Quote:Diane wrote: "A while ago I posted about it, and the fact that an Italian girl's tombstone was disovered there well before anyone had thought Italian traders had gone so far. On the other hand, John of Montecorvino mentions that a physician from Italy (Bologna, if I recall.. but that I'd have to check) had been where Montecorvino was - in capital, inland - and been speaking about the disruptions to the papacy which led to the move to A[i]vignon."[/i]
This map of Syriac-speaking emigration supports earlier migrations, as well (very interesting map).
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I've also read stories about early Chinese trading ships reaching northeast Africa much sooner than anyone realized, before the Chinese outlawed the really big ships and some of their shipwrecked descendants apparently still tell stories of how they reached Africa and apparently have a few artifacts passed down from the voyages.
There are also stories in Basque history that the Basque whalers reached North America decades, possibly centuries before Columbus. I believe it's possible they did since they visited Iceland so frequently that they developed kind of a "pidgen-Icelandic" Basque from their communications with the Icelanders (I assume Iceland was a stopping port) and probably heard about "lands to the west" from the Icelanders who had communicated with the Vikings who continued west. If you can get from Iberia to Iceland, it's not so hard to get from Iceland to Greenland and even easier to get from Greenland to eastern America.
I've always thought it was strange that history books say the west didn't know anything about the east. If Asians and the northern tribes (the Arctic peoples) could get from Africa and Europe to Asia in the very early migrations, why wouldn't travelers and sailors with better technology go there too? Some of the Jewish communities along the Indian and Malaysian trading routes are very old.