006
Vikings in Paraguay 1996

At the moment [1996] I am involved in trying to get a British TV Production company to make a programme about a cave in Paraguay... this is what it concerns.

      The whole teaching of American history is that Christopher Columbus discovered America. The Americans even have a special yearly holiday called ‘Columbus Day’, and there's a huge industry dependent upon Columbus pictures, Columbus statues, and Columbus toilet-roll holders etc. 

What I have, would blow a hole in all that, and provide evidence that the first Europeans to set foot on the soil of the Americas were Scandinavian Vikings - hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus ever saw the light of day!  
The Vikings were fierce warriors who left their homes in Scandinavia, and sailed in their longboats to far, distant places, and attacked and robbed people.  Sometimes they settled in these foreign lands, as they did in Britain, France, Ireland, Turkey, Russia, southern Italy, The Ukraine, etc., and mixed with the indigenous people, often bequeathing their language, and social habits, as they did in Britain.

For many years, archaeologists and historians have speculated about the possibility of pre-Columbian incursions by Viking adventurers into the Americas.  The so called Vinland Map was at the centre of a storm of speculation that Viking voyagers had landed on the north-eastern sea-board of what is now  The United States, but until now, no real evidence has been uncovered to give credence to theories based on circumstantial evidence 

      A Paraguayan friend Raul Gonzalez Allen, who lives in the capital Asunción, is the Executive Director of an officially recognised Foundation called Ecocultura.  This organisation has been set up by a decree of President Wasmosy of Paraguay with the intention of rescuing, and bringing to the attention of the world, the numerous petroglyphs that have been discovered in the Mountains of Amambay 500 km to the north of the capital, and in Ybytyruzú 200 km to the south.  

    Sixty-one of these rock inscriptions have been identified as Viking Runes (Viking alphabet) by the Runologist Dr. Hermann Munk, who has stated that the Paraguayan sites are a uniquely important legacy of Viking culture.  According to Professor Vicente Pistilli, an anthropologist, and President of the Instituto Paraguayo de Ciencias del Hombre  (Paraguayan Institute of Human Sciences.) there's no question that Viking penetration of Central South America took place through Brazil, to their primary centre called Tiahuanacu in Bolivia.  

    Together with a French expert Jacques de Mahieu, Pistelli and Munk are adamant that the stone inscriptions are the work of Scandinavian voyagers made  long before Christopher Columbus saw the light of day.  Señor Allen has just sent me a video recording of their latest expedition to the Amambay Mountain site, which shows the nature of the terrain, and some of the many carvings.  I also now have a photograph of an axehead, claimed by them to be of Viking type, which I've sent to my daughter Freja who's an Archaeologist, and her American husband John - who's an Egyptologist at Liverpool University - to have it authenticated by experts in the field of Viking artefacts. 

When I discussed it with them, they were naturally cautious.    Being professionals, they're aware that there have been many instances of 'so called' discoveries in North America, which later turned out to be frauds, or were the result of evidence that had been wrongly interpreted due to 'wishful thinking' or 'self delusion'.  One thing is certain however - based on the evidence, together with the academic stature of the principle exponents of the discovery, there's definitely a requirement for an investigative TV programme of the 'Popular Archaeology’ category, either to expose the claim as preposterous, or, if it turns out to be true, to inform the world that the Viking exploration of The Americas that has hitherto been surmised as inordinately likely - in fact took place.  If the outcome proved to be the latter, then the programme would go down in the annals of TV journalism as the programme that changed our understanding of history, and the sites of Amambay and Ybytyruzú— would be inundated by the mass-media of every nation in the world.  Now I am in the process of contacting various British TV programme Editors and TV personalities to try and interest them in producing a feature programme on the subject.

      Well I said that Professor Vicente Pistilli had identified the axehead as being of Viking origin.  I had the photograph greatly enlarged and sent it to two of the leading archeological authorities specialising in the Viking period and Scandinavian artefacts - Dr. D.A. Hall of the Jorvik Viking Museum in York, and Dr. Colleen Batey of the Department of Archaeology at Glasgow University in Scotland.  Both of these world-renowned authorities of the period rejected the axehead as Viking, and said it is nothing like any Scandinavian product that they have ever seen.   This raises worrying ramifications regarding the publicity that Ecocultura are promulgating, for if the axehead is false, it should not really be used as part of the promotional material and literature.  For as more people check on the axehead's provenance, and the word spreads that the axehead is not a genuine Viking implement, the veracity and seriousness of the whole Ecocultura Organisation will be challenged.

It also raises serious worries concerning Prof. Pistilli, for he was undoubtedly wrong to make pronouncements of this importance without seeking expert opinion from European experts before pronouncing the axehead as Scandinavian in origin.   In a wider perspective, it casts doubt on the whole interpretation of the petroglyphs as being of Viking derivation.  Once people's doubts have been raised, it is human nature for them to look more closely at other claims, and for scepticism to escalate about the whole proposition.