McMenamin Offers New Evidence for
Controversial Theory

This Phoenician copy of a half-dollar-size coin from ancient Syracuse may provide definitive evidence supporting Professor Mark McMenamin's theory that the ancient Phoenicians were the first Old World explorers in the New World. The coin's Punic (Phoenician) horse is flanked by an uprooted palm tree representing Phoenicia. McMenamin wonders if the dangling roots may indicate the travelers' intent to "transplant" Phoenician culture to the New World.

In a new two-volume work, Professor of Geology Mark McMenamin fleshes out his headline-making 1996 theory that Phoenician sailors discovered the New World circa 350 bc and reveals new evidence supporting this contention.

The MHC geologist and paleontologist, who has studied archeology and anthropology, has published six copies of The Carthaginians Were Here: Evidence for an Early Crossing of the Atlantic through his own press, Meanma, and plans to produce more as demand dictates. Students in his January Term course on the Phoenicians will draw heavily on the series and will conduct original research.

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.

The news came in the form of a telephone call in February 1997 from one Gloria Farley of Oklahoma. She had read an article about McMenamin's map-coin theory in the Biblical Archaeology Review and was excited by his findings. McMenamin would later learn that Farley is an independent pre-Columbian American historian who is highly respected within a community of nonmainstream archaeologists, enthusiasts who are often open to theories dismissed by conventional researchers. Farley informed McMenamin that a book she had written, In Plain Sight: Old World Records in Ancient America, contained a chapter, "The Coincidence of the Coins," that might be of interest to him. The chapter's focus is the discovery of Phoenician coins in America.

McMenamin was delighted to hear that seven coins, supposedly struck by Carthage in 350 BC, have been found across North America by treasure hunters between 1840 and 1986. These coins, some of which were struck from the same dies, are apparently silver-plated counterfeits of silver coins in circulation in the Mediterranean region during the fourth century BC. "The copies appear to be very old and may have been struck in antiquity. If authentically minted by ancient Phoenicians, and assuming that the coins have not been planted to fool archaeologists, then these coins represent definitive evidence for a Phoenician presence in pre-Columbian North America," McMenamin said.

He has borrowed three of the coins and has conducted various tests on them. One incorporated a new technique he developed to assay the elemental makeup of corroded ancient coins using Mount Holyoke's scanning electron microscope and energy dispersive spectrometer. While discussing the possibility that the coins are forgeries, McMenamin provides scientific evidence suggesting they are more likely the genuine article, confirmation that the Phoenicians were here first.

Like the Phoenicians for whom he has such admiration, Mark McMenamin seems to relish exploration and creative thinking. He plans to continue his research and will present his most recent findings in an invited paper at the New England Antiquities Research Association meeting April 17.

PHOTO COURTESY OF MARK MCMENAMIN