Yesterday I gave an overview of the new anthology Lost Worlds of Ancient America edited by convicted sex offender and former Neo-Nazi Frank Collin, writing as “Frank Joseph.” Today I will review the second chapter of the book, covering the alleged discovery of Roman artifacts in the United States. The chapter is divided into two sections, the first by Mormon hyper-diffusionist Wayne May, who has a vested interest in proving prehistoric trans-oceanic contact in order to provide support for the Book of Mormon. In his half of the chapter, May claims that a figuring found off the coast of New Jersey in 2003 was a 4-inch long erotic sculpture of a copulating couple from Roman Egypt. May asserts that an appraiser for New York’s Arte Primitivo: Howard S. Rose Gallery (which May mistakenly calls “Arteprimitivo Auction House”), Howard Rose himself, declared the sculpture a genuine Roman piece. After spending all day on the phone tracking down the “Los Angeles monolith” yesterday, I have no interest in wasting another day trying to confirm an undocumented, unofficial examination. Let’s just take May at his word and then ask how this would prove contact between Roman Egypt and early New Jersey. It is well known that ships crossing the Atlantic in historical times picked up ballast from indiscriminate piles of rocks, old sculptures, and other debris and dumped it as convenient. (One recent exploration of a nineteenth century shipwreck found ancient coins riding along by accident in the ship’s ballast.) There is no reason to suspect this piece, if genuine, is anything more than an accidental traveler to the New World. The burden is on those who claim it as evidence of Roman intervention to prove otherwise.
With this information, we can then explain May’s wonder at the discovery of eight Roman coins minted between 337 and 383 CE on a Massachusetts beach. May relies on the theories of marine biologist Barry Fell—not a reputable source—to suggest that the coincidence in dates proves such a discovery could not have been due to a lost coin collection because collectors wouldn’t have coins so close in date. This is a lie. I have on my shelf coins of almost exactly the same date. The reason for this is simple: Such coins, being among the last minted by Rome, are the most abundant and therefore least expensive to acquire. Even if they were not part of an American’s collection, they might well have been part of some Roman’s lost pocket change scooped up for the ballast of a Massachusetts merchant vessel on some European jaunt and dumped unknowingly into the sea, where they would have washed up on the beach. Point is: without any other evidence of Roman activity, these coins are not conclusive proof of anything. The second half of the chapter comes from Lee Pennington, a playwright and filmmaker. He reports the discovery of Roman coins in Kentucky in 2009. The same man, David Wells, turned up not one but two sets of Roman coins near Louisville, again near water, this time the river. Pennington dismisses the scholarly consensus, expressed in Jeremiah Epstein’s classic 1980 Current Anthropology article “Pre-Columbian Old World Coins in America,” that such finds are the result of lost collections and deliberate hoaxes. Pennington rests his case largely on the idea that more than half the coins (and here we have left behind the Kentucky coins and now speak of all coins found everywhere in America) are apparently third-century, which he sees as being too close in date for coincidence. His evidence is that the coins feature a “radiate” (solar) crown, “only minted between 215 and 295 AD.” Nearly all of the sites Pennington lists for what he considers well-documented finds of Roman coins are, he admits, “on or near waterways,” including the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and the Atlantic and Caribbean seaboards. He takes this as evidence that the Romans sailed along these routes rather than the most obvious situation, that (a) this is where colonial and Victorian people lived and therefore lost their collections and (b) this is also where oceangoing ships put into port, dumping their European ballasts, which archaeology has proved contained ancient coins among the granite and other debris they picked up in the Old World. So far Lost Worlds of Ancient America is 0-2 on “compelling evidence of ancient immigrants.” They have 43 tries left to go.
5 Comments
5/3/2012 08:15:47 am
Hmm, strange. I would've expected a mention of the Tucson swords/crosses in a chapter about Romans in America. And that one should be pretty tempting for a white supremacist author. Ah well, perhaps they're trying to find new and less know hoaxes. :)
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5/3/2012 08:19:20 am
I glossed over the paragraph Pennington devotes to Roman "swords" supposedly found in Cincinnati, Nashville, and St. Louis. It was a throwaway paragraph in a chapter on coins with no evidence presented whatsoever other than references to other alternative books, so I didn't bother including it, but in all fairness, some "swords" are discussed.
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Rick Osmon
5/10/2013 07:49:18 am
David Well's Roman coin find site is more than 14 miles above the Falls of the Ohio. No ocean going ship dumped ballast there.
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5/10/2013 07:55:20 am
I have corrected the typo on Wayne May's name. Thank you for pointing out the error.
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Dennis Webster
10/29/2017 12:48:48 pm
Has anyone looked into the discovery of the roman swords of Silverbell road near Tucson as they pertain toTerra Calalus?
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AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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