November 15, 2007
Traces of the early Spanish explorers found in Georgia?
What a high school girl found in 6 inches of South Georgia dirt last year may help rewrite the history of Europeans' earliest forays into the great, green New World that greeted them half a millennium ago.Of course, it could just be that these small items ended up there through trade. We'll see what else turns up. Full article here.The discovery is a glass bead no larger than a pencil eraser. It and four other beads, plus two ancient slivers of iron, may prompt historians to reconsider the presence of Spaniards in Georgia five centuries ago.
Blanton, the museum's curator of Native American archaeology, went looking for the remains of a long-lost Spanish mission near a spot not far from the place where the Ocmulgee and Oconee rivers join in a roil of brown water. He found something a century older.
He wonders if the artifacts may be evidence left by Hernando de Soto, who entered Georgia in 1540 on a three-year trek. Or could they hint of a doomed settlement that has never been found?
Posted by David on November 15, 2007 9:28 AM
Vikings.
Posted by: EricTheOptimist on November 15, 2007 11:31 AM
Considering it is on the Oconee River below the fall line and quite cose to most scholary guesses as to the location of Ayallon's colony, which followed several earlier contacts in the same vicinity. I think it is not all that unlikely they are artifacts of this.
Posted by: roy on November 16, 2007 9:34 PM
The historic and popular views of the Spanish explorations and conquests in the New World are frequently seen through a modern prism and colored more by revisionism and less by scholarship. The accomplishments of the Spanish, here in the Rio Grande Valley (and a town where I sit and first visited by Spainards in 1589) is viewed very differently than is the case elsewhere. This report of new evidence and early Spanish exploration in Georgia only strengthens my view that we need to rethink those early explorations and renew efforts to find archeological evidence. True, the beads may well represent trade goods; after all parrots made their way into North America via established trade routes from Central America. But, there is a good chance that a record of Spanish exploration and possible settlement also remain to be discovered.
Posted by: Donald Wolberg on November 17, 2007 8:34 PM
cronaca.com