http://www.historychannel.com/rome/

Click on the "Did you know" tab and scroll to the last fact.

Personally, I think the Spanish explores were responsible.

I didn't see a "Did you know" button on my browser.

I have heard of someone finding a Roman coin lying in the street in California, evidently a collector kept it as a pocket piece and lost it.

Roman coins have been found in British shipwrecks off of Bermuda, they were carried in Thames river mud that was used as ballast for ships.

Thanks for the link, Silver.
http://www.historychannel.com/rome/

"Roman coins have been dug up in America, suggesting that perhaps the Vikings or Columbus weren't the first Europeans to visit the New World. The coins were found in locations as far afield as Texas, Venezuela and Maine. One stash was found buried in a mound in Round Rock, Texas. The mound is dated to approximately 800 A.D. In the town of Heavener, Okla., a bronze tetradrachm bearing the profile of Emperor Nero was found in 1976. The coin was originally struck in Antioch, Syria, in 63 A.D."

It is true that ancient coins turn up all over, often lost by collectors, or others. It has been suggested that many fell from the pockets of US soldiers and sailors who looted them from Europe in WWII and lost them making out on the beach back home. For all of that, the fact is that MORE of these are found on the East Coast than on the West.

Ballast from English ships is responsible for some of them, also -- but not all of them.

It is also true that Roman coins circulated in some isolated parts of Spain to the late middle ages, 1500s.

For all of that, the fact is that Roman coins in America are most logically attributed to Romans.

When I was living in Albuquerque (2002-2003), a woman with a home on the Rio Grande (Rio Rancho neighborhood) brought a Roman coin to the local coin club meeting. They guys pointed her to the president. She was told that he is a high school history teacher. He told her that some farmer probably dropped it. I could not get her attention after that. I did see the coin, a mid-3rd century debased antontinionus, I think. When that coin was struck, the Rio Grande was navigatable all the up to Albuquerque and farther.

The Catheginians circumnavigated Africa.

Ancient peoples went from the Mediterranean to Britain for tin.

Ancient coins have been found in the Azores.

The real mystery is why anyone considers this a mystery.

Slightly unrealated but making the same kind of point. South American temples (and burial mounds) with Egyptian Pyramids.

It's often been said there was a link, i did watch a program on it one and i'm sure they said there was evidence of possible trade between the two. I think it was something in the heiroglyphics, something like a flower being depicted in some Egyptian hieroglyphs that only grew in South America.


I was dismissive of it generally, but it's certainly not impossible.

If I have my facts right, the people of Lake Titicaca built the same kind of boats as are built on the Nile.

I am sure that I have read about giant stone heads with Negro faces in the Yucatan, looking out East toward Africa, called the Olmec Heads, perhaps.

The book you need is Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl. You can find the book at the library or in almost any used store. You can read about the expedition on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kon-Tiki
The expedition took place in 1947.
The book came out in 1950.
The 1961 movie won an Academy Award.

Although i used to be very dismissive of it, latterly i've begun to think it's very likely that South America and Egypt had some contact.

Of course much of it could be coincidence and mere speculation (if you look for patterns you might find them even though they are misleading). For instance what of the Aztec/Olmec religions? Perhaps they had a thing about the East, like Christian burials are done facing Eastwards.

Bearing in mind they were often sun cults and the sun rose in the East. So the east was where their God came from every morning.

Still i can't help thinking there's more to it than that!

I don't think it is too unlikely that a Carthaginian or Roman vessel could have made it across the Atlantic. But, I do doubt that there was any purposeful or regular occurrence of such events. More like shipwrecks and lost crews. It's hard to imagine that regular contact would have been lost to the historical record.

Roman coins have been found in excavations in Viet-Nam in the last 20 yrs. Surely they did not get there recently, having been found in long covered ground, but they must have made their way on the Silk Road.

Conversely there is some suggestion that Chinese may have visited Central America early in the last millenium.

The book you want is 1421: the Year China Discovered America.
http://www.1421.tv/

Actually what I am remembering is some suggestion that the Chinese had traded with Central Americans, this was before this 1421 Book came out. There were some archeaological finds in Central American which have baffled researchers as to the origin of the objects.

If it is true it is amazing, otherwise it is just conjecture.

But you have to consider that lots and lots of history is lost because ships were lost on return voyages etc and records were subsequently lost later on in wars, fires etc.

I WILL always think of things which are not readily spoken when it comes to the ancients. Face the facts, we can not build the pyramids today, so how were they built so precise back then? Much much more to earth history than our governments or religion will ever want us to know!

Get out the tin foil beenies!

Well, fact facing is always good, but saying that we couldn't build the pyramids today is far from facing facts. I've heard several people make that same claim and it isn't even sensible to say, let alone true.

The Egyptian pyramids are rather advanced engineering feats for their time, but they're simply large masonry structures, easily replicated with modern technology.

I fancy he meant that we cannot build the pyramids today using the methods the Egyptians used. But if we had a few thousand slaves, no Health and Safety regulations and alot of time then i'm sure it would be possible using methods that we believe may have been used by the Egyptians.

Same goes for Stonehenge.

Since there's no record of the Egyptians' construction method, that part is surely true, but laying hewn stone is simple and modern quarrying and construction methods would make the pyramids easy to replicate in a reasonable amount of time. Slave labor would be terribly inefficient now as it must have been then, so it doesn't really even come into the equation. What is most remarkable is the positioning of the pyramids and their alignment to observable astronomical constellations.

Stonehenge could be replicated very easily in a short time as well. Multiton cranes work wonders for handling large stones. ;-)

With Stonehenge; I meant if you had to do it using prehistoric technology!