Did the Phoenicians discover America before Christopher Columbus?

Today, historians believe that the Vikings set foot in North America before Christopher Columbus, others claim that the Phoenicians were the first sailors to discover the Americas.

Who found Americas first?

Leif Eriksson Day commemorates the Norse explorer believed to have led the first European expedition to North America. Nearly 500 years before the birth of Christopher Columbus, a band of European sailors left their homeland behind in search of a new world.

When did Phoenicians reach America?

Beale aims to demonstrate that the Phoenicians – a Semitic civilisation that prospered between 1500BC and 300BC on the Mediterranean coast – sailed to the Americas first, CNN reported. “It is one of the greatest voyages of mankind and if anyone could have done it [before Columbus], it was the Phoenicians,” said Beale.

Who reached America?

The explorer Christopher Columbus made four trips across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain: in 1492, 1493, 1498 and 1502. He was determined to find a direct water route west from Europe to Asia, but he never did. Instead, he stumbled upon the Americas.

Who first invaded America?

The invasion of the North American continent and its peoples began with the Spanish in 1565 at St. Augustine, Florida, then British in 1587 when the Plymouth Company established a settlement that they dubbed Roanoke in present-day Virginia.

Who sent Christopher Columbus to discover America?

He has long been called the “discoverer” of the New World, although Vikings such as Leif Eriksson had visited North America five centuries earlier. Columbus made his transatlantic voyages under the sponsorship of Ferdinand II and Isabella I, the Catholic Monarchs of Aragon, Castile, and Leon in Spain.

When did the Phoenicians discover the New World?

In 1996, McMenamin proposed that Phoenician sailors discovered the New World c. 350 BC. The Phoenician state of Carthage minted gold staters in 350 BC bearing a pattern in the reverse exergue of the coins, which McMenamin interpreted as a map of the Mediterranean with the Americas shown to the west across the Atlantic.

What is the Phoenician theory of colonization?

Archaeological theory. A Phoenician ship carved on a sarcophagus, 2nd century AD. The theory of Phoenician discovery of the Americas suggests that the earliest Old World contact with the Americas was not with Columbus or Norse settlers, but with the Phoenicians (or, alternatively, other Semitic peoples) in the first millennium BC.

Are there any books about Phoenician History in New Mexico?

A Discourse Concerning Sanchoniathon’s Phoenician History by Henry Dodwell from 1691. Also, let’s not discount the presence of Jewish refugees in the earliest waves of Spanish colonists and settlers in the 16th or 17th century in today’s New Mexico one of the farthest outposts in the empire of New Spain.

Did the Phoenicians invent the alphabet?

All the forms of alphabetical writing used at present in Europe and Southwestern Asia came directly or indirectly from that anciently invented by the race to which the Phoenicians belonged, and they have traces of a common relationship which can easily be detected.