Carthies in the new world?

[Aemilius Paulus]

tAncient version of the best book of all time "The Hatchet"

You have read The Hatchet? By Gary Paulsen?? And the sequel? Those were only OK/mediocre/borderline rotten books, not to mention teen fiction. Very simple and un-sophisticated, not to mention, written by a half-amateur, despite the amount of books Paulsen wrote. Please, the best survival books are: Mysterious Island (Jules Verne) - the best of them all, Swiss Family Robinson, and of course, Robinson Crusoe and the sequel.

Sorry to trash your favourite book like that :P

[Ghaust the Moor]

Why do you do that? Why can't you just say it sucks and you don't like it? If the book is so poorly written, why has it won awards and is forced down every highschooler and middleschoolers throat and taught as a classic?

[Cyclops]

I think Jolt has nailed it. The route was just too difficult with Iron age tech. Maybe the Classical mediterranean civilisations were more advanced in some ways than the medieval Atlantic civs, but their naval architecture sucked by comparison.

If anyone made it, they probably weren't breathing. The likeliest route to the Americas goes to the Carribean: weren't the Caribes notorious cannibals? Then there's the return journey...

It is relatively easy to sail from the Cape Verdes to the Americas if you know they are there and take enough food and water and have ships that are high seas capable (deep enough draught etc).

I beleive the fundamental engine of the North Atlantic current has been in operation since the last Ice Age with minor variations, so the basic pattern was probably in place in Carthaginian times (I guess 700-160 BC).

It is a lot harder to come back the same way and you need top loop up toward Northern Europe to take advantage of the winds and the currents and IIRC (from Sid Meiers Pirates) the cycle of winds is seasonal and its easy to get doldrummed to death.

On the coins: Carthaginians were masters of barter (including dumb barter) and adopted coins later than their greek competitors: they would have taken and used coins if they needed them but I don't think there was a coin making culture in the Americas before the Iberians arrived. So an absence of coins is not really an argument, so much as the complete absence of even the remotest trace of anything Carthaginian.

The Vikings made one short lived settlement and even though they (and theiir parent colony in Greenland) were wiped off the map we have found documentary, oral and physical remains (at whatisname meadows). At this point it is Scandinavian scallywags 1, Levantine shorehuggers 0.

The pre-Columbian Americas were not completely cut off from Eurasia in any case. IIRC there is a copper bowl of central Asian design (with metal from a central Asian mine) found in Canada in a site with a carbon date before Columbus and after Leif. It either came with the Vikings (who got it from who? Mongols I guess?) or across the Bering strait passed from hand to hand by Inuits and Algonquins and whoever else.

Surprisingly chocolate bars never managed to make the return journey until the Conquistadores (and the ships never made it back completely full). I love Cute Wolfs' culinary warfare option: along with the armoured sombrerotoi there could be Hetaroi Xocolotloi, dispensing demoralising brown projectiles that disrupt enemy formations as the fall out to gorge themselves, rapidly outgrowing their armour (although I doubt we will see them in EB2, the team has said they will not represent Loricata Muffintopata).

[antisocialmunky]

We read Hatchet when we were like 12 and thought it was a great book. I still remember it fondly. Good for the age I'd say along with Holes, Ender's Game Series and Spin Offs, etc.

On a related note, there are theories now that there were many waves of Migration to the Americas from the Siberian Land Bridge, Pacific Island Hopping, Boat People from East Asia that hugged the shore, and Europeans crossing over the Ice Sheets.

[Intrepid Adventurer]

You know, if there isn't evidence now, there will be some in the future. If there's one thing studying history has taught me, it's that we keep discovering stuff we thought was impossible before. I would not at all be surprised if the ancient civilisations did in fact travel to the America's.

I think that phoenicia.org site isn't half bad. From what I read, there's more evidence than just a simple coin. I suggest you guys actually read the site, before being cynical. I agree there's a lot of speculation and guessing, but my gut says that in another century or so, people will be laughing at how we thought the ancient peoples could not navigate the Atlantic.

[Fluvius Camillus]

I recall that the Phoenicians once colonized a bay at modern day Mauretana.

~Fluvius

[miotas]

I think Jolt has nailed it. The route was just too difficult with Iron age tech. Maybe the Classical mediterranean civilisations were more advanced in some ways than the medieval Atlantic civs, but their naval architecture sucked by comparison.

Sorry but that's just bupkis. If it is possible to cross the pacific in a small raft(landed in my home town) then I don't think the Phoenicians would have had too much trouble surviving a trip across the Atlantic. I do think we would have heard more about it if it did happen though, but perhaps it was a closely guarded state secret that was lost when the Romans destroyed Carthage

You have read The Hatchet? By Gary Paulsen?? And the sequel? Those were only OK/mediocre/borderline rotten books, not to mention teen fiction. Very simple and un-sophisticated, not to mention, written by a half-amateur, despite the amount of books Paulsen wrote. Please, the best survival books are: Mysterious Island (Jules Verne) - the best of them all, Swiss Family Robinson, and of course, Robinson Crusoe and the sequel.

Sorry to trash your favourite book like that :P

I've never heard of "The Hatchet" but I read the whole of "The Swiss Family Robinson" when I was 9, I remember I was rather proud of myself for reading such a big book It's a brilliant book, but I never did understand why there were kangaroos there. And then reading it when I was older I realised there was a whole cornucopia of plants and animals that just shouldn't have been there. Still one of the best books I've ever read though.

[Apázlinemjó]

Sorry but that's just bupkis. If it is possible to cross the pacific in a small raft(landed in my home town) then I don't think the Phoenicians would have had too much trouble surviving a trip across the Atlantic. I do think we would have heard more about it if it did happen though, but perhaps it was a closely guarded state secret that was lost when the Romans destroyed Carthage

They feared that the romans would be able to get the secret, that's why they destroyed the evidences. Think about it, replacing the USA with the UPRP, United Provinces of Roman Republic. All hail the fantasy genre.

[Cyclops]

Sorry but that's just bupkis. If it is possible to cross the pacific in a small raft(landed in my home town) then I don't think the Phoenicians would have had too much trouble surviving a trip across the Atlantic....

Its also possible that elephants flew out of their butts, so bupkis yerself (anyway I thought bupkis meant "nada", rather than "horsefeathers").

Any claim that the Phoenecians regularly crossed the Atlantic are nonsense at this point. There is no credible evidence to support the thesis, and they did not have the technology to regularly do this in the way that the Medieval Atlantic civilisations (Spain, Portugal, France, later Holland and England) did.

I may be wrong and I accept this, but the evidence and consensus of opinion agree that the fantasy of Phoenecian colonisation of the new world is on the crackpot shelf for now.

The Phoenecians showed no tendency to strike out in the utterly fearless manner of the mighty Polynesian seafarers. They were brave in their own way, but coasthuggers nevertheless.

Even a one-eyed drunk like me would not deny the chance that a Phoenecian vessel straggled to Brazil or the Antilles, in fact I would bet there's a sunken Carthaginian bireme just waiting to be discovered, but it hasn't been and there wasn't a "Mighty Baal" sea ferry from Utica to Aruba.

"Mighty Baal seaferry now departing, stopping Arse, Pillars of Hercules, Gades, Hy Breasil, running express to Guatamala, not stopping Barbados or St Kitts. Stow your luggage in the under-bench compartments as we will definitely be sinking before we make it home. Thank you for sailing Phoenecian & Occident""

[Cyclops]

You have read The Hatchet? By Gary Paulsen??...

His name is Gary Paulsen. His name is Gary Paulsen.

Sorry, OT and spammy, I apologise.

[miotas]

LOL.

I was just trying to point out that if a raft can make it then the Phoenician ships could have. But yes surviving repeated trips with their level of technology is highly unlikely, no doubt most of the rafts that set out never made landfall in one peice, in fact if you read the article even those rafts were in pretty bad shape when they arrived, one even sunk. If any rafts did make it with their crew alive then it would have been throught the sheer numbers of the crazy buggers setting out. Couple this high likelyhood of failure with incredibly few, most likely accidental Phoenician attempts and the chance seems extremely unlikely.

And bupkis means something of no value, worthless, so perhaps a little strong.

[Fluvius Camillus]

Bay of Arguin, modern day Mauretania, that's the name. I heard the Phoenicians colonized it.

~Fluvius

[Apázlinemjó]

Let's send the idea to the Mythbusters. Lol.

[Mediteran]

Let's send the idea to the Mythbusters. Lol.

hey that would be cool

[Urg]

Let's send the idea to the Mythbusters. Lol.

Or we could just accept it didn't happen and move on...

Does that sound bitter?

[Cyclops]

Let's send the idea to the Mythbusters. Lol.

Jamie (in moustachioed monotone): "Well my approach was to create a paralell universe ab initio, developing in parallel to our own up to 700 BC and then observing every single sea journey by a bireme or greater rated vessel using time lapse cameras, to see if this was possible in the same circumstances"

Adam (somewhat more flamboyantly): "Typically boring, Jamie, I've decided to blast Europe back to the middle iron age using neutron bombs, and establish a Carthaginian-approximate city state in Tunisia. They will be encouraged to sail across the Atlantic infecting them with a deadly retro-virus whose cure is only found in a certain Guatamalen rainforest flower. When they get to the Caribbean they will encounter our resident hostile Amerindians Kari and Grant armed with the chicken cannon."

[Apázlinemjó]

Jamie (in moustachioed monotone): "Well my approach was to create a paralell universe ab initio, developing in parallel to our own up to 700 BC and then observing every single sea journey by a bireme or greater rated vessel using time lapse cameras, to see if this was possible in the same circumstances"

Adam (somewhat more flamboyantly): "Typically boring, Jamie, I've decided to blast Europe back to the middle iron age using neutron bombs, and establish a Carthaginian-approximate city state in Tunisia. They will be encouraged to sail across the Atlantic infecting them with a deadly retro-virus whose cure is only found in a certain Guatamalen rainforest flower. When they get to the Caribbean they will encounter our resident hostile Amerindians Kari and Grant armed with the chicken cannon."

Rofl.

[mountaingoat]

They feared that the romans would be able to get the secret, that's Think about it, replacing the USA with the UPRP, United Provinces of Roman Republic. All hail the fantasy genre.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I just want to say this is one of the more interesting threads this subforum has had for a while.

[Celtic_Punk]

You have read The Hatchet? By Gary Paulsen?? And the sequel? Those were only OK/mediocre/borderline rotten books, not to mention teen fiction. Very simple and un-sophisticated, not to mention, written by a half-amateur, despite the amount of books Paulsen wrote. Please, the best survival books are: Mysterious Island (Jules Verne) - the best of them all, Swiss Family Robinson, and of course, Robinson Crusoe and the sequel.

Sorry to trash your favourite book like that :P

Well, what you say won't change my mind. He wrote about a part of Canada I know and hunt. When I read the Hatchet I was 13 like Brian. I was going camping up in Algonquin the next week and my friend gave me that book. I'm happy she let me borrow it. It made my camping trip that much more awesome. Excellent book. That amateur you speak of is a woodsman first, a writer second. Give him some credit. Not everyone has to be a super nerd. Its a book meant for young teens, but as a Woodsman and a hunter I see the value in it. When I have a son, I hope he will value it as much as I have. I've never read another group of fiction books where the only thing I could say about it was "It was too short, I never wanted it to end!!!"


EDIT: I've also got to say, the Hatchet made me strive to become proficient in archery. My dad was teaching me how to use a longbow at the time, and every time I locked the arrow all I could think about was staring that big huuuge moose cow down in Brian's winter with his warbow.

[Reality=Chaos]

*emerges from lurking* Interesting thread this...

I kinda favour the "occasional lost Carthaginian trader* theory.... There's no doubt in my mind that had America been discovered and had those discoverers actually made it back, the Carthaginians would have set aside there fear of the open sea, but since there's no historical evidence in classical sources it just not very plausible.

I like the idea of a couple of Phoenician ships being blown of course and get marooned in the americas


@ Fluvius: I'm not familiar with that idea, but it sounds plausible enough. Point is there is a lot of coast hugging involved in that... so the fact that they got there, tells nothing about their ability to actually cross the atlantic