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Did the Ancient Greeks Sail to Canada?
Scientists claim the civilisation travelled to Newfoundland and set up colonies to mine gold in the 1st Century nearly a millennium before the Vikings
Daily Mail
February 5, 2018
The ancient Greeks could have reached Canada in 56 AD almost a millennium before the Vikings.
This is according to a controversial study that claims Hellenistic Greeks had such detailed knowledge of astronomy that they were able to pinpoint Atlantic currents that would propel them west.
This idea is based on a study of the text De Facie by Greek biographer and essayist Plutarch, who lived between 46 and 119 AD.
A character in the texts recounts meeting a Greek stranger who had recently returned from a great continent and scientists say this may have been Canada.
Powered by sails and oars, they may have regularly visited Newfoundland, mined gold and set up colonies that thrived for centuries, the study claims.
However, there is no concrete evidence of these trips and many historians and maritime archaeologists have dismissed the work as unfounded.
The ancient Greeks could have reached North America in 56 AD almost a millennium before the Vikings, according to new research. Pictured is the route they might have take
Our intention is to prove, with modern science, that it was possible for this trip to be made, Ioannis Liritzis, an archaeologist from the University of the Aegean told Hakai Magazine as part of an in-depth feature on his research.
These early settlers may have travelled for the sake of finding new lands or riches, researchers say.
They believe some travellers would return home after a brief stay but for others the trip was one way.
Researchers acknowledge that they do not have evidence that these trips were made but believe they were possible, as suggested by the writings of Plutarch.
Plutarch wrote more than sixty in-depth biographies of famous Romans and Greeks, detailed in his writings of Parallel Lives.
This theory is based on evidence from Plutarchs work De Facie, also known as On the Face Which Appears in the Orb of the Moon.
In this work, which became familiar to classicists during the Renaissance, characters discuss whether the moon is another Earth, whether it has life, and other philosophical questions.
One character recounts meeting a stranger who had recently returned from a great continent.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...il-Canada.html
Minoan Greeks had been there much earlier. They were the supreme naval power in the Mediterranean.
Viking ships are derivatives of Mycenaean ships as are Greek ships and they had figureheads. The Argonautica specifically states that Greek ships had figureheads and that the Argo was exceptional in that it his its figurehead facing towards the inside of that ship.
Take a look at the murals of Mycenaean and Minoan ships and you will see that they share the same common design as those of the Vikings and everyone else including the Romans all the way until the end of the middle ages. They were not surpassed until the 16th century.
http://www.artsales.com/Ancient%20Sh...psandCraft.htm
Dragon ships:Spoiler!
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