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Africans visited North America 2500 years ago

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WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Thursday, April 10, 1975
page 21

This is a 1966 photograph of Prof. Thomas Lee, a Laval University archaeologist who is working in collaboration with other scientists to determine if, as they believe, North America was visited by North Africans 500 years before the birth of Christ.

A working drawing of an inscription found on three stones in Quebec is being used by scientists developing the theory that North Africans were in this country centuries ago. Inscriptions such as this were deciphered recently.

QUEBEC (CP)
A Laval University archeologist said Tuesday that recently deciphered inscriptions on three stones found in Quebec province's Eastern Townships indicate that North America was visited by North Africans 500 years before the birth of Christ.

Prof. Thomas Lee said the stones were discovered "sometime early in this century" but the Egyptian inscriptions were written in a Libyan script not deciphered until last year.

"The Libyans would have been operating, in my opinion, out of Carthage, which was a Phoenician city at the time", Prof. Lee said.

Two of the stones, on display at a museum at Sherbrooke Seminary in Sherbrooke, Que., 100 miles east of Montreal, are reported to have been found in a field near Bromptonville, five miles north of Sherbrooke. The other is believed to have been discovered on a hill overlooking Sherbrooke.

Prof. Lee said he believes an ancient expedition reached the area after sailing up the St. Francis River, which flows into the St. Lawrence River, southwest of Trois-Rivieres, Que.

The inscriptions were deciphered by Prof Howard Fell of the department of comparative zoology at Harvard University.

He said in a telephone interview from Cambridge, Mass., that the Canadian stones are compatible with at least three discoveries of similar artifacts in the United States and Mexico. Others have been found in South America.

Prof. Lee, whose attention was drawn to the stones in 1966, said he was told the two stones found near Brompton-ville were lying face-to-face, thus preserving the inscriptions.

He said one stone is in scribed: "Expedition that crossed in the service of Lord Hiram to conquer territory." The other of the pair discovered together bears the inscription: "Record by Hata, who attained this limit on the river, moored his ship and engraved this rock."

Prof. Lee said the stone which was found alone reads: "Hanno, son of Tamu, reached this mountain landmark."

He said the half inch deep inscriptions are written in a format called Boustrophedon, in which "you read the first line left to right and the next line right to left."

The stones measure 22 by 32 inches and are of limestone, Prof. Lee said.

He said the earliest mention of the stones he has seen is in a letter dated Dec. 26, 1910, but he "got the impression the stones were not in the museum at that time." A spokesman for the museum said it has had the stones since at least 1910.

Prof. Fell is a member of the Epigraphic Society, which studies ancient inscriptions and includes members in 16 countries.

He said he believes that "barabarous lands at the end of the world" referred to in similar inscriptions in Spain definitely describe the Americas. He said evidence supporting an earlier discovery of the Americas than that of the Vikings has also been found in Spain and North Africa.

He said he believes the people who left the stones made "at least two" expeditions, including one to the Yucatan area of Mexico. One stone found there "gives the area its name", he said.

He said he will explain the finds at a conference at Woods Hole Institute at Woods Hole, Mass., next Monday.

published 19th july 2014

Africans visited North America 2500 years ago

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