Greetings and welcome to the May 2013 newsletter!

It has been another busy few months for us. We have been working on several exciting projects, and are pleased that they seem to be gradually coming to fruition! For example, we have recently dedicated quite a lot of time to searching our email archives for new and interesting material. We came across much new information that had fallen by the wayside, and this has been collated into digests for the last 5 years. You can see an example of what has been collated by clicking here

This is a small snippet of what we have in our database and we'd like to know your thoughts on how best we can make the most of this information. Would you be willing to pay a subscription to read it and / or our newsletter? We need to find ways of making our website pay for itself, and this would seem like a viable way to proceed.

The Midwestern Epigraphic Society 2013 Symposium   

American Discovery-World Heritage by Gunnar Thompson

We are pleased to announce the publication of our friend Gunnar Thompson's new book. Thompson has completed a panoramic historical narrative of New World Discovery, from the earliest Asian immigrants to Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Chinese, Celtic, and Germanic merchants and explorers. Packed with evidence from maps, artefacts, ships, and plant diffusion, the 338-page book is an excellent introduction for general readers.

You can purchase Gunnar's new book here 

Rock Paintings of the Chumash Indians - Multi-masted ship  A visitor to our website recommended we watch the following film entitled "Rock paintings of the Chumash Indians." They pointed us to 21:41 minutes into the film where one can see at the bottom left-hand of the screen what appears to be a large, multi-masted ship - could this image represent a Chinese treasure ship? It would be interesting to get an accurate date for this particular painting. To view the video click here 

Some recent news items which we hope you will find of interest below:

Ancient Chinese Coin Found On Kenyan Island
Scientists have unearthed a 600-year-old Chinese coin on the Kenyan island of Manda that shows trade existed between China and east Africa decades before European explorers set sail and changed the map of the world. More details here

X marks the spot: The find that could rewrite Australian history

Ancient African coins lead experts to question who discovered islands. Dr Ian McIntosh believes that the coins, which have apparently been gathering dust in a museum, could rewrite Australian history, indicating that the country was visited long before Europeans arrived. More information here

An ancient Egyptian harbour has emerged on the Red Sea coast, dating back about 4,500 years. "Evidence unearthed at the site shows that it predates by more than 1,000 years any other port structure known in the world," Pierre Tallet, Egyptologist at the University of Paris-Sorbonne and director of the archaeological mission, told Discovery News.
More information here

Identification of Polynesian mtDNA haplogroups in remains of Botocudo Amerindians from Brazil

More information here

Vikings in North America may have been preceded by Bronze Age colonists  More information here

Research published in the journal Nature shows that hunter-gatherer people living in Japan 15,000 ago cooked food in ceramic pots. "There's still a lot to work out about the details of why prehistoric hunter-gatherers made pots or painted or erected large buildings (Food rituals, or not? Art, or not? Temples for worship, or not?). Still, the discovery of 15,000 years of cooked fish is a new and exciting reason to recognize that our Homo sapiens ancestors were socially and technologically complex long before the advent of agriculture." More information here

We hope that you have enjoyed our latest newsletter. If so, please feel free to pass it on to others who might appreciate it too!

We look forward to hearing from you with any comments and suggestions you might have about our work.

Best wishes,

Gavin, Ian and the team