Here's some information about the very interesting Galapagos pottery. Ancient American pottery found there is extremely revealing. It makes it very clear that ancient Native Americans were very skilful navigators.
For the most recent research in this area, please consult my other webpage at trends.ca.
===>>>Here are additions to this "transoceanic page" as added in April '97:
It seems like new interest is being expressed recently in some major media outlets (US NEWS & WORLD REPORT, THE NEW-YORK TIMES) about trans-Pacific diffusion of cultural ideas. Specifically, a connection between the Chinese and the Mesoamerican writing systems is being proposed by some scholars. Detailed stories appeared about links between the ancient Chinese Shang script, and the Olmec writing system. All this is very interesting. Click here to see some articles about it.
The following is a selection of my articles that were mostly posted in August of '96. They were all a part of a larger discussion that was going on in these newsgroups at the time. The discussion was about culture diffusion, and specifically about across-the-ocean diffusion that was proposed by a number of scholars to explain why so many characteristics of ancient South and Central American civilizations seem so similar to those of Asian and Pacific Islands civilizations. I will give the names of two of those scholars here: Joseph Campbell (his work is the easiest to find for those who are interested in these subjects), and Joseph Needham -- the leading Cambridge University historian of China, and a noted authority on the history of science and technology in general (he passed away, being quite an old man, not so long ago). I am discussing these matters with scholars, most of them holding University appointments, who post their opinions in the newsgroups (Internet discussion forums) such as sci.archaeology.
The articles are mostly self explanatory. I haven't edited them much or hardly at all. The opinions to which I reply are marked as quoted text. If anyone wishes to see the opinions of my opponents in full -- they can easily find their articles by doing a search using DEJANEWS research service (it's linked to my homepage).
I've selected these articles mostly because they contain quite a bit of material that is hard to find -- one needs access to a major University research library to find these sources. The articles follow in chronological order -- and discussions develop naturally in their own way.
Here's the list of articles. Click on the links to go to them:
Best wishes to all,
Yuri.
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