5 Explorers Who May Have Actually Discovered America (Before Columbus)

In 1933, archaeologist José García Payón unearthed a small terracotta statue head from an archeology site in Calixtlahuaca, Mexico, and the groundbreaking discovery suggested ancient European civilizations might have reached the Americas centuries before Columbus.

The artifact’s appearance was intriguing, to say the least; its face was bearded, with distinctly foreign characteristics and wearing a shortened cap.

The terracotta head was found under three intact floors of a pre-Columbian pyramid structure. Along with the head were several objects made of gold, copper, turquoise, rock crystal, jet, bone, shell, and pottery. The burial site where the discovery was made was dated between 1476 and 1510 AD.

In 1960, García Payón granted the statue to the National Autonomous University of Mexico to undergo further research. Specialists Romeo H. Hristov and Santiago Genovés studied the ancient statue and even sent it to Bernard Andreae, a German Institute of Archaeology director emeritus in Rome, Italy, who confirmed the small head was a Roman work from the 2nd or 3rd centuries AD.

Andreae concluded: (QUOTE) “[The head] is without any doubt Roman, and the lab analysis has confirmed that it is ancient. The stylistic examination tells us more precisely that it is a Roman work from around the 2nd century AD, and the hairstyle and the shape of the beard present the typical traits of the Severian emperors’ period.”

How exactly could an ancient roman figurine end up in a sealed pre-Columbian burial site is still up for debate. Most world-renowned archaeologists and experts agree that the discovery is probably an elaborate hoax, and that perhaps the head was placed in the ruins during the Spanish occupation of Mexico.

Those supporting the hoax hypothesis cite the lack of archaeological rigor while documenting the discovery and the 30-year lapse between the discovery and the initial research.

However, a minority of experts, including Romeo H. Hristov, argue that the most likely explanation is the drifting of a Roman, Phoenician, or Berber ship to American shores.

Hristov claims that the likelihood of such an event is not far-fetched and is supported by the extensive evidence of Roman travels in the 6th or 5th centuries BC to Tenerife and Lanzarote in the Canaries. Thus, a lost Roman ship drifting into Mexico is entirely plausible.

Another possibility is human error, as archeological standards in 1930s Mexico were considerably less rigorous than they are today.

Still, there is no way to definitively disprove that ancient Romans arrived in Mexico many centuries before Christopher Columbus took the credit for discovering America...

[Imz]

Who remembers when dark5 had no narrator before ages ago.

[johngaltman]

To Discover something, you actually not only need to find it, BUT you need to return and spread the knowledge of its existence.
And you completely missed L'Anse aux Meadows, the actual Viking age settlement in Newfoundland.

[AlyKatIvy]

I was excepting to see Leif Erickson on here. Oh well Hinga Dinga Durgen

[chrisamore]

"in science, credit goes to who convinces the world, not to him whom the idea first occurs" - Francis Darwin

[zombieface]

I'm surprised St. Brendan the navigator was not mentioned. When Scandinavians made first contact on the east coast of North America the natives told them stories of white men with blond hair, wore white cotton and used metal tools and weapons.

[AveryChristy]

The largest collection of ancient Norse runes is in Paraguay. That's because the Norse had a silver trade operation with locals further inland. They left behind their sheep dogs (much treasured by the Inca), runes and settlements. No one believes this because the archeologist who studied this was from South America and published his findings in Portuguese.

[sharonrigs]

I lived on the west (wet) coast of Vancouver Island for many years.
I can confirm that Japanese items regularly wash up on our beaches.
Big, glass fishing net floats were very common for a long time. They were beautiful and came in many colours

[roccocoyote]

I "discovered" America in 1996! - it's quite big from what I could tell. I was impressed by the sheer size and the beauty of it's nature and there was all kinds of great food you could get with paper slips from the management department called "bucks"!

[HoosierThrottle]

IMO, it's really not a discovery unless other people are made aware of it. Being shipwrecked and never letting your home port know of your discovery, is just being shipwrecked and assimilating into the local culture.

[premierlitnant]

I believe that Columbus is the first documented explorer of the Americas. But there have been countless of undocumented explorers before Columbus.

[tadcastertory]

The Chinese were briefly a seafaring empire in the early fifteenth century and there is some evidence that they reached the Americas.
Chinese fishermen are known to have fished off California in the nineteenth century and there is little reason to believe that they were not present earlier.
English fishermen are also known to have fished off Newfoundland in the early 1500s. Long before Canada existed.

[billsullivan]

In 1973 on Marine Corps Base, Camp Pendleton, California, while doing amphibious exercises a buddy of mine, who knew of my interest in everything ancient said he found a cave in the sea bluffs and said there appeared to be artifacts inside- when time allowed, we investigated the sight and discovered a large whale jawbone, with a few noticeable human bones along with a bronze mirror, a bronze incense burner and coins inside the incense burner. We contacted our company commander to report the discovery and eventually an archaeologist from San Diego State University was called in to investigate and that’s all we ever heard about it. I did pocket two of the coins and years later found out, through research that they were from the late Han dynasty!! Crazy, but true.

[justinspicyrhino]

I think historians are starting realize that many different people's have been to the Americas long before Columbus.

[medicmule]

At this point in history, it is well accepted that Christopher Columbus certainly wasn't the first European to touch the Americas. That being said, there are Egyptian mummies that have been found with tobacco and have tested positive for coca. Being these plants are exclusive to the Americas, I have never seen a satisfactory explanation in the mainstream.

[grayknight]

I’m sure some foreign people drifted sailed made its way to the Americas. But the key 🔑 is to make it back 🔄 home.

[caniaccharlie]

The Japanese fishermen almost sounds assuredly plausible since it was still happening in the 19th century.

[matthewmann]

I am boggled and baffled that Eskimo And Aleut explorers are not given mentions much of there meet ups with Amerindians.

[crssm]

Here was me thinking a bald eagle holding a root beer between its talons was the first explorer to discover America

[paulpowell]

When columbus was a boy his father took him along on a sail to Norway. There the Young columbus seen an old map, A viking Map showing land to the west. He never forgot that map.

[tatankacleary]

St Brendan also …. No mention… Tim Severn did reconstruct of his boat and documented it