Morten St George Theory

[Morten St. George]

I never called them crackpots and I don't question their sanity in any way.

I said it was bad scholarship.
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And I need to point out to you AGAIN that I have never rejected the possibility of the Americas. How many times do I have to say it? Assigning it a lower probability is NOT the same as rejecting it. The lower probability is based on data.

It doesn't matter if no one has provided an indisputable argument for Europe. You can't reject Europe based on that. The research isn't finished yet... for any region.

I fully appreciate that Janick, Talbert and Tucker found themselves caught between a rock and a hard place. What were they supposed to do? Suggest that the carbon dating could be erroneous or fraudulent (quite unprofessional to do that) or claim that there had to be Europeans who beat Columbus to America (for which they would have surely received ridicule from many quarters as there is little evidence of such a thing beyond the VMS itself).

The carbon dating is itself part of the problem: many people fail to realize that the U. of Arizona could have been dating not an original production but only a copy of earlier writings. While the early 15th century in Europe was not conducive for a desperate escape, the same cannot be said for the 13th century.

Compounding the problem, people also fail to realize that it is possible for Europeans to have settled in the Americas during the 13th century without leaving descendants. I here cite two sentences about the Cathars from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

But the worst danger was that the triumph of the heretical principles meant the extinction of the human race. This annihilation was the direct consequence of the Catharist doctrine, that all intercourse between the sexes ought to be avoided and that suicide or the Endura, under certain circumstances, is not only lawful but commendable.

Though the European Cathars in America would have had no children (and indeed the naked women are not depicted with infants or little kids in the VMS), they certainly could have left native American converts to their religion behind, who in turn would have converted new generations of native Americans to the religion including those who would eventually copy the writings of the European migrants, ie. parts of the VMS. There is no reason why those writings could not have included drawings of European plants in a European herbal tradition. Indeed, if these Cathars had passed though Toledo as postulated, they surely could have had contact with herbals including some of Arabic origin.

Historical sources say that the Triple Alliance (the beginning of the Aztec Empire) was founded in 1430 and then spread across Mexico during the coming decades, that is, likely not long after completion of the VMS. Since the Aztecs forced conquered peoples to adopt their religion and language, it's possible that Catharism in Mexico was extinguished even before the arrival of the Spanish Inquisition.