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John L. Sorenson's Work On Pre-Columbian Transoceanic Voyages

guerreiro9

By guerreiro9
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guerreiro9 Community Regular

guerreiro9

Posted
Posted

I am sure some of you if not most of you are familiar with John L. Sorenson's and Carl L. Johannessen's work on Pre-Columbian Transoceanic Voyages.

If you are not you can read about it here:

http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp133_precolumbian_voyages.pdf

and here:

http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/transcripts/?id=154

I was exposed to this work only within the last year, even though it was originally published a number of years ago.

I have tried numerous google searches, and several searches on this forum and others, and I cannot find any discussion of the paper. I am completely willing to admit that my searches may have suffered from user error. Does anyone know of anywhere that this paper is reviewed and discussed? (hint cursor hint hint). How was it received? Is it accepted by the experts in the field? What are the conclusions or responses that other experts have made?

For me the paper is nothing less than staggering, and demonstrates that there are some significant holes in our current understanding of Pre-Columbian cultural exchange.

I could only come up with three possible conclusions:

  1. Our current understanding of how flora and micro-fauna could have been transferred naturally from one continent to another anciently is substantially flawed. Over 100 occurrences of items which our current models predict could not have been transferred have been.
  2. Perhaps there is something to the theory of convergent evolution, as over 100 items appear to have simultaneously, and independently evolved into the same species on separate continents.
  3. Perhaps as Sorenson and Johannessen suggest anciently there were a number of transoceanic voyages which brought about the continental transfer of the species in question

I am not an expert in this field, but any of these three possibilities would seem to be paradigm shifting conclusions. If number 3 is the accepted conclusion by the experts in the field, then why has more news of this research not reached the general public (me! I'm out of the loop). Am I overlooking something substantial, again this is not my area of expertise, so I could be missing something obvious.

What say ye?

Robert F. Smith Grand Master

Robert F. Smith

Posted
Posted

I am sure some of you if not most of you are familiar with John L. Sorenson's and Carl L. Johannessen's work on Pre-Columbian Transoceanic Voyages.

If you are not you can read about it here:

http://www.sino-plat...ian_voyages.pdf

and here:

http://maxwellinstit...scripts/?id=154

I was exposed to this work only within the last year, even though it was originally published a number of years ago.

I have tried numerous google searches, and several searches on this forum and others, and I cannot find any discussion of the paper. I am completely willing to admit that my searches may have suffered from user error. Does anyone know of anywhere that this paper is reviewed and discussed? (hint cursor hint hint). How was it received? Is it accepted by the experts in the field? What are the conclusions or responses that other experts have made?

For me the paper is nothing less than staggering, and demonstrates that there are some significant holes in our current understanding of Pre-Columbian cultural exchange.

I could only come up with three possible conclusions:

  1. Our current understanding of how flora and micro-fauna could have been transferred naturally from one continent to another anciently is substantially flawed. Over 100 occurrences of items which our current models predict could not have been transferred have been.
  2. Perhaps there is something to the theory of convergent evolution, as over 100 items appear to have simultaneously, and independently evolved into the same species on separate continents.
  3. Perhaps as Sorenson and Johannessen suggest anciently there were a number of transoceanic voyages which brought about the continental transfer of the species in question

I am not an expert in this field, but any of these three possibilities would seem to be paradigm shifting conclusions. If number 3 is the accepted conclusion by the experts in the field, then why has more news of this research not reached the general public (me! I'm out of the loop). Am I overlooking something substantial, again this is not my area of expertise, so I could be missing something obvious.

The work of Sorenson & Johannessen (who is non-Mormon) is being discussed widely, as a cursory google search will disclose. The paper you mention has been cited in discussions several times on this board in recent years, along with a more recent paper:

Sorenson, John L., and Carl L. Johannessen, “Biological Evidence for Pre-Columbian Transoceanic Voyages,” in Victor H. Mair, ed., Contact and Exchange in the Ancient World (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai’i Press, 2006), 238-297.

A more recent publication by the two is:

Sorenson, John L., and Johannessen, Carl L., World Trade and Biological Exchanges Before 1492 (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2009). Available as a Kindle eBook for $5.

You may also want to see:

"Contactos transoceanicos precolombinos," July 6, 2011, online at

http://chiwulltun.blogspot.com/2011/07/contactos-transoceanicos-precolombinos.html .

Sorenson has two already completed books coming out within a year, one is his magnum opus, Mormon'sCodex (Maxwell Institute/Deseret Book, forthcoming in 2013), which was summarized recently by him at the Aug 2, 2012, annual Conference of FAIR transcript available online at http://www.fairlds.org/fair-conferences/2012-fair-conference/2012-reading-mormons-codex ..

and the other is his Diffusion book, which will likely be published as an eBook next year (or sooner).

Your assessment of Sorenson & Johannessen's work is correct, and there is a great deal more available from senior non-Mormon scholars like David H. Kelley, Betty Meggars, and Dennis Stanford (the latter two with the Smithsonian). The anti-diffusionist position is now dead.

4
cursor Mentor

cursor

Posted
Posted

The work of Sorenson & Johannessen ... is being discussed widely, as a cursory google search will disclose ...

"cursory" ... love that word. :clapping:

Does anyone know of anywhere that this paper is reviewed and discussed? (hint cursor hint hint). How was it received? Is it accepted by the experts in the field? What are the conclusions or responses that other experts have made?

I'll pose the questions to my father. I know, however, he is currently deeply involved in reworking chapter 23 (of 26 total) of his soon to be published Mormon's Codex. Let's see if he has a couple of spare minutes.

guerreiro9 Community Regular

guerreiro9

Posted
  • Author
Posted

I knew of Sorenson's upcoming book Mormon's Codex (from posts on this forum), but I did not realize another book on diffusion was in the editing process. I will try to wait "patiently" for both.

I had previously encountered a paper by David H. Kelley, but it appeared to pre-date the work of Sorenson and Johannessen by a number of years. I will search out more work by Betty Meggars and Dennis Standford.

If experts in the field have indeed embraced the position that "anti-diffusion is now dead" why is more not being made of this development? My background is in physics and engineering, and very rarely if ever do you see a paradigm shift of this magnitude. Generally new discoveries are used to refine and improve upon existing models, but very rarely if ever are existing models completely discarded.

As I mentioned this is not my area of expertise, but I frequent a number of general scientific sites, which post discoveries and articles from a number of different disciplines. If I find something interesting, I try to read more papers on the subject, but I had not caught even the scent of the work being done in this area.

It wasn't until a few months ago when I happened to catch a few minutes of a "docu-tainment" program on the history channel that I became aware of these developments. The program was describing the discovery of cocaine and nicotine traces in the tissue of ancient Egyptian mummies, and I nearly spit my food out onto the TV from shock. I began a series of internet searches, and found that these discoveries had been known for a long time, despite my efforts to stay abreast of scientific discoveries I had completely missed this.

My research led me to some of the earlier work by David H. Kelley, and eventually to the work by Sorenson and Johannessen. I tried to find scholarly critics of their work, but have been unsuccessful. I did find a number of blogs, and articles which agreed with their work, but these sites already seemed to have a "diffusionist" slant to them.

If you perform a google search of "John L. Sorenson Pre-Columbian Transoceanic Voyages" you will return the following as your top five results: (at least as of this morning)

Notice what is at number 5? This thread on this forum (complete with my mis-capitalization of 's) . Apparently my work in starting this thread on this forum was so ground breaking that it now occupies the number 5 spot in the Google search in question. No one in the greater scientific community is talking about this, and I am a little confused why they are not.

cursor Mentor

cursor

Posted
Posted

The "Sorenson'S" mis-capitalization was not your error. For some reason there must be an option set in the administration panel of this forum to auto-capitalize the first letter of each word (or what it thinks is a word). I do wish the admins would turn that feature off, if possible.

cursor Mentor

cursor

Posted
Posted (edited)

I asked:

Do you know of any expert reviews or significant discussions of this work?

Sino-Platonic Papers —
Scientific Evidence for Pre-Columbian Transoceanic Voyages

My father responded:

None at all. It may be too challenging (too much work) for any orthodox archaeologist to take the time to confront. More likely it remains unknown to them. Although Victor Mair, whose site is Sino-Platonic.org, reported in Jan. 2011 (when the paper had been posted less than two months) that it had had 30,000 page views by then.

Edited by cursor
1
guerreiro9 Community Regular

guerreiro9

Posted
  • Author
Posted (edited)

I asked:

Do you know of any expert reviews or significant discussions of this work?

Sino-Platonic Papers —
Scientific Evidence for Pre-Columbian Transoceanic Voyages

My father responded:

None at all. It may be too challenging (too much work) for any orthodox archaeologist to take the time to confront. More likely it remains unknown to them. Although Victor Mair, whose site is Sino-Platonic.org, reported in Jan. 2011 (when the paper had been posted less than two months) that it had had 30,000 page views by then.)

Cursor,

I appreciate very greatly your efforts in contacting your father, and it has unfortunately confirmed what I have found in my limited internet searches. The work does not appear to be the topic of much discussion, either by willful dismissal or simple ignorance. This is unfortunate, as it appears to be groundbreaking and substantially changes the model by which flora and micro-fauna dispersion should be viewed. People have been awarded Nobel prizes for less groundbreaking work in their fields.

Unfortunately I do not have substantially more to add to the discussion. The methodology is sound, the logic is sound, the conclusions need to be left to the experts. The only experts willing to address the subject have come to conclusions that completely alter the way in which the history of the western hemisphere should be viewed and no one seems to care.... fascinating!

Edited by guerreiro9
1
cursor Mentor

cursor

Posted
Posted (edited)

You're certainly welcome, guerriero (warrior).

Always keep up the good fight. :)

[i see that the "Sorenson'S" error has been corrected by the moderators. Cool. :good: ]

Edited by cursor
Bob Crockett Grand Master

Bob Crockett

Posted
Posted

Dr. Sorenson has a 2009 book-length treatment of this subject, which I have. It is dry as dust but I read it and found it very compelling. I recall that Gavin Menzies (or maybe Charles Mann) cited Dr. Sorenson's book or books (there may be a multivolume work out there), but rather grudgingly, noting he was a BYU professor with an agenda.

cursor Mentor

cursor

Posted
Posted (edited)

Can you provide me with a title, Bob? Thanks.

I have an unpublished manuscript that written by my father which is (at this point) entitled "Diffusion." Within the next couple of months I'll be publishing that title as an ebook (as Robert F. Smith hinted, above).

Edited by cursor
cursor Mentor

cursor

Posted
Posted (edited)

The text that my father previously referred to as "Diffusion" is now entitled "Transoceanic Voyaging: How Ancient America Became Civilized." Here is the Introduction:

Transoceanic Voyaging: How Ancient America Became Civilized

John L. Sorenson

Introduction

One of the great issues that historians and scientific researchers who try to reconstruct humanity’s past record have been unable to settle is, did civilization arise in the world just a single time, in the Old World, or also separately in the New World? If it came about twice, the civilizing impulse process may have been a natural process, a result springing more or less inevitably out of human consciousness. If, on the other hand, it arose by borrowing, from one hemisphere to the other, its rise would have come from a unique set of circumstances. In that case we would have to consider our civilized heritage a one-time historical accident.

About civilization’s beginning in the Old World there is little question. Despite some unsettled details involving chronology and channels of influence, the several areas where civilization came into being the earliest seem to follow a time line that looks as if one center—the Near East—led the way, then stimulated parallel developments in other spots—Egypt, the eastern Mediterranean, India and China--according to their distance from the heartland. The big question is about civilization in America. Most archaeologists, anthropologists and historians have consistently and vehemently maintained that developments in the two centers in the New World that had reached a civilized level before Columbus’ day—Mesoamerica and the Andean zone—did so without significant influence from Eurasia. They hold that this means that humanity twice came to a basically similar result, and thus that we can hope to determine through examining the commonalities in the two halves of the world how, presumably, the civilization came about by natural, evolutionary means.

But enough experts disagree with this position that its unsettled nature continues to trouble the scholarly waters. For example, Gordon R. Willey, prominent archaeologist at Harvard, observed in 1985 that, “No other subject in American archaeology has brought about such heated discussions as the role of Old World contacts.”

Very recent discoveries help us address this challenging question on a new and firmer basis. To do that will involve two analytical steps. The first is to settle the nagging issue: How much, if at all, were ancient American peoples connected across the oceans? We shall see here that the answer is, to a significant degree; the oceans were paths as much as obstacles. That is a shocking answer for most experts on the human past.

But the second question then remains to be answered: Was such communication crucial in bringing about civilization in the New World? The answer is equally positive.

The full text (49,146 words) will be available later this year as a digital ebook (JohnLSorenson.com — launch date 10.11.12).

Edited by cursor
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guerreiro9 Community Regular

guerreiro9

Posted
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Posted

The full text (49,146 words) will be available later this year as a digital ebook (JohnLSorenson.com — launch date 10.11.12).

I've just added an entry in my calendar for 10/11/12, and I've penciled in a sick day for the 12th and perhaps the 13th, nasty little bug.

Robert F. Smith Grand Master

Robert F. Smith

Posted
Posted (edited)
Notice what is at number 5? This thread on this forum (complete with my mis-capitalization of 's) . Apparently my work in starting this thread on this forum was so ground breaking that it now occupies the number 5 spot in the Google search in question. No one in the greater scientific community is talking about this, and I am a little confused why they are not.

Actually, the results of a google search do not often provide the most important or germane sources, but only those which have key words which favor an early position in search responses. One must be very canny in the process of searching -- how to phrase both to include as well as to exclude search terms. Those of us who have been researching this subject(s) since before the internet age have much deeper bibliographies than can be obtained via google searches. It required a lot of collaboration and use of snail mail.

Many of us still have a good deal of material which needs to be digitized and put on the internet. I am slowly moving in that direction, but at a snail's pace.

Edited by Robert F. Smith
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