Beyond ancient Greeks and Romans, it has been said
and written about contacts between lost travelers from the Mediterranean Sea with people from
what we now call America, a possibility great thinkers had always
denied: Aristotle (because of the sun passing so close), Plato (Atlantis
had sunk) and St. Augustine (how descendants of Adam could cross the sea swimming?)
A curious
book El enigma de Colón (The Enigma of Columbus) Pedro de Frutos, 1980, gathers some of those stories that are
confused with legend, myth and taboo, as the alleged affair of the Queen of
Sheba who by the tenth century A.D., misled by an ocean current, would have sailed the open sea as far as where
some assumed was Japan (then, in European geography, Japan was located beside the Occidental Indians).
De Frutos wrote that whoever had been Columbus may have read
in a book of Ptolemy, the Greek-Egyptian astronomer and geographer of the
second century, that…
...earth is divided into 24 hours of which ancients knew only fifteen,
from Spain to Asia...
And Columbus
may could also read in the Imago Mundi of
Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly, that…
...the
sea is small within the confines of Spain and the beginning of India ...
But perhaps
had been Seneca, Roman philosopher and historian (first century A.D.) who
most forward-prophet announced the existence of another continent; in his Medea ones read:
...over
the lazy years, will
come centuries when the ocean break their
chains and appears, enormous, the surface of the Earth, when Thetis (then Goddess of the Sea),
discover new orbs and not be anymore Thule (now Iceland) the term of the World...
For some writers, Columbus
was looking for the same legendary happy-kingdom described by Marco Polo years
earlier in his travels to the East, but maybe not, he
was looking for the Tir nan Og, Paradise of Britons, Scots and Irish. Juilene Osborne- McKnight in her Celtic Legend
summarizes its meaning, narrating that for
the Celts:
"The Tir Nan Og is the Land of Eternal Youth,
the Wonderland, Source of Salvation,
Isle of Blessings placed in a Westland. A place where there is
no death, old age, sickness or sadness. Songs, banquets and dances are their
diversions, and time passes so quickly that hundreds of years are mistaken for a few days; the Celts did not
fear death because their spirits went to the Tir Nan Og" (Plaza & Janes: 2000)
Not only
would the Tir Nan Og be located in pre-Columbian America. Europeans
then also placed westward the wonderful islands of Atlantis; it was widespread that despite its
sinking, reported by Plato in his Dialogues (Timaeus or Nature), should subsist any remains, though the philosopher warned
about the danger of trying to cross the darkness of the Sargasso's Sea.
There was also on this side of the Strait of Gibraltar (or were all the same great place with
different names?) the mythical Saint Brendan's Island, that with Adam
and Eve´s Paradise, after their original sin would be
drifting through the ocean with the Antillia
Island, where it was rumored a Mohammedan had fled persecution
to seven Portuguese Bishops.
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........................
Visit preColombia zibbet gallery to store the JPG file at your cloud for research or to print it yourself and frame for your atelier or gift to friends.
Enter to preColombia Gallery
To download a free sample of The voices of Silence / Las voces del silencio to your eReader: iPad, Kindle Kobo or Smartphone
enter to Samshwords or Read it OnLine
