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Ancient Chinese and Roman Coins Found in North America

Dickydevo

Dickydevo

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Recently I`ve found a few references to ancient (hundreds or thousands) of years old coins in the U.S. or Canada in old newspaper reports.Does anyone have any similar stories?
 
Are the reports online? I'd like to read them. Never heard of such a thing! :D

However, I've heard of a few hoaxes on similar lines.

For example, there was a stone slab carved with 'Viking runes' which turned out to have been carved with a chisel available at the local hardware store. ;)

Coins though, a different kettle of fish.
 
I have a report of a Roman coin in the U.S. which I will elaborate upon tomorrow.
 
Full attribution of find within an undisturbed strata of dated earth, using an approved chronometeric reference?

Please don't let this be a dinaria dropped from the pocket of Sicilian immigrant in 1934, on Ellis Island....or a archeoterrorist insertion.
 
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Ermintrude said:
Full attribution of find within an undisturbed strata of dated earth, using an approved chronometeric reference?

Please don't let this be a dinaria dropped from the pocket of Sicilian immigrant in 1934, on Ellis Island....or a archeoterrorist insertion.
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The story was in the Muskegon Chronicle of Sept 19th 1898. `An old Roman coin found among the Mackinac Indians.`

The Detroit Free Press was shown,recently, by G.M.Wendell of Mackinac, a relic,in the shape of an old Roman coin or medal,in an excellent state of preservation...This coin,Mr Wendell states,was given to him by an Indian,at Fort Mackinac,who said he found it,or dug it up,in the earth..." The article then goes on to speculate,was it brought by the Jesuits or the Normans?

It dated from the Emperor Trajan and had IMPERATORI TRAJANO AUGUSTO GER DAC P.M. T .R. Coss V.P.R. "The Senate and the People of Rome to the conqueror of the Germans and Dacians,Chief Ruler."

Reverse: "S.P.Q.R OPTIMO PRINCIPI" The Senate and the People of Rome to the best (or most cherished )prince." upon it.With Roman warrior clad in armour.

"This little relic,insignificant in itself,has come down through the centuries from the times of the ruler under whose command the Roman arms were carried farther than ever before or after.
 
Where is it now? If it's not in a museum somewhere, all we have is an old newspaper article.
 
It doesn't necessarily mean it was transported there by Romans. We now know the Vikings had travelled that far and had a settlement in Greenland, and perhaps it had been dropped there by one of them (or traded with the indians).

Mind you, having said that, Muskegon is quite a distance inland from Iceland or Greenland...
 
Charles Fort would not have sneered at data in "an old newspaper article," but I would be interested to know whether the (1898?) Mackinac find ever made its way into any of the scholarly literature on the subject.

It's not mentioned in William R. Corliss's chapter on "Anomalous Coins" (MGC) in his Archaeological Anomalies: Graphic Artifacts I (Glen Arm, Md.: The Sourcebook Project, 2005). A subchapter (MGC1), "Coins of Precolumbian Mintage Found in the New World," includes a highly selective state-by-state list of examples, but not this one.

Incidentally, Corliss gave all these New World coin finds his lowest rank for data quality, noting the finds have been "almost exclusively by nonprofessionals and under uncontrolled conditions. The ages of the coins are often determinable, but the times of deposition are not. Understandably, professional archaeologists refuse to accept such coins as indicators of anomalous Old World contacts. The coins could have been lost from collections, dropped at random, or even intentionally planted in hoaxes. Note that few of our references come from science journals" (8).
 
Andy Duncan said:
Charles Fort would not have sneered at data in "an old newspaper article"...
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But it's well known that papers of that era were prone to make up stuff, just to attract readers. And there's an example on a recent thread about a group of people who killed some kind of water monster in an American waterway, but the final post claimed it was a hoax invented by a local doctor. (Annoyingly I can't find the thread now - perhaps the thread starter pulled it on realising it was a non-story. Anyone else remember it?)

And then there were the phantom Airships (we must have threads) - many of those stories are thought to be fakes, or papers jumping on a craze, trying to outdo their rivals.

As for the 'Roman' coin, it would be nice if it was still around, to back up the newspaper story.
 
rynner2 said:
As for the 'Roman' coin, it would be nice if it was still around, to back up the newspaper story.
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I agree. And you're right to keep in mind the newspaper hoaxes of the 19th and early 20th centuries, but those tended to be much more spectacular and outrageous than an anomalous coin find. Moreover, anomalous coins do turn up from time to time, so newspaper accounts of such, from any era, don't beggar belief -- as opposed, say, to newspaper accounts of Snallygasters ravaging the Maryland countryside.
 
rynner2 said:
...And there's an example on a recent thread about a group of people who killed some kind of water monster in an American waterway, but the final post claimed it was a hoax invented by a local doctor. (Annoyingly I can't find the thread now - perhaps the thread starter pulled it on realising it was a non-story. Anyone else remember it?) ...
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forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/huge-prehistoric-lizard-like-animal-in-iowa-river-1885.58627/
Link is obsolete. The current link is:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...-lizard-like-animal-in-iowa-river-1885.58627/
 
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Andy Duncan said:
I agree. And you're right to keep in mind the newspaper hoaxes of the 19th and early 20th centuries, but those tended to be much more spectacular and outrageous than an anomalous coin find. Moreover, anomalous coins do turn up from time to time, so newspaper accounts of such, from any era, don't beggar belief -- as opposed, say, to newspaper accounts of Snallygasters ravaging the Maryland countryside.
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A few Chinese coins have turned up in N.America.Examples here on Sunday or Monday.
 
rynner2 said:
But it's well known that papers of that era were prone to make up stuff, just to attract readers. And there's an example on a recent thread about a group of people who killed some kind of water monster in an American waterway, but the final post claimed it was a hoax invented by a local doctor. (Annoyingly I can't find the thread now - perhaps the thread starter pulled it on realising it was a non-story. Anyone else remember it?)

And then there were the phantom Airships (we must have threads) - many of those stories are thought to be fakes, or papers jumping on a craze, trying to outdo their rivals.

As for the 'Roman' coin, it would be nice if it was still around, to back up the newspaper story.
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Remember though according to ancient texts the Vikings may have sailed as far as N.America (the Vinland Sagas) and the book of Jonah and other sources indicate the Phoenicians traded with the inhabitants of Cornwall in tin,so the possibility of a Roman coin reaching as far as N.America is within the bounds of possibility.
 
I have a few cases of Chinese coins in N.America

OLD CHINESE COIN FOUND.
1. A Chinese coin was found in Cassiar,British Columbia, by gold miners digging in a "claim".It was 3000 years old (according to the NY Herald of Oct.24th 1882.) "It is supposed to have been left there by Chinese mariners wrecked on the coast long before the Christian era."[See also Dr Mike Xu`s Transpacific web site].Inscriptions on it said to resemble Aztec calendar.American Naturalist, 18:98-99,1884."So far as I can make out the markings,this is a Chinese chronological cycle of sixty years,invented by the Emperor Huungti,2637 B.C., and circulated in this form to make his people remember it."

2.The Taylor Daily Press ,Feb 16th 1933:
OLD CHINESE COIN FOUND ON RANCH NEAR CANYON

Coin,thought to be 300 years old,found on a ranch at W.Texas State Teachers college farm

In W.Corliss Ancient Man: A Handbook of Puzzling Artefacts. p. 429:

3.CHINESE COINS IN ALASKAN BURIAL. Nature,46:574-75,1892. The coins were part of a wooden mask.The junk was actually driven onto the coast 200 years before.The grave were the mask was taken was near the Chilcat village,at the mouth of the Chilcat River, Alaska.

I am not infering from 3 records that the Chinese ever visited N.America in a significant way,but it`s a possibility.
 
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