It is also the case that there is no real sign of any Egyptian presence along the Maghreb. It is the Phoenicians who are showing up first in leaving the signs of the continued trading presence.
it makes very little sense, the idea of trade across the Atlantic by the ancient Egyptians and yet leave essentially zero traces in the Maghreb or the Spanish coastal areas where there is the archaelogical evidences of the Phoenicians and then of course sustained by the Carthiginians.
Monkeys migrated to the New World about 40 million years ago. At that time, the Atlantic was much narrower. Also it’s thought there may have been mid-ocean islands, perhaps because sea level was lower than now. So the migration could have been a series of shorter ocean crossings. There may have been a land bridge, although I don’t think there’s much geology in support of that.
I see the idea that epidemic diseases is mentioned. I am not clear on the timing of the proposed Egyptian-American exchange, but weren’t some of the diseases that plagued the New World in the 1500s not even around during the time of the Egyptians. This link suggests the earliest known smallpox evidence, for example, from around 300 BCE - how does that square with the timing of the OP theory? Is measles even more modern? Cholera? I don’t know that these diseases existed at the time of the Egyptians.
I am mentioning this as it is assumed any contact between Old and New world peoples would be lethal for the New, but if the disease did not exist in antiquity (or was unknown to the explorers in question), then you could rule out spread of disease as evidence of contact in some cases, depending on the timing.
I always wondered about the Vikings and their assumed contact with the “skraelings” of the Arctic, and presumably with other communities further south. If they carried smallpox, as an example, then the epidemics of the later Old world arrivals would have been less extensive? Perhaps the contacts they did have were brief and the local natives died and rotted quickly so the disease did not go very far?
I agree that contact is exceedingly unlikely. But hypothetically, they could have gone from Tartessos. Of course, there are a number of civilizations who’d be slightly less exceedingly unlikely. Phoenicians, Minoans, and the Tartessians themselves.
You have a point there, disease is not a solid indicator of a brief contact, like with the Norse (NOT Vikings!) and the “skraelings”. The Norse had little friendly contact with then, from what we know.
Ooops. Norse! :smack:
Thank you. But I like to keep pedantic corrections like this friendly and non-snarky. I hope i wasn’t snarky.
For epidemic diseases to really get rolling you need a fairly high population density, which neither the Norse nor the native populations in Greenland or that part of North America had. I doubt whether smallpox could have persisted in the Greenland colony even if a smallpox sufferer had survived the trans-Atlantic voyage, nor would it have spread very far in the native populations.
Smallpox spread like wildfire once it had been introduced by the Cortes expedition because of the very high population density of central Mexico.
The Norse had more contact with the “skraelings” than is recorded in the sagas. Apparently they traded quite a bit, usually metal for furs and walrus ivory. Tanfield Valley on Baffin Island was likely one of their trading posts. There probably were others.
Unfortunately research on this is currently suspended, or at least was a few years ago.
Or epidemic diseases wasn’t endemic at all in the Viking population that came to Vinland - the first recorded smallpox epidemic in Iceland was in 1241, centuries later. Measles, another big post-Columbian killer, didn’t even really exist as an epidemic human disease yet.
Epidemic diseases of that sort - smallpox, bubonic plague, measles -are really a thing of concentrated populations. Not a culture of isolated steadings like Iceland and Greenland had.
Cite for this? Everything I know about West African shipping of that time period references large dugout canoes, which, yeah - technically canoes could cross the Atlantic (see: Polynesians) but West African canoes weren’t usually sailed and IMO don’t merit the name “ship”. So perhaps you have different vessels in mind?
yes agree.
In this time period the major economic trading was inwards, the Sahara focused and had been so for the centuries. There was essentially zero economic motivations for the development of the open sea going vessals for a state like the Mali.
Yes. These infectious diseases don’t last long in small populations because everyone in the group either acquires the immunity or dies. And let’s not forget the role of the climate. Canada and Scandinavia are both known for their harsh winters. We know the Scandinavians in places like Iceland and Greenland were pretty much stuck on their homesteads for six months out of the year. Likewise, the natives in modern Canada probably did not travel much during their winters. When trade and travel are minimal, the disease has a much greater chance to burn itself out. (eg During winter everyone in a village either becomes immunes or dies, and the disease doesn’t have the opportunity to jump to a new village) Places like Central America had favorable climates that allowed people to trade and travel year-round, and their highly urbanized and robust populations allowed the disease to constantly find new hosts.
That’s true of deadly diseases like smallpox, but a really successful disease will have only minimal impact on its host.
eg roughly 2/3 of humans have HSV-1. Though smallpox had a good run for millennia before Jenner got around to messing with it, wiping out half a billion people in the 20th century alone; if I were a mad scientist designing such things I would call that a reasonable success.
But how deadly a disease is depends also on how long it’s been evolving with a given population. Smallpox was even more deadly in the Americas than it was in Europe, and Native American peoples succumbed to diseases like measles that were rarely fatal to Europeans.
I’m sure Chukchees, Evenks, Yakuts, Yukaghirs all have been visiting their aunt living on the other side of the sea every year during the fishing season.
Siberian and Inuit-Aleut peoples lived there before Russians and Brits expanded.
I wonder why we never consider the opposite hypothesis–that people from North America visited the old world. If a Malian canoe could go west, why not a Taino canoe going east?
Read up on trade winds…