Why Take the Long Road?

I am a huge fan of Skeptic Magazine, and am always sure to pick up every issue. Needless to say I was quite ecstatic to see that the latest issue promised an article concerning “ancient astronauts & lost civilizations. These are some of the key myths and false histories embraced by pseudo-archaeologists and other sellers of fiction.

In general, the article by Tim Callahan does an admirable job dealing the popular beliefs and hoped points of evidence held up by pseudo-historians. However, Callahan gets a bit off track in a very questionable way when he deals with the claims of Charles Hapgood.
The issue of concern is the Piri Reis map, from around 1513 CE. Hapgood claims that this map, which shows portions of Antarctica and South America explored by Christian sailors of Portugal, would have been beyond the knowledge of the Muslims who made it, since they were not at peace with the Christians. From this, Hapgood draws the incorrect conclusion that this means the map was based on the work of some ancient super civilization. Callahan, quite justifiably, feels the need to contest this position as unlikely, but the way he does is quite problematic.

Instead of looking for a method to understand how the Muslims might have gotten the information from the Europeans, Callahan presents the theory that the Muslims were themselves in possession of the knowledge from their own exploration of the Americas and Antarctica.

Callahan proceeds to present two possible pieces of evidence. First, a small collection of coins found off the coast of Venezuela, which included two Muslim coins, possibly from as early as the ninth century. These coins were identified and supported by Cyrus Gordon, a well known scholar, who seems to have been too willing to accept likely false stories of pre-Columbian visits to the Americas by Semitic peoples. One such claim concerns the image to the left, the “Bat Creek Inscription” found in Tennessee. Cyrus claimed this showed an early Jewish population in the Americas. Doubt of this claim is very prevalent among archaeologists and epigraphers alike. Of course, as Callahan admits, there is no provenance on the coins, and thus they cannot be accepted as concrete evidence. I would beg the question of if they can be reliable at all.

A second possible piece of evidence proposed is Maize and its appearance in Europe and China. Callahan proposes that corn reached China in the early fourteenth century CE, well before Columbus. This is based on the work of Dr. M. D. W. Jefferies, author of “Pre-Columbian Maize in Asia” in Men Across the Sea. Now, this is in and of itself a questionable piece of theory, one not widely supported among historians. What actually appears to have happened is that Maize simply crossed Asia very quickly, in a period under one hundred years following the introduction of Maize by the Portuguese.

If this is true, then why, as Callahan points out, was maize originally called “Saracen corn”, “Turk corn”, or other similar names? Simply that the Muslims did aid in the distribution of corn throughout Asia and Europe. To many Europeans, this might have been the most widely accepted image of the new grain in their mind. However, this does not mean that the Muslims brought corn to Europe and Asia.

Instead, the grain could likely have spread into the Muslim world through Strait of Gibraltar after entering Spain from Portugal, or alternatively from Portugal’s colonies in Africa and Asia. It could easily have spread quickly through various trade routes, possibly including the silk road.

So how, if Muslims did not reach the Americas, a theory which there appears to be no evidence for, why does Callahan spend almost a page on this issue? I cannot tell, but certainly it does not seem to be the skeptical position or evenly the largely accepted archaeological position.

In the end, it also serves little purpose, since, as Callahan notes, Muslims did obviously have contact with the Portuguese through trade and possibly their colonies. In fact, the prolonged explanation of Muslim exploration, Callahan writes:

…Thus, the Piri Reis map may not be the great enigma theorists of the new paradigm claim it to be. Finally, it turns out that a notation of the “Portuguese Infidels” indicating that Muslims had access to Western information after all.

Now, if I were setting out to make a case against secret ancient societies, it would seem a much better position to simply write this single half-paragraph, instead of a large speculative text on Muslim seaman. Perhaps strangest of all, is the fact that Callahan actually leaves this entire point out of his E-skeptic article on the subject which uses the entire text on Muslim explorers. I wonder if someone presented the obvious issue with his work to him, but also why it would still remain in. In truth, his concession to the much more likely history appears as an after thought.

In the end, I suppose that as archaeologists, historians, and skeptics, we need to remember to check out what we are reading, even when it comes in the context of being skeptical or attempting to remedy problems of “alternative history”.

What I read:

Callahan, Tim “A New Mythology: Ancient Astronauts, Lost Civilizations, and the New Age Paradigm” in Skeptic 13. 4 2008. 32-41.

_____. “Ancient Astronauts, Lost Civilizations, and a New Paradigm” on E-Skeptic
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-04-25.html accessed 2-13-2008

Desjardins, Anne E. Desjardins and Susan A. McCarthy “Milho, makka and ya mai: early journeys of Zea mays in Asia”
http://nal.usda.gov/research/maize/index.shtml accessed 2-13-2008 (this is a really cool text, which I just have to point out to everyone, its a history of corn and its distribution throughout the world, available from the USDA. Its quite long and very interesting.).

Zirkle, Conway “Indian Corn in Old America” in Isis 46.1 1955, 64-65