are the most beautiful in Egypt and so were violated by Crusaders who could not contain their lust!)...

Skeptics can happily note that this story has some truth to it. Did you know that Technically Non-White People with an Off-Brand Religion once captured a European king? The NERVE!!!

History:

El-Mansura (the "Victorious") was founded by Sultan Malik el-Kamil in 1221 to replace Damietta, which had fallen to the Crusaders. In 1249 a Crusading army led by Louis IX of France succeeded, after hard fighting, in crossing the Ushmum Canal (now the Bahr el-Sughayyar) to El-Mansura, but were then surrounded and defeated by the young Sultan El-Moazzam Turanshah. Their fleet was destroyed, their supplies were cut off and finally, after great slaughter, Louis himself was taken prisoner in April 1250, and was released (on May 6, 1250) in return for a heavy ransom and the surrender of Damietta.

http://www.touregypt.net/elmansur.htm

Egypt also has those fascinating dark-skinned folks, the Nubians from around northern Sudan. According to my reading, Egyptians with harems prized Nubian women for their intelligence and talent as well as their beauty. So intelligent they had to be very closely guarded on the way back to the ol' harem. They were famous for creative escapes.

I deal with one of their descendants quite often. She works in a store where I shop. Lovely young woman from Upper (southern) Egypt who speaks perfect English in a strange lilting accent that always makes me smile. And I'm a notoriously grumpy, non-smiling person. She has the bearing--and cheek-bones--of a fashion model. But is unfortunately dark-skinned enough to be denied entry to all non-token GOP functions. (Insert your own sarcasm smiley, as usual...)

Tourist Note: Upper Egyptians are usually called sa'idis by other Egyptians. The name literally means "hick," but the Upper Egyptians themselves don't seem to mind it. Just as American Southerners did with "redneck," some have adopted it as a badge of honor.

[TZ]

17. I could see a few isolated populations

of non-natives in SA---getting lost/blown off course and no way to get home, but I doubt they were very large. But I guess the traits would take a few generation to disappear so that might make them notable.

[edhopper]

18. I htink this is the idea.

A few people who may have been remembered in the myths and depicted in the murals. Not some great civilization changing invasion.

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. Yeah, but this is 100 miles from the Pacific, and 2000 from the Atlantic

and even that would be way outside the area that Vikings or similar people had been found in before.

Having said that, it was the mention of Atlantis that really got me going.

[csziggy]

26. Could be Madoc and his Welsh explorers - j/k

Madoc and his group have been rumored to have settled all over North America and occasionally in Central America.

Or the Romans, whose ship wrecks are supposed to have been found off the coast of Brazil.

There are plenty of candidates available for this nonsense in folk lore aside from the Vikings or the Atlanteans. I love throwing out these alternatives to the woo woo believers - it confuses them and screws with their tiny minds.

[semillama]

27. One of the funniest books I've ever read

[csziggy]

28. I'll have to look for that one! I love keeping up with woo woo stuff as folklore