Europe 'Discovered' When Native Americans Shipwrecked In Holland, Books Claim

A visitor places her hands on a tangible earth, a digital globe, at an exhibition pavillion in Rusutsu town, northern Japan. Reuters

Europe was discovered when Native Americans shipwrecked in what is now Holland around 60 B.C., according to claims in a number of history books that call into question the history we all learned in school.

For instance the book Still Casting Shadows: A Shared Mosaic of U.S. History, Volume 1: 1620-1913 by B. Clay Shannon includes a passage that speaks to this little-known claim:

Native Americans also crossed the Atlantic: Anthropologists conjecture that Native Americans voyaged east millenia ago from Canada to Scandinavia or Scotland, the book says. Two Indians shipwrecked in Holland around 60 B.C. became curiousities in Europe.

The passage is actually a quote from a well-known 1996 book called Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen, which helped to debunk many commonly held beliefs about American history.

The topic has been trending on Internet trend websites such as Alexa as people become aware of the theory, which has been out there for years but is garnering new attention for some reason in recent days.

The discussion comes on the heels of a History Channel documentary titled Who Really Discovered Europe?, which discusses alternative theories about how the New World was first reached by explorers. The film throws into question the accepted narrative of Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci and other European sailors being the first to find America.

The History Channel documentary attempts to turn history on its end by suggesting that the Chinese sailed a junk ship south around the Horn of Africa, then made landfall in America in 1421. The claim is backed during an interview with author and historian Gavin Menzies, who wrote the book 1421: The Year the Chinese Discovered America, and has extensive evidence that he says backs the claim that the Chinese reached America before the Europeans.

Click play below to watch the Who Really Discovered Europe? documentary video below:

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