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“God cannot alter the past, though historians can.”
Novelist Samuel Butler’s words about the shifting sands of time took on new meaning after two major announcements over a couple of days in late September.
Both discoveries, if confirmed, would significantly alter our understanding of the past.
In one case, extremely old footprints preserved in New Mexico’s White Sands National Park appear to show that humans spread across the North American continent far earlier than generally accepted.
Photos of fossilized footprints in New Mexico's White Sands National Park, estimated to be almost 23,000 years old. (National Park Service)
An archaeologist not involved in unearthing the fossils told the New York Times that it’s “probably the biggest discovery about the peopling of America in a hundred years.”
The other finding is no less dramatic. A study of the writings of Galvaneus Flamma, a14th century Italian monk, indicates that sailors in Christopher Columbus’ hometown of Genoa knew of America’s existence 150 years before its 1492 “discovery.”
Of course, evidence abounds that numerous Norse expeditions reached the tip of North America more than 1,000 years ago. That includes the archaeological site of L’Anse aux Meadows, a settlement on the Canadian island of Newfoundland.
However, no evidence existed that anyone outside Viking lands had heard of what was later christened as America until Columbus arrived there at the close of the 15th century.
What did Italian seafarers know about America in the 1300s?
Flamma’s writings, circa 1345, reportedly describe a land called “Marckalada” in Latin that’s located to the west of Iceland and Greenland.
Professor Paolo Chiesa, the author of the study of Flamma’s writings published in the peer-reviewed journal Terrae Incognitae, says that land is clearly Markland, which Icelandic sources identify as part of Labrador or Newfoundland.
Chiesa believes Flamma’s account is “the first mention of the American continent in the Mediterranean region.”
Chiesa describes how the monk claims that he learned about Marckalada from the oral testimony of “sailors who frequent the seas of Denmark and Norway.” Flamma was based in Milan, but is likely to have studied for his doctorate in Genoa, the nearest port.
While the Genoese may not have traveled as far as Iceland or Denmark, they traded with Scottish, British, Danish, and Norwegian sailors. They could have heard the tales from them of what later became the “New World.”
Does this change the Columbus narrative?
Barring new discoveries, we don’t know what Columbus knew. However, awareness of Markland could explain why Columbus, who was Genoese, might have been willing to risk his life setting off into what most scientists then considered an almost endless ocean.
As a comedic aside, one could imagine a very different audience between Queen Isabella I of Castile and the man known in Castilian as Cristóbal Colon:
Isabella: “Qué pasa Cristóbal?”
Columbus: “Hey! I’ve got an idea to make you mucho dinero.”
Isabella: “I like dinero, Cris. I’ve got to get money from somewhere to keep Spain united, fund the Inquisition, and kick out Muslims and Jews. It’s all costing me a fortune.”
Columbus: “Well, you need dinero to make dinero, so I have a business proposal for you.”
Isabella: “Money’s short around here, Cris. We’re spending an awful lot of reales and maravedís to force everybody to be good Catholics.”
Columbus: “Money won’t be an issue if you invest in my project and finance some ships and crews.”
Isabella: “How do I know you’re not just selling me some swampland in Florida? By the way, that’s a very hot place with lots of bugs that I had a nightmare about last night.”
Columbus: “If I find a place like that, I’ll call it Florida for you.”
Isabella: “So, how are you going to produce a solid return on my investment?”
Columbus: “First, it takes forever to get to the Indies by going east over land. But we know the world is round, so why don’t I take some ships, head west, and open sea routes that can get us there faster?
Isabella: “So you could get us more of those great spices and luxury goods cheaper and more quickly?
Columbus: “Bingo!” [He likely would not have said that because U.S. bingo was not invented until 1929, although similar games started appearing in Italy in the 1500s.]
Isabella: “So, how else are you planning to get me a good ROI?”
Columbus: “On the way to the Indies, I can stop off at Marcolandia!”
Isabella: “What’s that?”
Columbus: “You know those barbarians from the north? The Vikings? They found a land they call Markland that’s much further west than any other land. It’s on the way.”
Isabella: “OK. Head out to the final frontier, explore strange new worlds, and boldly go where no man has gone before.”
From silliness to seriousness, Flamma’s writings could change everything. If Columbus were aware of the Viking discoveries, history must question how that affected one of the most consequential events in human history.
And the mysterious footprints?
Over the past half century, archaeologists have found increasing evidence that humanity’s presence in North America began much earlier than what the conventional wisdom holds. Those findings include a report of 26,000-year-old stone tools found in Mexico.
Painting by Karen Carr imagines teenagers leaving footprints along a lake near mammoths almost 23,000 years ago in the area of New Mexico's White Sands National Park. (National Park Service)
But the thousands of human footprints discovered in White Sands National Park may be the most powerful. Found alongside footprints of mammoths, dire wolves, camels, and giant sloths, they were left when humans walked over damp ground near a lake.
A trench dug into the brown gypsum soil on a lake playa in New Mexico's White Sands National Park reveals human footprints below the surface. (National Park Service)
The footprints were then covered by layers of sediment, including grass seeds. Researchers carbon-dated the seeds and determined that the oldest footprints, of a human and a mammoth, were located under a seed bed that was almost 22,800 years old. That would indicate humans traveled across North America many thousands of years earlier than previously believed.
So, what does it all mean?
Major revisions of the historical narrative can cause extensive ripple effects.
In an excellent piece, my Bulletin colleague Andrew Revkin addresses the significance of the discovery of the footprints. He points out that it is an example of why it’s important to avoid what he calls “narrative capture.” The same can be said for the monk’s writings about Markland.
As Andrew argues, it’s easy to get “seduced by a story line,” and that “compelling but faulty narratives are hard to kill.”
Once a faulty narrative takes hold, other historical accounts, based on the unsound history, are developed. When a new discovery contradicts the original theory, it all comes crashing down like a house of cards.
For example, the White Sands footprints could draw into question another announcement that received lots of publicity earlier this year.
After the discovery of the oldest remains of a domestic dog in the Americas, researchers argued that dogs accompanied the first waves of human settlers from Siberia into North America. But the remains were only 10,000 years old.
How does that gel with the White Sands fossils, which indicate humans may have inhabited North America far, far earlier?
When it comes to the Columbus case, I suspect many people still believe that he set out on his first voyage to prove that the world is round.
Christopher Columbus at the Convent of La Rabida, engraving after the painting by Felipe Manso in The Spanish and American Illustration, 1892. (PHAS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
That common misconception arose greatly thanks to author Washington Irving.
The master storyteller who brought us “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” also spun a fictional tale in “The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus,” at least when it came to the explorer’s motivations.
The portrayal of Columbus challenging troglodyte scientists to prove the earth is round was so compelling that the faulty narrative took hold as fact.
But, as historian Jeffrey Burton Russell wrote in 1997, “with extraordinary few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat.”
Who knows how many mistaken historical accounts flowed from the invented Irving story?
In the end, quoting Andrew Revkin, the White Sands fossils and the monk’s writings provide “more sobering evidence that it's best to think of textbooks, and history itself, as a series of crude, ephemeral tokens, not a firm reference” because “knowledge of the human journey so far remains a work in progress.”
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Cover photo: Liebig Company collectible card series portraying Christopher Columbus seeking patronage for his first journey across the Atlantic from Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile on Jan. 15, 1492. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)