Did Phoenicians discover America?
Thank you for the Question I too am a skeptic. In fact, scholars are well aware of these claims, and very few take them very seriously. A few problems, and things to keep in mind: 1) In general — beware of archaeological hoaxes, esp. of things showing up ‘far from home’. There have been quite a number of them in the past two centuries. (How do you come up with “Phoenician inscriptions” in the Americas? Well, one way would be to copying from the many KNOWN inscriptions.) 2) Purported mentions of “cities in the Amazon” in ancient Greek texts (and just how did we get from Phoenician to Greek here?) need to be looked at closely. It is easy to read a lot into texts, to read obscure references and imagine things that ‘sound like’ New World places, etc 3) Numerous features in the inscription at Pedra da Gavea (the one you cite) fail to match up with known Phoenician inscriptions (esp. those close to its supposed time) Examples: a) it refers to “Phoenicians”, something these people did NOT ca
