Uncharted: A Rediscovered History Of Voyages To The Americas Before Columbus, by Tim Wallace-Murphy and James Martin

For many years now I have been aware of the ubiquity of stories about the various missions of trade and exploration that have involved the Precolumbian world, and this book joins the writings of Louis L’amour, Menizes, and many others, including the author of “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” concerning various voyages to the Americas in the time before Christopher Columbus. I have long stated, at least in conversation with friends about the matter, that any society which could feed and store enough water for a couple month voyage and had seaworthy enough ships to survive the Atlantic would likely have discovered the Americas at some point. Numerous societies in the ancient world had boats that were more impressive than the caravels that Columbus took with him. What is most notable about the voyages before Columbus’ were that previous peoples, from the Egyptians and Phoenicians and Romans to the Norse to the Chinese, came to trade and explore, but the Europeans after Columbus came increasingly to conquer. The authors view this in a negative sense, and it is easy to understand why, not least because in seeking to wipe out Native peoples, it appears that later Europeans may have wiped out earlier European settlers who had done so more peacefully.

This book is a relatively short one at less than 200 pages in 18 chapters of about ten pages apiece on average. Th book begins with a preface, dedications, and a short introduction. The authors begin with a discussion about the distinction between fantasy and fact in the accounts of voyages to the Americas (1), before discussing the presence of maize corn in Egypt millennia before they are supposed to be there (2), the voyages of classical Greece and Rome (3), the Celts (4), and the Viking voyages (5), as well as a brief discussion of Chinese and Japanese and Polynesian contact (6) with the Americas. The authors then spend a couple of chapters talking about the maritime trade in Europe during the Middle Ages in the Mediterranean (7) and in the western Atlantic coasts (8), before the rest of the book focuses on the efforts of the Earl of Orkney, Prince St. Clair, and his actions in the late 1300s. The author discusses the Baron’s rise to power (9), his early actions as the Earl of Orkney in consolidating his power over the Shetlands with Venetian help (10), his exploration of the North Atlantic with the help of the Zeno family (11), as well as his efforts to make peace with the local people there (12). There is a further discussion of the voyage to Vinland (13), a detailed discussion of the controversy of the Newport tower (14), a larger discussion of dissention and debate within the American scholarly community about Precolumbian finds (15), a celebration of history (16), the controversy over the Zeno narrative (17), and some closing harsh comments against Columbus (18), before notes and an index.

One of the aspects of this book that is particularly notable is the way that the authors have points they are trying to make, but that this book is strangely focused on one particular aspect of the European voyages before Colombus, and that is a specific set of voyages made by a specific Scottish-Norse prince in the late 1300s, who apparently settled in the area of New England and was responsible for a mysterious and controversial tower in Newport. I wonder if the authors of this book had that in mind as thee main subject for a book but realized that they did not have enough material to write strictly about that book and then decided to add a few other chapters about other voyages of trade and discovery that were much more secretive because the people engaged in them wanted to keep the Americas secret to preserve their advantage in trade, while Columbus thought he had reached East Asia in error and wanted to brag about what he had found, thus spoiling what had been a secret but mutually beneficial relationship between European and Mediterranean and East Asian merchants and the local indigenous peoples of the Americas, and in the process destroyed most of the native peoples in the process. This is a deeply moving and deeply tragic sort of tale, but it is to be regretted that the authors are more interested in showing their independent status as writers than they are in addressing the real tragedy of the situation that led the Americas to become settler colonies for Europe’s superfluous and struggling population rather than a peripheral trade partner largely left on its own.