markdienekes

The Phoenician Ship Expedition: An attempt to recreate the first circumnavigation of Africa, accomplished by Phoenician mariners in 600 BC, in a replica Phoenician/Mediterranean vessel.

Contains an interesting blog if anyone wants to read it and lots of pictures from their adventure, which is still ongoing!

http://www.phoenicia.org.uk/inspiring-blog.htm

Heinrich

Cool post :thumbs:

Volume One focuses on the culture and explorations of the mariners of ancient Carthage, a Phoenician colony on the North African coast, and McMenamin's hypothesis that Carthaginians made it to America before Eriksson and Columbus. McMenamin bases this idea on his belief that some Phoenician coins from around 320 bc contain maps that include a land mass west of Europe, indicating that Phoenicians had traveled to the New World. Geographic information about ocean currents also led him to this theory. While many experts dispute McMenamin's theory, the publicity it generated led one "believer" to contact him with some startling information, the subject of Volume Two.

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/com...108/mcman.html
http://www.sfslac.org/Library/Phoeni...mericaCont.htm

Edratman

Cool.

sylla1

Thanks for this wonderful thread, Mark.

Ms. Stephanie Edwards, the beauty on board:


The original Phoenician expedition used no doubt an almost entirely cabotage route, never far from sight of land; this modern expedition uses a more oceanic route:


The adventure began in August 2008; their last reported position (report #208 today) is 36.45.36 N, 42.21.22 W ("some 660 miles from Horta in the Azores"), i.e. the westernmost point of their planned route.

BTW, it tells a lot of the History of Exploration that the cabotage trip around Africa was reportedly done only once until the arrival of the notable nautical advances of the Portuguese in the XV & XVI, and also that even so that it took so many decades for the latter to replicate the circumnavigation of Africa.

Efendi

wonderfull indeed, Phonecians are one of the most interesting civilization of the long past. I wanted to make a web page about them. But I couln't find good source about what they sell what they buy. Map showing tradeable goods of that times.

Toltec

Hanno the Navigator's account is well worth a read.

I saw this website a while back and wondered how they'd get through Suez.

IamJoseph

That the Phoenecians were early pioneers with ships dates far back from 600 BCE. It is recorded in the writings of King Solomon [900 BCE] that the Phoenecian & Israelite Navies were in collaborative company in export of commercial trade.

davu

my my my --- weren't our early sailors very intrepid in their exploration of the world. HHEheheheh -- you just have to love it -- especially that little bit about "many experts challenge the theory". not that these people have good reason to do this sailing, exploring, and trading. they have done one thing that cannot be denied. they did the voyage, they lived to write about it and OF COURSE, they were the first one's ever ever ever to have done this.

now back to my little story line --- i now have living and writing proof about some people in a very small boat who sailed the ocean blue.

thank you to the person who presented this thread. do you possibly think they (the Phoenician's) might have even crossed "the pond". Even if its just a palm tree on a coin, maybe somewhere a picture of the Rocky Mountains.

We have short changed our own history and our legacy by always at first thought, challenging those who step out ------- hats off to these explorers and adventurous people because that is what they are.

if you could be so kind as to point me in the direction of literature and research (1st - I must be able to afford it), so as to read a little further into this.

Edgewaters

The Egyptians built several canals, at various times, from the Nile to the Suez.

Efendi

If it means opening Mediterneal to Indian Ocean, I wonder why it wasn't used medieval times. Opening Suez channel is not too earlly.