There is growing evidence of possible visits to the Americas made by people from Asia, Europe and Oceania prior to Christopher Columbus in 1492.  Pretty much accepted by mainstream scientists and scholars are Maritime explorations by Norse peoples from Scandinavia during the late 10th century led to the Norse colonization of Greenland and Newfoundland[3] which preceded Columbus' arrival in the Americas by some 500 years. Recent genetic studies have also suggested that some eastern Polynesian populations have admixture from coastal northern South American peoples with an estimated date of contact around 1200 CE.

Gunnar Thompson,  Anthropologist (1946 - 2017) has been a lifelong critic of traditional history. In the third grade, he was asked "Who discovered America." He replied: "The Indians"--thinking they were here before everybody else. The teacher said he was wrong. In grad school at the University of Wisconsin, he was again asked the same question. This time, he added: "the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Romans and the Greeks.”  He has written several watershed books and numerous articles on the subject of early voyages to the New World before Columbus. These include: Nu Sun (1989), American Discovery (1994), The Friar's Map (1996), and Lions In The New Land (1998). His discovery of the Omnibus Power Sign in 1985 offered the first conclusive proof that Asian mariners had made a significant contribution to the origins of New World civilization. In 2005, he was invited to give a presentation on Zeng He and Marco Polo at the Library of Congress. In 2006, he was invited to Beijing, China, to authenticate the 1418 Ming Map of the World. His vital discoveries have received praise from such notable scholars as the Norwegian ethnologist Thor Heyerdahl, author Gavin Menzies, and archeologist Betty Meggers of the Smithsonian Institution. He has appeared internationally on countless television documentaries and is widely acknowledged as a leading world expert on multi-ethnic New World Discovery.

From the Archives: This live interview was recorded on July 15, 1995 on the nationally syndicated radio program The Laura Lee Show. See more at www.lauralee.com

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