Coins:
Roman coins have been found in Venezuela and Maine.
Roman coins were found in Texas at the bottom of an Indian mound at Round Rock. The mound is dated at approximately 800 AD.
In 1957 by a small boy found a coin in a field near Phenix City, Alabama, from Syracuse, on the island of Sicily, and dating from 490 B.C.
In the town of Heavener, Oklahoma, another out-of-place coin was found in 1976. Experts identified it as a bronze tetradrachm originally struck in Antioch, Syria in 63 A.D. and bearing the profile of the emperor Nero.
In 1882, a farmer in Cass County, Illinois picked up bronze coin later identified as a coin of Antiochus IV, one of the kings of Syria who reigned from 175 B.C. to 164 B.C., and who is mentioned in the Bible.
Pottery: Roman pottery was unearthed in Mexico that, according to its style, has been dated to the second century A.D.
Inscriptions:
In 1966, a man named Manfred Metcalf stumbled upon a stone in the state of Georgia that bears an inscription that is very similar to ancient writing from the island of Crete called “Cretan Linear A and B writing.”
In the early 1900s, Bernardo da Silva Ramos, a Brazilian rubber-tapper working in the Amazon jungle, found many large rocks on which was inscribed more than 2,000 ancient scripts about the “Old World.”
Near Rio de Janeiro, high on a vertical wall of rock – 3,000 feet up – is an inscription that reads: ‘Tyre, Phoenicia, Badezir, Firstborn of Jethbaal…” and dated to the middle of the ninth century B.C.
Near Parahyba, Brazil, an inscription on Phoenician has been translated, in part, as: “We are sons of Canaan from Sidon, the city of the king. Commerce has cast us on this distant shore, a land of mountains. We set [sacrificed] a youth for the exalted gods and goddesses in the nineteenth year of Hiram, our mighty king. We embarked from Ezion-Geber into the Red Sea and voyaged with ten ships. We were at sea together for two years around the land belonging to Ham [Africa] but were separated by a storm [lit. ‘from the hand of Baal’], and we were no longer with our companions. So we have come here, twelve men and three women, on a… shore which I, the Admiral, control. But auspiciously may the gods and goddesses favor us!”
The Kensington Stone, discovered in Kensington, Minnesota in 1898 contains an inscription describing an expedition of Norsemen into the interior of what is now North America. It’s estimated that this expedition took place in the 1300s.
In 1980, P.M. Leonard and J.L. Glenn, from the Hogle Zoological Gardens, Salt Lake City, visited a rock outcropping in Colorado that was reputed to be inscribed with “peculiar markings.” Leonard and Glenn believe they are excellent examples of Consainne Ogam writing – a type ascribed to ancient Celts. One of the many inscriptions was translated as: “Route Guide: To the west is the frontier town with standing stones as boundary markers.”
A fist-sized, round stone was found during the early 1890s in an cemetery near Nashville, Tennessee. Its front was inscribed with symbols thought to be Libyan, pre-100 A.D. style. It translates as: “The colonists pledge to redeem.”
Pictures: An experienced botanist has identified plants in an ancient fresco painting as a pineapple and a specific species of squash – both native to the Americas. Yet the fresco is in the Roman city of Pompeii.
Statues: In 1933, in a burial at Calixtlahuaca, Mexico, archaeologist José García Payón discovered a small carved head with “foreign” features in an undisturbed burial site. It was later identified by anthropologist Robert Heine-Geldern as “unquestionably” from the Hellenistic-Roman school of art and suggested a date of “around AD 200.”
Structures: Many stone chambers dot the New England countryside and most archaeologists insist they are all potato cellars built long ago by farmers. Others argue that they are too sophisticated for such a mundane application. One, is built into a hillside at Upton, Massachusetts, has sophisticated corbelling that follows they style of Irish and Iberic chambers. It’s theorized that it was really built by Europeans around 700 AD – long before the Leif Eiriksson.
Ships: In 1886, the remains of a shipwreck was found in Galveston Bay, Texas. Its construction is typically Roman.
Toys: A doll made of wood and wax was found deep in a “Well of Sacrifice” at Chichén Itzá, Mexico, on which is written Roman script.
Tombs: In the Mayan ruins of Palenque, a stone sarcophagus was found that is very much in the style of the ancient Phoenicians.

Statues: In 1914, archaeologist M.A. Gonzales was excavating some Mayan ruins in the city of Acajutla, Mexico when he was surprised by the discovery of two statuettes that were clearly Egyptian. One male and one female, the carvings bore ancient Egyptian dress and cartouches. They are thought to depict Osiis and Isis.
Inscriptions: Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs have been found in New South Wales, Australia. Located on a rock cliff in the National Park forest of the Hunter Valley, north of Sydney, the enigmatic carvings have been known since the early 1900s. There are more than 250 carvings of familiar Egyptian gods and symbols, including a life-sized engraving of the god Anubis. The hieroglyphs tell the story of explorers who were shipwrecked in a strange and hostile land, and the untimely death of their royal leader, “Lord Djes-eb.” From this information, scholars have been able to date the voyage to somewhere between 1779 and 2748 BC.
Fossils: In 1982, archaeologists digging at Fayum, near the Siwa Oasis in Egypt uncovered fossils of kangaroos and other Australian marsupials.
Language: There are striking similarities between the languages of ancient Egypt and those of the Native Americans that inhabited the areas around Louisiana about the time of Christ. B. Fell, of the Epigraphic Society, has stated that the language of the Atakapas, and to a lesser extent those of the Tunica and Chitimacha tribes, have affinities with Nile Valley languages involving just those words one would associate with Egyptian trading communities of 2,000 years ago.
Artifacts: Near the Neapean River outside Penrith, New South Wales, a scarab beetle – a familair Egyptian symbol – carved from onyx was unearthed. Another was found in Queensland, Australia.
Tombs: The April 5, 1909 edition of The Phoenix Gazette carried a front-page article about the discovery and excavation of an Egyptian tomb in the Grand Canyon by none other that the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian has since denied knowledge of any such discovery.

again, I think you are over valuing the importance of the transportation system over the idea of new land and the exploitation of the resources that can be claimed. Egyptian and Roman generals, which also ran commerical type operations from land they were given from pharoh and ceaser for conquering new land can be compared to today’s billionaires acting like a general commanding the troops in the battle of economic warfare. My point is we can not know WHAT a group of billionaires would do IF the free land and resources was put on the table. This offer can not be put on the table though until property rights etc get decided. A chicken and the egg senerio.
Since we can not know what a group of billionaires would do IF the inducement of a million free acres of land was offered on the table ( and which can not be offered UNTIL property rights are established) The whole idea of PRIVATE colonization is all moot.

Have you heard of this idea?
http://www.space.com/news/070314_moon_fuelingstation.html

“A Texas-based firm has drawn up plans for a manned expedition to the Moon to seek out the raw ingredients for what amounts to an orbital gas station for future spacecraft.

Under the plan, from Bill Stone of Austin’s Stone Aerospace, Inc, a vanguard team of industrialists would explore the Shackleton Crater at the Moon’s south pole to determine how much, if any, frozen water and other materials sits locked beneath the lunar regolith [image].

If enough resources are found, they could then be processed into spacecraft fuels and hauled into low-Earth orbit (LEO) for propellant-thirsty spacecraft at one-tenth the cost of launching them from Earth, according to the plan.

“Once initial funding is received to initiate the detailed planning effort, we expect to be open for business in LEO in the 2015 timeframe,” Stone said in a statement, adding that the ambitious plan would likely cost about $15 billion and require significant international partnerships. “Only by operating commercially will this enterprise be successful.”

See this is what I am saying, if the USA stated that if this company did this and was successful the USA would recognize a 5 million acre land claim by the company do you think it would gain any traction?

You have to remember monte a mining rights claim as soon as obtained automatically becomes an asset you can loan money against. A mining claim holds value NOT for the gold that has already been mined, the asset value is against all FUTURE mining. The same would hold true for the moon. How much capital could be leveraged with a 5 million acre moon mining rights claim backed by the USA? Which group of billionaires would try for it first? Do you think none would make a play for this? Do you think private enterprise would tear into this at a scale we have never seen the government do before with space flight?
Where do you mine diamonds? Volcanoes, when they erupt, diamonds are thrown out of the top in the lava or are left in the pipe, the central, vertical part of the volcano. So the best place to find diamonds is in the center of an extinct volcano. Magma-spewing volcanoes developed on the moon soon after its formation, according to a new study of a moon rock that fell to Earth. How many diamonds are just waiting to picked up?

I agree with you that we can not launch rockets over night, but we also know the difference between government doing something and private enterprise doing it. I feel the lure of free diamonds might do it, or mining oxygen, so once again I am going to say, if we truely want to “colonize” we REALLY have to get going on the property rights so land grants can be offered and we can find out once and for all if business would go there and make a go at it.

In terms of your beloved historical analogies: to claim that billionaires aren’t funding lunar transport now because they aren’t assured of land claims is like claiming that the Roman Empire didn’t find and colonize the New World because it hadn’t developed institutions like the Spanish land grant and the English chartered company. True, it hadn’t — but the technical and economic shortcomings of galleys for open-ocean sailing played a role so much greater that it’s silly to dwell on the institutional/legal barriers.

Well, if you could WALK to the moon, you might have a useful analogy.

So you’re saying when rome colonized gaul it was because the ceaser said, “well, ox carts are now cheap and routine enough I guess it is time to colonize gaul”

OR was it because everyone that colonized gaul got HUGE tracts of land and slaves to work the land, which ceaser gave them if they went and colonized.

Columbus landed and IMMEDIATLY claimed the land for the crown and the crown started GIVING LAND AWAY to induce people to go colonize. It was the same for the brits, the crown gave away HUGE land grants to INDUCE people to go live like a savage AND fight the current land holders in the new world. The history of colonization is the history of man going somewhere, on foot, horseback or boat and THEN claiming all the land for the crown (or declaring themselves king) then giving that land away to induce others to come and fight whoever held the land and take it way from them. In all cases it was about the freakin LAND and LAND OWNERSHIP. It didnt or does not matter what the transport method is or it’s relative cost.

Tell me professor gas can, if the United States of America made a policy statement of ” The first american who can privately fund a manned expedition to the moon can claim it for themselves and the USA will recognize and ENFORCE the claim with the military” do you HONESTLY believe cost would be a factor? Free land AND free resources would be the ONLY modivating factor and a few billion FREE acres of land and the resources they hold would be all that would be needed.

Monte, when the USA colonized the west, people WALKED, rode a horse, an ox cart it didnt matter, they wanted FREE land AND the resources on them ( gold, silver, timber, coal etc) the government (crown) GAVE FREE LAND to INDUCE people to go. The homestead act is a clear example FREE LAND to anyone willing to GO THERE on THEIR OWN DIME and start utilizing the resources. (which the government or crown can THEN tax)

As I said, no one will spend the dime to goto the moon without that incentive to INDUCE them to go on their own dime. A colonist wants to OWN the freakin’ LAND and resources it contains. It is the same for a mining company they will not spend BILLIONS without the MINING RIGHTS.
So if we REALLY are serious about “colonizing” the moon we have to resolve the property rights issue FIRST or NO ONE will be induced to go and colonize.

I say, the First mining company gets 5 million acres, the second 4 million etc etc until we have about 5 companies, and like the railroad, which was given every alternating MILE or section (640 acres) along the tracks they laid to INDUCE them to build it, they were then free to sell that land to “colonists”. It would be the same here the mining companies would set up the transport systems.

No, the number one reason was that the transport used for the colonization already existed and was a routine, affordable aspect of the colonizing society. When and if that becomes true for space, then the political/economic motives canl kick in; putting them first is wankery.

Now, its true, that the same arguments can be put forward to Obama (and whose to say that they aren’t), but talking to clinton about it doesn’t really help, IMHO.

Ferris,

There is more than one way to be effective with influencing Obama. If Clinton were to take the tack I suggested, it is likely to force Obama to respond. That is influence.

What would I advise Obama to do?

I would advise him to take a space policy position that mitigated one of his perceived weaknesses (that he is more rhetoric than substance), while also being consistent with his existing philosophy of “change”, and while being consistent with a theme of entrepreneurial innovation that he talks about on occasion.

I would propose that he respond to Clinton with:

OBAMA: “You want to spend $100-200 Billion dollars putting a few dozen government employees in space. Personally, I think that is very poor investment for this nation, and not that inspirational. Kids have a better chance of being an NBA basketball star than being a NASA astronaut. We need to create reality to kids dreams, and not hold out false hope like you suggest.

Then, as President, I will take the 90-190 Billion that I have just saved from that poor investment on government human spaceflight, which you support, and I will use those taxpayer funds to pay for expanding health care to tens of millions of Americans, and to help pay for tax cuts to the middle class. That too is a better investment than spending $100-200 Billion to send a few dozen government employees into space.”

That would be a substantive response to Senator Clinton, and would show to the world he has REAL substance behind his rhetoric. (Of course, he is pretty busy right now, and the chance of anybody getting to him with this substantive policy position is pretty small.)

But Ferris — if anybody can do it, you can. Give it a try!

FWIW,

– Al

“Politics is not rocket science, which is why rocket scientists do not understand politics.”

It would in Cleveland.