Please keep the discussion polite, everyone.

I am quite willing to believe that the Romans could have sailed to America, but if contact was extensive enough to leave a serious footprint we would have known more about. Not necessarily from primary sources, but from archaeological finds and casual references. However, if it's just scattered coins and a statue then it doesn't suggest a clear time-line or base of operations: and that either means long-lasting, widespread contact or randomly planted artefacts. Given the lack of corroborating evidence I am inclined to think the latter. If planting these artefacts wasn't an accident, it wouldn't be the first time someone forged evidence because he wanted to make a major discovery.

By the way: several of the pictures in this thread were hotlinked. This means we're stealing bandwidth of the hosting website. Please use a dedicated image-host like Imageshack or Photobucket rather than hotlinking. I am not sure if Wikimedia Commons allows hotlinking. Could somebody enlighten me?