On 11/8/05, P. J. Alling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Could have been the first to discover America, there's also arguments > for Celtic Monks,
St. Brendan? His exaggerations of what he saw on his voyage make one skeptical about his arrival on these shores - or at least make one question the reliability of his reports. Portuguese and or British Fishermen, Certainly they were fishing off the Grand Banks, and may have stopped off in the new world to dry cod or fix ships/gather provisions. But there's no evidence that they set up any permanent settlements. and Bronze age > traders... Don't know about them. > (We won't even begin to discuss possible Chinese explorers in the Pacific). Don't know about them either, but they were so technologically and culturally advanced as compared to Europe in the middle ages, they likely could have had they wanted to. The only thing that would give me pause is that they were not the exploring type, were they? (someone correct me if I'm wrong). I thought that they were rather solipsistic, even to the point of xenophobia, and pretty much didn't care what went on outside their territory as they thought the Rest Of the World to be not worth worrying about. In terms of the Vikings in Newfoundland, AFAIK, the evidence is that they're the first to have set up permanent settlements in the new world. Then, they left. Can't say as I blame them. <g> -frank -- "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." -Henri Cartier-Bresson
