Romans Actually Might Have Been In America...Sort Of.
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- Опубліковано 21 тра 2024
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See amphorae covered up by the Brazilian government found off the coast!
There was a documentary about Carthaginians fleeing to America after the fall..."the hunt for the lost survivors of csthage"
Columbus landed in what is now Venezuela on his second voyage, and explored the coasts of what are now Ecuador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama on his fourth voyage. Don't we have the crew manifests for all four voyages? Surely we could figure out the likelihood based on the areas the names indicate. But I find it very likely that a Roman ship could have been blown way off course by a storm and ended up adrift in a Transatlantic Current. Is not the Odyssey theorized to have been based on a sailor who did just that, and managed to make it home to tell the tale? And
I wonder if there was someone born in the eastern Roman empire before it fell in 1453 who made it to the new world.
I have thought about this! I've been thinking of writing a short story of a guy who, as a kid, lived in Constantinople during the fall and makes a great escape/journey to Spain, where he rises to the rank of captain over the decades. Then journeys to the new world in 1492 with Columbus, or possibly just after. I like the idea of a Roman dying of old age on the east coast of proto-America.
I think one of the Captains who discovered Florida in the early 1500's was a Greek by the name of Ioannis Phokas (Juan de Fuca to the Spanish) and I'm pretty sure he was born in either Constantinople or Epirus (Byzantine rump state)
Edit: Lol he mentioned Phokas in the video
@@bretalvarez3097No his gramps fled constantinople in 1453 but its close
@@WilliamAppel3 Yes, go for it !
vikings could have taken things manufactured by romans to new world
Something worth noting is that Juan de Fuca (Ioannis Phokas) had a grandfather who fled from Constantinople to the Peloponnese, and then later to Cephalonia. It's speculated that he might have been a descendant of the old Phokas family.
🌎🇬🇷🇪🇦Greek Conquistadors🇬🇷🇪🇦🌏
Jorge Griego (Greece 1504- after 1545)🇵🇦🇵🇪 Participated in the conquest of Peru, following his Greek friend Pedro de Candia.
Pedro de Candia (Crete, Kingdom of Crete 1485-1542 Chupas, Viceroyalty of Peru)🇵🇦🇵🇪
One of the earliest explorers to panama, participated in the conquest of Peru. He is associated with 16 other Greeks in the new world before his death.
Theodoro Griego 🇨🇺🇺🇸
Born in the Aegean sea and later moved to Spain. Landed in North America 1527 following Panfilo de Narvaez. Killed in 1528?
Juan Griego (Phillipines 1571)🇵🇭
Present during the conquest of Philippines 1571.
Juan Griego 1514-1560 🇩🇴🇨🇺🇲🇽🇬🇹
Landed in Santo domingo in 1514 and in 1518 sailed for Cuba. He became a member of the Cortez entrada and after the capture of Tenochtitlan he went to Guatemala. He returned to Mexico (New Spain) and was finally assigned as an encomendero of the province of Atoyaquillo untill his death in 1560.
Juan de Fuca (Kefalonia1536 - 1602 Kefalonia)
🇲🇽🇵🇭🇨🇳🇺🇸🇨🇦
I will let you look him up yourself.
Fuca never recieved his payment in 1596 he decided to return to Kefalonia, his homeland.
🇬🇷 🌎 🇬🇷 🌏🇬🇷
I remember being at high school aged 13, reading the Eastern Roman Empire survived till 1453, and in another chapter there was a story about Columbus discovering americas only 40 years later. I remember it completely stunned me, and it is that moment that triggered my interest in history forever.
If any (Byzantine) Romans made it to America, i think it is the most likely they were either children of Byzantine Merchants that fled to Genoese or Venetian posessions in the Aegean, and then onward towards Italy. Even maybe even more likely if they fled to one of the possesions in Italy that later would become part of the Aragonese possesions: Sicily and Naples.
Maybe they lived in the Byzantine vassal state of Athens, which used to be Aragonese in the 14th century, and their family still had some connections to some Aragonese people.
I think that’s the most likely scenario. There used to be a dialect of Italian native to Brazil that was brought there by northern Italian merchants mainly from Venice in the 1500’s. It’s mostly dead now barring a few old and dying people because the Brazilian government outlawed Italian, German, and Japanese during WWII. It’s definitely within the realm of possibility that someone of Byzantine ancestry who’s parents fled to Italian possessions to later go to the new world.
Lots of them are documented to have fled west to Italy, France, and Spain and Western Europe in general.
I sometimes regret so much that America was colonised by Spain and not Italy…
@@RyanWarriorzZ Latin American cuisine + Italian cuisine. Imagine the gastronomic potential. 😂
@@roddbroward9876 You mean Amerindian cuisine, because "Latin American" is already Amerindian + Spanish
If any Roman ship did actually cross the Atlantic Ocean, it wouldn't have been a naval galley but a merchant sailing ship with a small crew and better seagoing capabilities. One of these might actually have had a chance to make it back.
Wouldn't that be a plot twist - Syphillis actually DOES originate in the New World, but came to the Old World very early this way?
Anyway - it's a very remote possibility. But, even trading vessels are unlikely to have stored enough water for that long of a journey.
It would be extra-slow (compared to Columbus,) because the thing that sped up Colombus' voyage was the new invention of "triangle sail rigging." The triangle sail, lets you sail against the wind via "tacking."
The ancient world's square-sail rigging would doom them to die of thirst.
Either on the way there, or, on the way back.
But - say they transported wine. Possible for a skeleton crew (no pun intended) to make it.
Neverminding thirst, we must overlook 2 major things:
- Trireme-style ships weren't "tall" enough up off the water to withstand big waves.
- Trireme-style ships had no pumps in that era. Only "Archimedes screws" to try to get water out of the hold.
Buckets and screws just don't cut it in tropical storms.
Also, if blown of course by a storm, they'd have storm damage. Likely severe. We're talking snapped-mast.
The tropical storms/hurricanes of that latitude are no joke.
The worst part though - getting back.
If the ship's carpenter was dead - or they didn't have one - the likeliness of competent repairs is slim.
Even if he was alive, he'd have to have iron tools. Native axes made of stone - he'd be like, what the hell is this?
How do we fell a tree with a jade axe!? It's not even sharp.
How am I supposed to carve with flaky rocks? Where's your DRILLS?
Also, to make it back - they'd have to leave the tropics IMMEDIATELY. Like, within the year.
"Screw worm" is a crustacean that burrows into wooden ships. Makes them swiss-cheese.
Every single wooden ship that sailed the tropics of the new world had to leave for the cold waters up by at least the Carolinas - to kill the worm. Each year. (Or towards Antarctica.)
They usually beached, careened, scraped barnacles / repaired the screw-holes in the bottom, next, re-launched.
If enough of the crew died for the water supply to last the survivors - I can't imagine this happening.
Nevermind the elephant in the room - would the natives even ALLOW them to leave?
Not just the FIRST natives they came into contact with. But every subsequent tribe of every island/coastal inlet they'd have to hopscotch to go get back home.
BTW - the route home, without triangle sail. Is leaving Nova Scotia, headed for Britain.
Majorianu's map was correct. The wind/currents are like one big clockwise circle in the Atlantic.
Still - why do the Meso Americans have legends of pale-skinned, bearded "gods" that once came from the Atlantic, and, would return again? Really makes you wonder if at least 1 boat did make it, prior to 1492.
@@KathrynsWorldWildfireTracking If I'm not mistaken, I'm the only person who has read your comment (as it only has one like), which was a fascinating read, by the way. Your knowledge of ancient history and seafaring is truly dizzying. It's a shame you typed that whole thing only for people to not see it. You should curate in a museum or something.
@@benjaminririe2009 *blush* thank you for the kind words. I plan to branch out with History-based channels soon. You can sub and say hi when I'm live. In summer, I'm live most of the time. In between crisis, I'll talk about history, and let my chat guide conversation.
I originally wanted a History channel on UA-cam... before wildfires took the life of a good friend, and my brother almost died in Paradise. I hope the government gets its act together - and I can retire from giving evacuation info to the public. I want to document the tales of elders, and dying ways of life before it's too late.
But they say life is what happens when you're busy making other plans ..
@@KathrynsWorldWildfireTracking Nice. I'll check out your channel. Sorry to hear about your friend.
You didn't mention the supposed and enigmatic Roman shipwreck in Guanabara Bay, Brazil.
Came here to comment this!
My thought on this was of Varangian Guard going to Vinland
Funny how the norse inevitably were going to arrive at the Americas
Either by varangian mercenaries or by vikings
Yeah or rather the Western Northmen Vikings, as the Varangian Guard mostly travelled east, who most definitely made it to Vinland, and there is a lot of indication that they made it to Minnesota, which means they likely would have crossed the Ohio river too.
My thoughts exactly; or, one can imagine two brothers in c. 1000: one travels to Vinland and settles there while the other travels to Constantinople and joins the Varangian Guard
@@thenerdfulspirit Why would they travel from Constantinople to Vinland? That makes no sense.
Far more likely they travelled from Norway, Denmark, Iceland or Greenland to Vinland.
This reminds me of a EU4 mod, where you can escape as the eastern roman empire from europe and sail in the east coast of modern day usa. Also you can find Vinland there, they also survived
I found a Greek coin digging a ditch in West Virginia
No way!
@@JOEROCKYlive Yes a Syracusan Litra from the 4th Century BC
Byzantinium is Roman and there were Byzantines who fled the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and resettled in Renaissance Italy and in Iberia
Byzantine were hardly Roman. They were Greeks not Latin.
@Beyonder1987 Byzantines were the direct continuation of Rome the next thousand years lmfao. The fact that they constituted the Greek east of the Roman Empire hardly disqualifies them from being Roman, what a ridiculous take.
@@TacitusKilgore165 of course it is. Is America the west wing of British empire. If the Arabs caliphates call themselves the Akkadian empire would that mean such. Would you consider Ottoman empire Roman? The ottomans for short period of times did call themselves the new Roman empire
@@Beyonder1987America is NOT the "west wing of the British Empire" as America was Spanish for over 300 years, which is more than the British were ever there for. Plus America is the continent, not the United States. Yet even the United States was partly Spanish, Florida, California, New Mexico and Louisiana after the French, all Spanish.
Ferdinand Paleologus (Italian: Ferdinando Paleologo; June 1619 - 2 October 1670) was a 17th-century English-Italian freeholder, sugar or cotton planter and churchwarden and possibly one of the last living members of the Palaiologos dynasty, which had ruled the Byzantine Empire from 1259 to its fall in 1453. Ferdinand was the fourth and youngest son of Theodore Paleologus, an Italian soldier and assassin who moved to England in the late 16th century.
and is buried in a caribean island
@@globalgaucho yeah I believe he is buried in Barbados. His headstone iirc has the Eastern Roman Eagle on it
Nice vid. Thanks. At 1510 The Spanish were already in some of the Caribbean Islands. Therefore it is possible that the 200 AD style head was taken from or given by the Spanish. Applying Occams Razor, that is the most likely conclusion.
Given trade routes, even the appearance of something indisputable like Roman coins found in the Americas wouldn't necessarily mean anything. Roman coins have been found as far as Japan, carried there through trade. If they've made it to China and Japan, it doesn't take much to imagine some trade to groups further north, who had contact to groups that regularly crossed the Bering Strait, and once they hit Alaska they're in the precolonial American trade routes and could theoretically arrive anywhere.
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There's an example of this sort of thing in Canada. In 2012 an iron axehead was found during excavations of a Huron village near Toronto.Through analysis, they determined the axehead was manufactured in Spain, but had been buried over a century before Europeans first showed up in the area. The leading theory is that it was brought over by Basque whalers to a station they had in Newfoundland-Labrador, was acquired by some locals by whatever means, whether trade, finding it, or stealing it, and it made its way to the Great Lakes region.
Wasn't the basques during their cod fishing golden age on the shores of the Caribbean?
@@keith6706 To be fair, China and Japan is something quite different than Americas, when it comes to trade routs during antiquity or even middle ages... but yes, there's possibility that something from Rome got into China and then Pacific ocean currents brought it on a ship into America - native tribes from Pacific north-west were regularly using iron tools made from scraps they found in Asian shipwrecks long before Europeans showed up. That being said, simple "Spanish guy found a Roman coin/artefact in his youth, kept is a token of luck and in late 15th or early 16th century went to America with it" is always going to be much more probable explanation.
The Basque axe tale is cool, but if there were already other tribes in contact with Europeans, then it's not really surprising - trade between tribes existed and once one tribe acquired European goods, they were more than capable to exchange it with others. IMHO there are probably other artefacts like this, but they weren't found in specific pre-contact context, so they were automatically assumed to be from period after the first local contact with Europeans...
Regarding the Roman ships not suited for the Atlantic. I tend to be more positive about that:
1) Romans sailed from Hispania to Britannia quite regular and those regions are known for harsh weather
2) Merchant ships and navy transport vessels were not galleys but sailing ships
3) Roman merchants and envoys reached today's Vietnam
But I agree any contact was not planned and "those beautiful sailors journeyed to the north and the south americas" but never back.
Were children of people fleeing to Italy already Italians or still Byzantine-Romans?
After the Romans conquered Carthage they ransacked the libraries of Carthage and stole Cathaginian texts on how to increase agricultural yeilds several fold. It wouldn't surprise me if they discovered some old maps, journals, or logs from Hanno the Navigator about his journeys or something similar by someone else. The Carthaginians were direct descendants of the Phonecians who traveled everywhere on trading missions. Why wouldn't the Carthaginans try to go even farther? The Romans may have attempted to retrace their steps.
For similar reasons, all Mediterranean ships were bad at open ocean sailing.
Punic sailors did sail around the coast of Africa a great distance though. At the time, that was a much more logical direction to explore, because it was manageable by their ships and they also knew for certain that something was south of the Sahara.
Yeah I think that Egyptian pharaohs of the 26th Dynasty hired Phoenician sailors and they actually did sail around whole Africa. But it took them several years as I read somewehere that they needed to stop several times to actually grow crops to have enough supplies... The boats they used in Mediterranean were prone to sink in rough weather, especially the warships of that age like triremes which they usually needed to beach for a night. Worked sufficiently well in Aegean where there is always an island nearby, but just look at how many ships did the Romans lose due to storms durung the First Punic war. And this is still relatively calm Med we're talking about not the North Atlantic...
@@ThutUPB Speaking of Egyptians... There was ethnologist by the name of Thor Heyerdahl who sailed across the Atlantic back in the 1970s in the reconstruction of a papyrus boat. He wanted prove it was possible for ancient peoples to travel across the Atlantic. On his second attempt he successfully made it sailing from Morocco to Barbados. So don't be too quick to dismiss ancient sea craft. Just because it's very unlikely and probably wasn't very common doesn't mean it wasn't possible.
@@ThutUPBsource
The last person a Roman ever saw died in the 1600's
Wut
You have a fixation for triremes. They were mainly war ships, not fit for high sea navigation, requiring constant steps in seaport to sustain the huge number of men. For high sea navigation, and especially for commercial navigation, other kind of ships were used, bigger ships based on sails.
Indeed, Roman merchantmen certainly existed. The wrecks of many have been found.
The Empire never dies, only goes through bottle necks and mutates
True Roman empire is dead. Even the Romans peoples are gone. Latin is an extinct spoken language.
Now, this would make a pretty cool Movie, A Roman ship gets lost at sea, some of the crew just barely survive by fishing & probably resorting to cannibalism, & then make it to the new world & try to survive and maybe even try to return home............. but they never will.........
In the northwest of America, there is a body of water called the Strait of Juan de Fuca, named after Ioannis Phokas, a Byzantine navigator serving with the Spanish that first sailed and documented the waters.
Azores islands for sure.
It’s important to remember that the English also brought Roman-era artifacts with them when they settled in the modern-day United States.
At Jamestown, for instance, they have found a number of Roman-era artifacts; namely an Oil Lamp dating between the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. There were also Roman road cobblestones found at the site, which had been used by the colonists as foundations for some of the structures during the Early Fort period.
So, many artifacts uncovered at the native sites likely were brought by Europeans during the colonial period and may have been either traded with the natives or acquired through hostile means (I.e. raiding a colonial settlement and stealing whatever looked valuable).
It's interesting that something I had never heard of until yesterday was the Equestrian Statue of Corvo island in in the Azores. When the Portuguese first found the island in 1452, they saw an equestrian statue on a ridge very visible from sea. The explorers landed and went to the statue, it was described as a "rock' statue of a nude rider with a cloak, one hand outstretched and the other on the mane. It was described as worn and aged. There was an inscription on the pedestal but was unreadable. When the island was settled, it was taken down and shipped to Portugal but but what happened to it after that is unknown. It is now lost if it existed. Some charts from the period call it the island of the statue. The description is very Roman.
" This image, which all came out massively from the same slab, was ordered by King D. Manuel to take it natural, by one of his servants, who was called Duarte D'Armas ; and after he saw the design, he sent an ingenious, natural man from the city of Porto , who had traveled a lot in France and Italy , to go to this island, to, with equipment that he took, remove that antique; had made last winter. But the truth was that they broke it by bad luck; and they brought pieces of it, namely: the man's head and the right arm with the hand , and a leg , and the horse's head, and a hand that it was folded, and raised, and a piece of a leg; all of which was in the king's wardrobe for a few days, but what became of these things afterwards, or where they were put, I could not know " ( Chronicle. of Prince D. João , Chapter IX, 1567 ) Apparently there were drawings and wax castings of the inscription made but they are lost too.
It's an interesting story. Honestly the real question is whether such a statue would even have survived for over a thousand years in the rainy/windy weather of the Azores, but they do mention it was highly eroded in the report. It's definitely a lot more credible than these modern day hoaxes we see everywhere.
King Juba II, ruler of Numidia and a loyal client of the Roman Empire, is known to have sent expeditions to the Azores. Maybe the statue was of him.
I would find it difficult to imagine an elderly Roman who fled the fall of Constantinople would volunteer for a dangerous ocean voyage i can imagine though how Byzantine scholars living in renaissance Italy might react to exciting news of the discovery of a new world
In th early 80s a Floridian treasure hunter called Robert Marx claimed to have found 200 Roman amphorae at the bottom of Guanabara Bay in Brazil. He fell foul of local authorities who didn't like it, and was eventually banned from diving there ever again. The validity of his claims remains contested and controversial to this day.
For my money, the small sculpture featured in this video looks more Carthaginian than Roman - just my opinion tho..
i mean if it was true, he or someone else would have went back to retrieve out of spite wouldn't they?
This guy had a very clear agenda and he was honestly very sketchy in general.
The oldest relics discovered in Iceland are Roman bronze coins that were forged in the years 270-305 A.D. These coins were found near in Hamarsfjörður. They're not gold and they're far too old for a viking to have buried them. The years align with the Roman era of Britain. Why do I bring this up? Because Iceland is an island on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Eastern Iceland is on the European plate and western Iceland is part of the North American plate. If we assume the Romans who dropped those coins explored the island then we can entertain the idea that the Romans found North America sometime before 305 A.D.
The coins were almost certainly brought by either the original Irish monk settlers or Scandinavians. Artifacts from seemingly distant times and cultures have a funny way of turning up in unexpected places.
@@Alpvagabund "almost certainly" is a problematic assumption. The Scandinavians didn't discover Iceland until the 9th century and the Irish monks didn't arrive until the 8th century. Why would an Irish monk have multiple 500 year old bronze Roman coins on him with no other coinage from anywhere near his own time? What would he be doing with a bronze coin collection that had no exchange value in his time? The Romans were known to have circumnavigated the British Isles well before the time of the coins. We know for a fact that pieces of Roman amphora dating to before 60 AD can be found south east of Iceland on the Orkney Islands. "In AD 43 and 77 the Roman authors Pomponius Mela and Pliny the Elder referred to the seven islands they call Haemodae and Acmodae respectively, both of which are assumed to be Shetland. Thule is first mentioned by Pytheas of Massilia when he visited Britain sometime between 322 and 285 BC, but it is unlikely he meant Shetland as he believed it was six days sail north of Britain and one day from the frozen sea (a description that seems to refer, more or less, to Iceland). However, another early written reference to the Shetland islands may have been when Tacitus reported that the Roman fleet had seen "Thule" on a voyage that included Orkney in AD 98. [17] for Orkney there are some significant archeological evidences: according to scholars like Montesanti, "Orkney might have been one of those areas that suggest direct administration by Imperial Roman procurators, at least for a very short span of time. [22]". The Romans had sailed north of Britain, left evidence on the Orkneys, and were aware that there were islands 6 days north well past the Shetlands. They knew it was there and there are Roman coins left there from the time the Romans owned Britain.
So there's no indisputable proof but it's no less problematic to say they were probably dropped by a Roman.
@@TERMICOBRA Perhaps “almost certainly” is a bit too strongly worded. All things being equal, I do not think that it is impossible that the Romans had reached Iceland, but if the only evidence is the coins, then I would not feel comfortable saying that it was the Roman’s that brought them there. As far as I can gather, the coins were scattered across multiple sites and are the only potential physical evidence. All things considered, I believe that even if the Romans did know of Iceland, those coins were likely not brought directly by them. Roman coins are incredibly common finds in Scandinavia. They were widespread and Norsemen obviously had access to them at the time. If Roman coins have been discovered across Scandinavia, are we to assume that they explored the peninsula in it’s entirety? Did they leave the coins directly at all of the sites in which they have been found in the modern day? It really is the same principle: the coins were widely produced in Rome and naturally began to spread outwards due to trade. The same is true for Roman coins in Ireland. That said, it feels to me as though whether or not the Romans reached Iceland, those coins were brought by either the Irish or Scandinavians. Nonetheless, it is interesting to consider the possibility that Iceland or further may have been reached by classical explorers.
They would likely have been in circulation for centuries after the fall of Rome in Northern Europe
Dude, you don't know enough about the subject of coinage for your logic to make sense.
Coins had value back then, not because they were backed by a government's "guarantee" like today - but purely for metal content.
"Why would they have old coins?" REAL SIMPLE:
Because they are metal! A coin weighing 1 troy ounce of silver in AD 200 has the same silver value as a 1 troy ounce silver coin in 2024 AD.
Since coinage began, the standard of copper / silver / silver-gold / gold (from lowest to highest value) has existed. But - gold comes and goes as currency. That's right. Sometimes gold is worthless.
"They're not gold" and "far too old for Vikings to have buried them."
Metal currency requires stability of production. If something becomes too rare, it's no good as a medium of regular exchange. It becomes 'wait for the right person to want this.' Namely, artists. And - goldsmith is the rarest, most highly-trained form of a jeweler. In the post-roman world - that's a long wait for a trade.
After W. Rome's fall, gold production nearly ceased. The engineering required for hard rock mining for Europe's gold was tech that was lost. Trade with Africa, where it was easily surface-mined, was severed.
Silver became the highest-value metal currency in the post-Roman period. Gold became worthless/decorative. Vikings were disappointed in the gold cups of priests in churches and demanded "where is your silver?"
Vikings prized silver first, and iron second. So did mostly everyone else.
Iron - was prized like oil is today. Was the backbone of their war machine.
Copper/bronze (sometimes coins too) was their 3rd-most desirable metal.
In the age before stainless steel, the resilience of bronze (which doesn't rust,) was still in high demand.
Iceland was discovered late - because it was likely found by Vikings following walrus or narwhals, seeking ivory. The ivory trade only really took off in the medieval period once the Vikings came to dominate European trade. Many new customers upped the demand. Thus, they sought out more.
This is a practical if not anecdotal reason for Iceland being discovered so late.
Nobody needed to explore out there, for any reason, until after Viking domination.
What an excellent bit of thinking about the "end" of the Roman Empire and that end date being closer proximity to the modern age than we usually think - Plus the New World conjecture!
Como siempre, magnífica exposición de ideas acerca del pasado.
Mis más sinceras felicitaciones 👏 por su extraordinario canal "Mayorianus". Por favor, continue con su labor de divulgación del fascinante mundo romano tardío y sus implicaciones en nuestra civilización occidental actual.
Un fuerte abrazo desde España. 🤗
Captain Bligh after the Bounty made a 4200 voyage in a very overcrowded 18 foot boat without stopping for food or water after the first few days (cannibals found the Brits to be tasty). So, a Roman ship from the Canaries could have made it. Grain/mechant ships didn't have rowers so food and water (rain) might not have been such a huge issue. It is fascinating that if you consider the US to have started in 1620 with the Pilgrims (sorry Jamestown, suck it) then you have only about 140 years between the final fall of Rome and the establishment of the USA.
From Spain, Rome took vast amounts of wealth -- metals, grains, olives, the finest wines -- and some of the Roman Empire's finest minds. The emperors Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius -- among Rome's best and wisest rulers -- and the poet Seneca all were of Spanish origin. With Columbus in 1492 Spain began the new reincarnated Roman-Catholic global empire on which the sun never set for the next almost 500 years
LMFAO Spain is a creation of the garbage barbarian christian kingdoms of Germania, They couldnt take the Iberian peninsula from the caliphates for 800 YEARS! Whereas the caliphates took the Iberian peninsula in an easy 30 years... Barbarians of Germania are nothing noble as compared to ROME
They came from Italica - an Italian colony in Hispania
Okay but "Hispania" was to the west.as Byzantium was to the east
Okay but what I'm pointing to is that Columbus' discovery of america did more to stop the muslim onslaught to take over the west than anything else. That indigenous people didn't like the idea (some yes, some no), well, not everything in the world is to everyone's liking
Okay but what I'm pointing to is that Columbus' discovery of america did more to stop the muslim onslaught to take over the west than anything else. That indigenous people didn't like the idea (some yes, some no), well, not everything in the world is to everyone's liking
Another absolutely fascinating video! Thanks!
There is some solid, interesting research that the Carthaginians reached South America. Proof could be the building techniques in South American civilizations which were extremely similar to those of the Carthaginians
there is a documentary on Netflix about that.
The Eastern Roman empire transfered the emepror title to the Spanish kings before falling, so technically all the land conquered by the Spanish was conquered by the Roman Empire, since Spain holded the title.
The Czars of Russia also claimed to be the successors of Rome due to marriage. If so, Rome was in Alaska! I had a professor who argued this point about the Czars to state that Rome finally fell in 1917.
@@raedwulf61 but there is a king of Spain there is no Czar of Russia.
If the ceramic head was left in Haiti in (let's suppose) 1493 then it could have found it's way to Mexico through trade networks by 1510.
This was so entertaining, I really hope your channel will grow far beyond our current shores, my captain!
Also, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is named after the Golden Gate Strait, entryway into San Francisco Bay, which is in turn named after the Golden Gate of Constantinople, the main processional gate into the city.
I had heard that there was Roman Trireme wreckage on the coast of Argentina or Brazil and was seized by one of the governments.
I recall a couple of years ago seeing a photograph of the grave of a Palaiologos at a church in the West Indies, where he had been the Warden of that church. The date on the grave was very early. I can't quite remember, but it could have been the 16th or 17th centuries. Maybe you can find more information on that. I did an internet search and found out it was Barbados. He was Ferdinand Palaeologos - born 1619 and died 1670.
There’s a New Codex that was recovered from the 16th or 17th century and it depicts Hernan as a Roman Centurion. And it makes you wonder I hope you see this Message and can do a Follow up Video talking about it. Maybe they think it’s Hernan since it would of been impossible for a Roman to of been in americas but why would Hernan be dressed as a Centurion. Just a fun speculation 🙂
the Romans also used Transport merchant ships without the rowers, so if one of those was filled to the brim with food and blown off course... i imagine that up to 3 or 4 crewman could still be alive once they reached the Americas... and this number is so low that they would have either integrated into the indigenous societies or they would have starved in America... since Romans already had the division of Labor, we can safely assume that the crew probably had no knowledge of iron working or ore gathering or just how to built a furnace
Imagine being an Indigenous American or Mexican fisherman and coming upon a beached Trireme full of Roman armour, weaponary, treasure, and food like wine and bread. And you'd likely never know where it came from or who those people are.
Nice to put a face to the voice! First time seeing a video of yours that you were in. Thank you for another great video good sir.
There was an experiment a few years ago that showed even rafts could cross the pacific with a 50/50 chance of foundering. So I don’t know why some say it as if it’s soooo implausible that a trireme could cross the Atlantic or a Viking ship or a welsh ship or an Olmec vessel crossing from the other way etc.
The Romans living in modern day Brittany built Stronger non combat ships that crossed the English Channel and beyond, thus, more likely to cross the Atlantic and survive than a triremes. Gaius Julius Ceasar had the tribes of Brittany build ships to transport troops and supplies to invade Britannia
How do you mean "stronger?" Crossing the British Channel is like crossing a lake. People do it in rafts, inflatable kayaks, and rowboats all the time. (Mostly unfortunate, desperate illegal migrants.)
Also: A few famous athletes even swam it.
"They could cross the channel" is not an endorsement of strength or even something impressive. Certainly not Trans-Atlantic impressive.
Caesar needed boats, because his army arrived on foot. Triremes are for naval warfare, and are inappropriate for landing on hostile beaches under fire, esp with horses. You need barges for that.
The crossing craft probably were similar to the D-day boats, but maybe even roofed against projectiles.
Caesar was lucky the channel is so small that his barges don't need to be particularly seaworthy.
Prioritizing supremely-swift unloading likely trumped stability, just like on D-Day.
He likely pulled it off because the weather stayed good. (Another reason to special-order boats for speed in unloading.)
I think if artifacts did arrive earlier on, the plausibility that a ship full of dead people but with artifacts on it actually did drift across and get picked through by the locals. He probably wondered who these weird people were and thought their stuff was interesting because it was different. I could definitely see that.
That is a very fascinating hypothesis. However, I’ve heard more recent research that the Portuguese may have reached both Brazil and North America long before they ever announced it. There is some evidence that they were here even before the Vikings.
The Romans had been trading with the Nordic peoples since during the Republican times. So it's plausible that the Roman traders might have travel alongside with the Viking forefathers into modern day Canada.
Apparently when the Portuguese discovered the Azores,one of the islands had a statue of a man riding a horse
Yes, Byzantine and Italian sailors (living in Greece or some part of the Byzantine territories could have made their way to an Italian city-state and later into a crew for Columbus or other Conquistador for the Spanish or for another nation that also sought to gain experienced sailors to man their exploration ship's crew.
I remember reading a response from an oceanographer a few years ago. He indicated that given the currents and the available Roman sailing technologies, it would have taken quite a long time of the Romans to be able to make a journey to the Americas.
My professor back in college told me that they found Roman armor in southern Texas.
From what he had said that they had done testing and it was legit Roman armor.
So who knows
Roman armour from which period?
Interesting video. It´s always interesting to compare timelines and set them in relation to other historical events (I like doing that for the Mongol "Storm", the Vikings or Classical Greece and the Hellenistic Period.
BTW, don´t neglect your sci-fi/futurist channel, Sebastian. That´s interesting too and much needed in our times!
One of the forgotten elements are the Basque sailing ships that went to Labrador in the 1500's and the Breton Cod fishermen. These people used temporary camps in labrador and newfoundland.
We currently do not know fully the evolution of the boats and if there were efficient precursors to the boats of the 15th century. Earliest estimates is around 650 AD.
It is not out of the question that a "roman" from the time of Charlemagne went to a fishing expedition and arrived in the Labrador area.
Reflexively, at Herculaneum, there are frescos of a feast table that apparently feature pineapples, which could only have come from South America. This doesn't mean the Romans traded with the peoples of South America, of course, but it means that they traded with someone who traded there, in a short enough period that they enjoyed fresh pineapples.
Another channel called Fire of Learning made an episode on who a Roman Legionary transported to today would be able to relate to the most and he argued that it would be the Catholic authorities within Vatican City as they still do speak a form of Latin. So in a sense, the Romans were not only in the Americas, but took over most of the Americas under the Roman Catholic Church.
Wasn't there memeber of the family of palaiologoi who was buried in barbados, Ferdinando Paleolocus.
I suspect that Babbel relies on machine translation - at least to some extent.
I have studied Thai and occasionally do Thai > English translation.
I experimented with a free trial Babbel offer by asking for directions in Thailand.
What came back turned out to be syntactical Thai, but rejected by an educated English-speaking Thai as “unnatural” - technically correct, but out of context.
She then gave me the appropriate Thai to use in asking for directions.
We know they teach us the little poem in school, “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean-blue” or whatever; by that logic, it would be enough time, I guess, for the Roman head to be acquired by someone in the new world, if it had indeed come from an Iberian man who made it to the Americas. But then again, a lot can be said of international trade, and that alone could send lots of items thousands of miles from their point of origin. For example, plenty of "far-flung", unexpected artifacts have been found throughout North America, and all over Central & South America, from not only Ancient Rome, but Egypt, Islamic Spain, Medieval Arabia, West African empires, Mughal India, and China and Japan, to name a few. How’d these things get to the Americas? Trading. From point A to point B all the way to point…Z? One transaction to the next, and eventually an item ends up on a boat across an ocean or sea. If the head was made in a Rome, imagine it was traded to… a Greek, who teaddd it with a Turk, who traded it with an Arab, who traded it with someone from the Horn of Africa. Then that person ended up trading it to an Indian person, and then it made its way throughout mainland Southeast Asia, eventually to the Philippines… where it managed to be traded with a Spaniard. And from there was taken aboard their ship to Mexico. And from there, who knows... and yes, I know 1510 is earlier than the formation of the Manila-Mexico shipping network, I’m just saying this as an example…
But from all we know nowadays, I don’t think psychopathic, sociopathic "Columbus ‘n co." were much in the "gifting" mood by the time they finally anchored their ships… lol. Unless it was a bribe of some sort, or something with malicious intentions attached to it, ya know.
Much awaited, much appreciated excellent insights as always from you.
It would have been nice if the Spaniards hadn't burned up the Mayan Codex on July 12, 1562.
One of the downside of the monotheist faiths.
I find it intriguing that while the Vikings managed to reach the Americas, the Romans seemingly did not. If the Vikings could navigate the northern Atlantic, why couldn't the Romans have done the same? The Romans were undoubtedly skilled sailors and explorers, as evidenced by their discovery of the Canary Islands (although I'm unsure if the Carthaginians discovered them first). This suggests that they likely attempted to venture further west.
It's plausible that some small-scale Roman expeditions might have reached the Americas but failed to return, leading to scant archaeological evidence of their presence. Given their seafaring capabilities and exploratory nature, it's not far-fetched to believe that Roman explorers could have made it to the Americas, even if such occurrences were rare and undocumented.
The Romans were notoriously shit at actual sea voyages. Bunch of coast huggers
The Romans weren't really the exploring type: note their tendency to decide "this far and no further, let's build some walls and forts" when it came to their frontiers by the 1st and 2nd Centuries CE. The Romans, strictly speaking, didn't "discover" the Canaries, that was the Numidians (at the time a client state), and it's suspected the Phoenicians, Greeks, and Carthaginians got there before them. And there was, of course, an indigenous population that came from North Africa.
@@keith6706 “The Romans weren’t really the exploring type”. Nothing can be further from the truth. Hadrian’s isolationist policies don’t speak for the entire Roman civilization, nor does it erase the previous history of exploration, conquest and settlement. You need to be careful about judging the entire history and culture of Rome by one man.
Roman ships were not deep seaworthy. A galley like the trireme wouldn't last a week in the Atlantic. I could possibly see a corbita getting blown towards Brazil and making it with a lot of luck, but North America? Not a chance. Meanwhile, the Vikings lived on the Atlantic and built ships to sail it for hundreds of years before ever getting to America some 1000 years after the Romans.
More likely the Carthaginians would have discovered america as that was their main schtick, the navigation and trading routes
It's quite interesting to think had the Carthaginians managed to win the punic wars the Americas almost certainly would have been discovered and likely being in contact way earlier
What about the other way around? Pliny: "Nepos notes concerning the northern parts that Quintus Metellus Celer, colleague of Afranius in the consulship and at that time Proconsul in Gaul, was given certain Indians by the king of the Suebi, who, trading out of India, had been driven by storms and thrown up in Germany. And so the sea flowing on all parts around this globe of earth, split into small portions, keeps us from areas of the world, so it is not possible to go from here to there or from there to here easily". This was also reported by Pomponius Mela : "Cornelius Nepos offers the account of Q. Metellus Celer from whom he had heard the following. When Celer was consul in Gaul some Indians were given to him by the king of the Boii. When he tried to discover from where they had come they answered that they had been driven by storms from Indian waters and having crossed the spaces between they had arrived on the coasts of Germany". This would make a great movie!
Fun thought & video.
Contact with Carthage would have been very likely. Isotopic analysis has shown that much Roman copper came from Michigan.
hey I already follow your italian channel which I learn Italian from lol
There’s an account of one of Cortez’s men talking about how the markets in Tenochtitlan were bigger than the ones in Constantinople because some of the crew members had seen both. 😮
They could have distilled fresh water from sea water but I don't know if romans did long range exploration, as indeed it would be very hard to get back alive.
being italian i feelt kinda in the wrong place while you were talking about babel
I think it would be more remarkable if the Romans didn't reach the americas. They went everywhere possible. Humans made it to Australia 60,000 years ago...in canoes.
they built the coliseum and the pantheon yet didn't have ships that could make it to the new world, even roman concrete and aqueducts, so yeah it does seem possible they could have made the journey and maybe a little surprising they didn't and colonized the new world a thousand years earlier than it actually happened. It does appear there was trade with Asia via the Silk Road, not sure if any of them went there before Marco Polo.
@@abc123fhdi The Silk Routes existed before the Romans had an empire, and by the 1st Century CE, Chinese silks were in huge demand in the Empire, just as honey, wine, and gold were in demand in China from western suppliers. Marco Polo wasn't anywhere near the first, he was just the first who stayed for a lengthy period of time and wrote about it. The Chinese documented Roman embassies in 166, 226, and 284, and the Byzantines later showed up in 643.
@@abc123fhdi Markopoulos and Doukas eating garos , garum
@@keith6706 Chinese word for love you and Turk word for mother is identical
@@georgepapatheofilou6118 That doesn't mean anything. Most languages have words that coincidentally are similar to words in other languages where, if you squint hard enough, you can imagine some related meaning, even though the words aren't actually related.
Outstanding! 👍 Thank you for the wonderful and beautiful video.
If memory serves, there are potentially Roman shipwrecks just off the coast of Btazil. However, the Brailian gov't has refused further investigation, so it isn't known what the objects really are.
The headgear in that one representation kinda similar.
LOL
The British never reached the mainland America in the 1500s, since their first arrival was Jamestown in 1607, which is a small corner in the northeast of the Americas and they never came in droves until 1640 onwards, bringing slaves with them.
The Spanish and Portuguese pretty much controlled the Americas throughout the 1500s all by themselves, working with local tribes to establish trade routes and mapping.
A Roman civilian cargo ship loaded with food could have been blown off course sometime prior to the fall of the Western Empire and ended up being beached off the coast of one of the Americas.
The food on board could then conceivably have sustained the ship’s crew totally across the Atlantic
Great video! Fascinating observations
I made a sick Constantinople in Florida during my last culture victory on Civ 6
You could speculate ships with experienced and adventurous sailors might have undertaken journeys long before it was otherwise common. Certain personality types always want to explore.
Stunning artworks, illustrating a fascinating hypothesis.
Another possible angle is the fact that there is an unbroken cultural development from classical Roman times all the way through today. Portuguese, Spanish and Italian navigators were romans of the Middle Ages, even if they didn’t live under a single emperor. They went on to dominate a vast swath of the Americas which not coincidentally is called “Latin America”.
Between Ancient Rome and Latin countries, both in Europe and America, there’s an unbroken line in culture, language, laws, and thought.
Possible! There are certain ornaments in Aztec art which have striking resemblance to certain Roman pieces - like gorgoneum, which was on the chest of Roman breastplates and on the helmets. The stone knives of Aztecs have a shape similar to European blades, which is strange, because the texture of stone commanded different shape. Trying to carve out of stone a blade similar to metal knife only means that at some point Aztecs actually saw these knives.
After the fall of Constantinople some Greeks migrated to Spain and Portugal. It’s quite possible a few of them (or their descendants) joined the voyages to the Americas.
There's the Clash of Eagles trilogy exploring alternative history where old Roman empire didn't fall and later clashed in America with the natives.
It's certainly possible that someone from the Western Roman Empire, specifically the northern parts, could have travelled to the Americas with the Vikings in 1000AD as well.
Also, Romans has been in Australia...
In a way, they had been in indirect contact with the new world centuries earlier, when they traded with the Viking world through the Varangian way, while at the same time that Viking world stretched all the way to Newfoundland.
Finally someone that makes the necessary steps to do actual field research. 😤👍
If you had a full dive VR simulation, would you give Roman food and wine a try?
I don’t really conceptualize the Roman Empire as an “ancient“ civilization. I see the Roman Empire as the beginning of the modern era,
Surprised the bay of jars in Brazil wasn’t mentioned.
There is some evidence that at least one roman ship was found wrecked in Baía da Guanabara, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, full of roman ceramics, coins and artifacts. The site was immediatly after the discovery closed by Brazilian Navy in the 60's, who aprehended all it's content. At the time Brazil was under a military dictatorship and the artifacts vanished since then.
By your definition there were Romans in the Americas, since almost all Greeks saw themselves as Romans until the modern state of Greece gained independence in 1830 and even later than that. There were Greeks among the crew of Juan de la Cosa who accompanied Columbus. His ship, the Santa María, had sailors from various backgrounds, including Greeks. One such sailor was a man named Pedro de Arana who was reportedly Greek.
I can imagine Romans travelling to the New World if they had made Britannia, Ireland and Scottland a higher priority. Travelling by sea like Vikings later they could have reached North America.
This roman problably gave the Amazonas river its actual name, trust it.
So there's a man named Ferdinand Paleologus who may have been the heir to the Byzantine throne who died in Barbados
Google him if you're interested in more
The Pacific is much more pacific (peaceful) than the Atlantic. It’s basically a highway.
In a way, the Eastern Roman Empire really did meet the new world… the day someone added chocolate to coffee.
Hmmm... Babel doesn't have any Language I'm interested in: Hungarian, Latin, Sanskrit, ect....
That thumbnail is hilarious hahaha
Would be nice a video on what happened to the citizen of Constantinople on 1453. Also families could have flee to Castile and their children be in the ships to discover the New World? 👌👌