The Lost Colonies of Ancient America: A Comprehensive Guide to the Pre-Columbian Visitors Who Really Discovered America

Why four stars? It seems too easy to score points against this book. It is in serious need of an editor, to tighten up the narrative, or even just a proofreader, to eliminate stray superfluous words which resulted from careless cut-and-pasting. It certainly needed a fact-checker: if you are going to explain the Christian use of the fish as a symbol for Jesus, at least get your Greek right, and, as many people have already pointed out, Wyoming is not in the Four Corners region, etc.. The citations are dubious: too many are to Ancient American, of which the author was editor-in-chief, and others are to books published by companies most of us have never heard of. (Note that I don’t think “Frank Joseph”’s past history, as a pedophile and a neo-Nazi, is of any relevance here, although others seem to. Anyone is entitled to the benefit of the judgment after serving their time, and the one thing this book is not is white-supremacist - it claims to be an account of the remarkable achievements of just about every race on earth!).But nevertheless I think four stars is what it deserves. Unless every one of the examples cited was fabricated by people every bit as obsessive as I suspect the author himself is, this is an astounding compilation of little pieces of evidence which, taken together, add up to a good case for reexamining the historical narrative taught in our schools. As Karl Popper said, no amount of experiments can ever prove a scientific theory, but a single experiment can disprove one, so we should welcome uncomfortable findings as advancing the frontier of knowledge (especially in this young country, which has such a strong foundation myth). Of course, some of his sources, such as Gavin Menzies’ “1421: The Year China Discovered America”, have already attracted quite a lot of criticism, and on closer attention may not survive to be of much help (he does not mention one of my favorites in this category, Farley Mowat’s “The Farfarers: A New History of North America”, which I think would actually strengthen his case considerably).The impression the author gives is that the archaeological establishment has scorned these findings because they do not fit with majority academic opinion - often without even bothering to examine the evidence (or, as in the case of the Roman amphorae in Rio harbor, actively concealing the evidence for theological reasons). So - four stars for stirring up the hornets’ nest in a most entertaining way, and in the hope that a strictly neutral researcher will one day untangle this web.

For a very long time, I have suspected many of the things Frank Joseph has presented in his book. This is a spell binding series of events that prove people were coming here long ago. I always suspected the Minoans and Phoenicians, but Mr. Joseph shows how many other peoples came here and some as a joint effort between countries. Even as a young man it seemed that Columbus must have had a map. Recently I read that he admitted there was a map. He ran into an Island before he got to the mainland, but many followed in his footsteps and that helps to prove it could have been done long ago.The saddest thing is the most overwhelming cover-up that has been performed by our leaders and this starts even before Thomas Jefferson, but he helped the cover-up considerably. It couldn't get out that there were Europeans here, and the Indians were savages that had to be eradicated. That allowed our ancestors to take all the land. So many artifacts have been lost and destroyed, because the powers that be, said they were fakes. In 1848 Abe Lincoln made a comment about giants being found in "Indian Mounds". He had been informed of these people with two rows of teeth, both uppers and lowers and ranging from seven and one half to over ten feet. Some had six fingers and toes. These all disappeared to some place, maybe even destroyed.My copy is loaned to a friend and I'm going to read it again when he gets done. I plan to order some more for fellow history buffs. This is a book that must be read, but you are going to be unhappy with the cover-up. I'm going to look up some of these ancient fortresses as they are within an hours drive from me.

I find Frank Joseph's seemingly comprehensive list of actual physical evidence to be a compelling argument for early travel to America from Europe and the Middle East. Unless he's just made this stuff up it is hard to imagine any other conclusion. I do find that he stretches from the piece of physical evidence to proposed circumstances on how they ended up in the places they did.I have long thought that we give the ancient cultures too little credit for the distances they traveled and how they did so. Mr. Joseph discusses this and again provides convincing argument. I don't buy the theory that the people of the Americas all walked from Russia via the Bering Straights. No doubt some did. Yet knowing how men are basically lazy, ingenious, and always looking for short cuts it makes clear sense that sailing was involved.Still there are huge issues that have to make us wonder; where, for instance, is there any genetic evidence of these cultures in the New World? Why has none persisted through the ages? If the cultures in the ancient Americas did so much they must have established colonies or else there were people already here who they interacted with. It is a curious problem that the only dna evidence I've read about so far leads us back the the Bering Straights theory of populating these continents.Mr. Joseph provides a fascinating read nonetheless...

A great book which describes a large number of archaeological finds which indicate that numerous ancient civilisations visited mainland USA long before Columbus 'discovered' it. Plus other information: for example, did you know that Columbus had a map?

Given as a gift to my husband who has found it extremely interesting.

Did sailors from other continents travel to the Americas before Columbus? We know for a fact that they did, but prior to the discovery of L'Anse-aux-Meadows in 1960, the official answer would have been NO. Since that time, Viking settlements and artifacts have also been found in Nunavut.Would it really be so shocking to find a larger Viking presence here? Or, since we know the Vikings made it, and did so regularly, that others may have as well? It's only common sense to acknowledge that it is possible, but did it happen?Frank Joseph presents compelling evidence that it did. Archaeological evidence, combined with DNA evidence suggest that the Americas were important trading sites for such ancient peoples as the Minoans, Phoenicians, Chinese, Hebrews, Japanese, etc. Does he correctly interpret the evidence? That, I can't say. But it's interesting to contemplate.

Well researched. Insightful. It helped me follow up on many of the points in the book and confirm much of what was written.

There is only one word to describe it - FANTASTIC!!!!!