From the Vineyard Volume 7, Number 1

H. Mike Xu, a Chinese language professor at Texas Christian University, claimed in 1996 to have found Chinese writing engraved on a set of jade celts or ax-heads that, with a number of Olmec figurines, were part of a miniature ritual scene that was excavated years ago at the site of La Venta in southern Mexico. He also claimed to see related characters on other Mesoamerican finds. The signs meant in Chinese, he said, such things as the sun, rain, water, worship, sacrifice, wealth, land, mountain, and plants. Even names of kings and ancestors of the rulers of the Shang Dynasty in northern China are also found on the objects, he claimed. He hypothesized that refugees from the Shang territory in northern China fled there in 1122 b.c. when, according to Chinese records, that dynasty ended. Xu thinks that a group of them probably reached southern Mexico where they helped trigger the Olmec culture.

The immediate reaction from American archaeologists (none of whom were expert in Chinese language) who were queried by reporters was to deny with scorn any such possibility. However, Xu gained the support of prominent scholars of history and language in China that the characters are indeed Chinese. More recently he has discovered other examples on ancient objects and rock art in Mesoamerica and in western North America; he claims now to have found hundreds of examples. Many of these were shown at a FARMS-sponsored presentation given by Xu at BYU in April 1998. FARMS provided some support so that Xu could accept an invitation from Chinese government agencies to pursue his research with key scholars in China in summer 1998. As a result, a number of historians there have indicated interest in beginning work on the problem from the Asian end.

The skull of a male, discovered on the shore of the Columbia River in Washington and called Kennewick Man, has generated a flurry of press publicity over the past two years. It has been dated at around 9300 years old by the radiocarbon method. Anthropologists who have examined the remains were struck that it shows features that relate it to caucasoids ("white men"). One of the experts who studied the find noted, "This skeleton would be almost impossible to match among any of the Western American Indian tribes." Under U.S. laws governing the handling of ancient skeletal remains, a nearby Indian tribe has claimed this specimen as one of their ancestors and has blocked further tests; they plan to rebury it. However, certain studies had already been accomplished before the Army Corps of Engineers, in whose custody it remains, put it off limits pending settlement of a suit by prominent scientists to permit further study. The Corps proceeded to bury the site as part of routine flood control activities despite criticism, and a lawsuit, by scientists. Now other ancient skulls, from the Wizard Beach and and Spirit Cave sites in Nevada, have been dug out of museum storage and restudied. They date to the same period and likewise prove not to be "typical American Indians." Forensic reconstructions of the appearance of the three specimens show, in addition to certain relationships to modern Amerindians, notable similarities to people of European extraction. Two researchers who reported on these results at the 1998 annual meeting of physical anthropologists, which happened to be in Salt Lake City, concluded that there must have been several waves of migrations from the Old World to America by 10,000 years ago rather than just one or two out of northern Asia as claimed by most anthropologists until recently.1 It remains to be learned why only "Indian" characteristics seem to have survived in later inhabitants of the area.

Other research reported at the same anthropological meeting offered "tantalizing support to a controversial theory that a band of people who originally lived in Europe or Asia Minor were among the continent's first settlers."2 The reporting team was led by Emory University DNA researchers Michael Brown and Douglas Wallace. They were searching for the source population of a puzzling genetic descent line known as haplogroup X. Reviewing previous studies and analyzing new samples from Native American, European, and Asian populations, they found to their surprise that X was confirmed only in a smattering of living people in Europe and Asia Minor, including Italians, Finns, and certain Israelis (and perhaps Turks, Bulgarians, and Spaniards), but "It's not in Tibet, Mongolia, Southeast Asia, or Northeast Asia," according to one scientist.

Back to Top
Back to Transocenaic Contacts