Nibley has also suggested that “more recent discoveries show that an ancient seafaring nation from the Mediterranean Sea was trading with far off Peru. For example, the New World plants of coca and tobacco having been found in the graves of Egyptian mummies starting in 1070 B.C. Someone had to have brought these commodities from South America. Again, the likely candidates for these ancient drug traders would have been the master sailors of Phoenicia.”
Map of the Mediterranean, showing the extent of Phoenician trade routes and sailing ventures by the 3rd century B.C. Note that except for Portugal, Britain and Gaul, the Phoenicians had sailed nowhere else outside the Mediterranean First of all, as has already been amply shown, the Phoenicians were never interested in new colonies. They were interested only in ports where their shipping and trading interests could be enhanced. Colonies never accomplished such profit ventures. Secondly, it seems that Nibley has never understood that the Lord told Lehi that his land would be kept form the knowledge of other nations. Phoenicia was a nation. The Lord also said that if other nations became aware of the Land of Promise that they would overrun it and there would be no place in it for Lehi’s descendants.
One of the problems people have, no matter how intelligent and accomplished they are, is that they forget or do not understand that when the Lord covenants with man, he NEVER goes back on that promise.
Nor should we ignore that Phoenicia was a Mediterranean nation, an ancient civilization centered in the north of ancient Canaan, with its heartland along the coastal regions of modern day Lebabon, Syria and northern Israel. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean during the period of 1550 B.C. to 300 B.C. In fact, the Phoenicians called themselves Kena'ani (Canaanites), which is Hebrew for "Merchant."
Though ancient boundaries of such city-centered cultures fluctuated, the city of Tyre was the southernmost Phoenician city, with Sidon the northernmost, and Sarepta (modern day Sarafand) between them. They traded by means of a galley, which was a man-powered sailing vessel, and are credited with the invention of the bireme—a ship about 80 feet long with a maximum beam of ten feet with two rows of oars on each side and a square sail. It was later adapted by the Greeks as a warship and even later by the Romans, who used it in the invasion of Britain.
Why people want to credit the ancients with accomplishments they never achieved, is hard to understand, but has led to so much disinformation and the rewriting of history that it is hard to know what is factual and what is someone’s imagination. With the Phoenicians, it would seem some want to make them the discoverers’ of the world—yet, their accomplishments, as great as some were, never left the Mediterranean other than a voyage around Africa under the direction of the Egyptian government, and their sailing to Britain for the purpose of trading in valuable tin.
However, their sailing to the Western Hemisphere in the 6th century B.C. borders on the type of print found about Atlantis, Ophir, and king Solomon’s mines. It is not factual. There is no proof of any kind that the Phoenicians ever sailed out into the Atlantic away from the sight of land. Actual Phoenician records, lately uncovered in the diggings at Sarepta, show their confinement to enterprises within the Mediterranean and list no voyages out into the Atlantic or to any land beyond the ocean.
When the Lord told Lehi that the Land of Promise would be kept from the knowledge of other nations, we might want to believe him. And in such believing, we need to realize that this means the Phoenicians and any other nation or people, except for those the Lord brought to the land. And those he brought were the Jaredites, Nephites and the Mulekites.
(See the next post, “Who Were the Phoenicians? Part VII.” What course did the Mulekites take, and did they build their own ship?)
It seems I read somewhere that there were survivors of drift voyages and shipwrecks that came ashore in the Americas over the years, especially from about 1000 A.D. onward. Is that true and were they led by the Lord?
ReplyDeleteDrift voyages refers to a weather vessel, such as a sailing ship or raft, that follows the winds and currents without tacking or sailing close to the wind—such as Nephi’s ship in 600 B.C. or Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon Tiki in the early 1900s. J.G. Nelson wrote a book called “Drift Voyages Between Eastern Asia and the Americas.” His work is born on the basis of what he claims “At time of early contact with the Europeans, natives of eastern Asia and western North America possessed similar culture traits.” His premise may be flawed, but the idea of a drift voyage between those two areas is possible. However, there is more chance of drifting down toward Hawaii than to the west coast of the United States since the northbound Kuroshio Current runs headlong into the southbound Oyashio Current, which is a cold subarctic current that flows south and circulates counterclockwise along the western North Pacific Ocean. The two currents collide near the eastern shores of Japan forming the North Pacific Current which bends eastward across the Northern Pacific with the outside edges (western edge) curling further southward than eastward. This is one of the reasons why there are so few actual recorded landings along the west coast of the United States that have been accredited—but writers and even scholars love to speculate on such.
ReplyDeleteAs for wreckage, for a ship to defeat the effects of the inside Oyashio Current sweeping southward toward Hawaii etc., the wreckage would have had to occur around the Aleutian Trench or in the Gulf of Alaska to reach the western shores of Washington, Oregon, or California. Likely, if they did not, the California Current would send the drift object back out to sea in the southern gyre of the North Pacific Current.
However, most of the emphasis behind the so-called drift and wreckage voyages are based upon the relationship to Peruvian foods, such as the yam, peppers, etc., showing up in Polynesia. It is evidently impossible for scientists, archaeologists and anthropologists to believe such foods were brought from South America by man (such as in Hagoth’s ships) and insist such movement was accidental, or the result of wrecks, etc.