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Phoenicians in Australia

A lot of crazy claims have been made about the Phoenicians. Not content with them having created possibly the world's first alphabet, established an unprecedented trading empire and given the world the color purple, some amateur historians claim that the ancient seafarers also beat Columbus to the New World by a good 3,000 years.

Now, Val Osborne, an amateur archeologist from Australia, says the Phoenicians discovered Down Under and established a trading center near Brisbane on the Queensland coast. A conspiracy theorist, he claims the Australian government has known about this for 40 years but has kept the discoveries quiet for fears of further upsetting Aboriginal sentiments. Osborne claims that the site contains a cemetery, a temple, the remains of port walls and stone sculptures -- several of which, he says, have already ended up in private collections. Gripping stuff. But so far, no one has seen any proof.

Here in Lebanon, the Phoenician motherland, Osborne's claims are met with a skepticism that borders on derision. "So far there is no evidence of the Phoenicians crossing the Atlantic, let alone going all the way to Australia," said Helen Sader, an expert in Phoenician history at the American University of Beirut. "The claims are unsubstantiated. Until we have some scientific evidence, from what we know, it's impossible."

But lack of hard evidence hasn't discouraged the faithful. The announcement, published by The Associated Press in July, led to a rash of postings on alternative history Web sites, where believers have been making similar claims for years.

A search on the World Weird Web -- a Web site dedicated to the more unusual theories out there -- reveals that the Phoenicians, like the Egyptians, were descended from the survivors of Atlantis. It is a mythical continent believed to have been located in the middle of the Atlantic, which according to legend sank beneath the waves.

Another theory has it that they were the offspring of aliens and that Baalbek is actually a spaceport. Apart from Australia, Phoenicians are claimed to have discovered Brazil, India and North America, to have brought cocaine and tobacco from South America to Egypt and, most curiously, to have inter-married with native New World inhabitants, producing blond, blue-eyed Amazon Indians.

If Osborne's claims turn out to be true, it wouldn't be the first time accepted historical wisdom has been turned on its head. The discovery in 1962 of a Viking camp at L'Anse aux-Meadows in Newfoundland confirmed old Norse stories that the Vikings had made it across the Atlantic. Subsequent excavations revealed that the camp was permanent; a cemetery and traces of agricultural activity were later discovered. Built in 1000 AD, the camp predates Columbus by almost 500 years.

But Viking navigational technology was slightly more sophisticated than Phoenician. Where the Phoenicians navigated by the stars, the Vikings also used a crude magnetic compass. Viking boats were also better adapted to open-sea journeys.

Established Phoenician activity was largely confined to the Mediterranean, where land, and thus fresh-water supplies, was never far away. The furthest Phoenicians regularly sailed to, was Cornwall, to trade for tin, and to a trading colony at Mogador on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. Even then, ships sailed close to the coast, stopping at Phoenician ports along the way for guidance and supplies.

In comparison, a voyage across the Atlantic or to Australia would require carrying sufficient provisions to last the voyage. "Even if the crews ate fish, what would they do for water?" asked Hassan Sarkiss, Professor of Archaeology at the Lebanese University. "With ultra-sophisticated equipment and knowing exactly where they're going, ships still have problems today." The belief that ships built by early civilizations were incapable of lengthy open-sea voyages was a fundament of historical theories. Then in 1947, Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl proved that open-sea voyages were not beyond the capacity of ancient peoples when he sailed on a traditional pre-historic reed boat from Peru to Polynesia, completing the 6,900-kilometer journey in 101 days.

In 1970, Heyerdahl built an Egyptian papyrus boat and sailed 6,100 kilometers across the widest part of the Atlantic from Safi in Morocco, not far from the ancient trading colony at Mogador, to Barbados. This, his second attempt at the crossing, was completed in 57 days. It proved that in theory, transatlantic travel was within the reach of the Phoenicians.

Interestingly, Heyerdahl believes that Phoenicians are contenders to the crown for the discovery of North America. "They had sea-going ability and they were sailing with women and plants for settlement as early as 1200 BC," he said in a 1999 interview in the Japan Times.

But for Sarkiss, there is one further complication in the Australian story. While the Vikings knew from exploration of the seas around their colonies in Iceland and Greenland that unexplored land lay on the other side of the Atlantic, there is no proof the Phoenicians had similar knowledge. "At the time, people believed the world was flat. They didn't know there was land across the Atlantic or that Asia existed," he said.

Professor Mark McMenamin, a geologist from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, disagrees. He believes that a series of gold coins minted in Carthage between 350 and 320 BC provide proof that the Phoenicians knew exactly what lay on the other side of the Atlantic and that they knew of India as well.

Working with computer-enhanced images of the coins, McMenamin was struck by the similarity between seemingly random patterns at the bottom of the coins and Greek geographer Ptolemy's maps of the known world. The difference was that these maps showed a distinct landmass where the Americas should be and a large triangular shape to the southeast of the Mediterranean.

McMenamin's discovery, coming as it does from a highly credited scientist who recently discovered the world's oldest known fossil in Mexico, has resulted in a great deal of discussion. Some scientists are now prepared to concede that Diodorus of Sicily might not have been exaggerating when he wrote in 100 BC that "in the deep off Africa is an island of considerable size that the Phoenicians discovered by accident after having planted many colonies throughout Africa."

That the Phoenicians were familiar with Africa now seems to be accepted fact. According to Greek historian Herodotus, in 600 BC, Pharaoh Necho hired a Phoenician fleet to circumnavigate Africa, from the Red Sea around the Cape of Good Hope and up the West African coast to the Mediterranean. The mission took three years. The travelers stopped each autumn to plant crops, which would be harvested before the fleet again set sail. "The new trend is to believe that the African story is true, although there is no direct evidence except in Herodotus," said Sader. "But after discussing the points, all of the information makes sense." This includes a geographically accurate reference to the voyagers watching the southern sunrise on their right as they sailed west around the tip of Africa, a sight Northern Hemisphere sailors never saw.

Given the proximity of the West African and South American coasts and the prevailing ocean currents, which flow in a westerly direction, Diodorus' claim is not impossible.

But archeologists believe that regular, planned journeys across such huge distances simply wouldn't have been worth the effort. The Phoenicians were traders, not explorers and colonizers. There would have to be a compelling reason to undertake such a hazardous voyage.

"If the journey around Africa took three years, how long would one to Australia take?" asked Sader. "I don't know if it was worth it and remember, the idea of sailing out to unknown lands is a relatively recent one." So did they or didn't they?

Sarkiss isn't convinced. "If the Phoenicians made it to Australia, why haven't we found evidence of them in India or Indonesia?" If Osborne is to be believed, the answer to that question might just lie outside Brisbane. But at the moment there is little physical evidence to suggest that the Phoenicians ever made it much further than Morocco or Cornwall.

Sader prefers to err on the side of caution. "There are no documented material finds (in Brazil or Australia) and the Phoenician inscriptions that were 'found' in Brazil were 'lost' before they could be studied," she said. "As for Australia, well, let's say right now that's very, very far-fetched, isn't it?"