Uncharted

Really enjoyed listening to this book, many times over in fact, just to grasp half of the information contained within. Well researched, and packed with information, but never dry. It’s delivered in a digestible way, even if I did have to listen several times over to fully ingest. Interesting and insightful.

I am sure that the thesis of the authors is fundamentally correct: that both Asians and Europeans visited, and possibly settled, in the Americas before Columbus. I think there is enough circumstantial and material evidence for this. However, the authors choose to devote a lot of time to the least likely such visitation - that of Sir Henry Sinclair.

Alarm bells rang for me almost immediately when, in the first few lines of the introduction, the authors cited Gavin Menzies. Now, I am all for presenting unusual propositions regarding history but if the authors intend to be taken seriously they should also discuss the problems with the sources they are relying on. For example, they refer to Nicholas of Lynn(e)'s alleged visit to North America without informing the listener that there is actually no evidence that Nicholas even left England, never mind went to America. They go on to rely almost exclusively on the Zeno Narrative for Sinclair, despite serious misgivings on the subject, i.e. that the Zeno brothers can be shown to have been elsewhere during the alleged voyages to Orkney/Shetland/North America and indeed that the Zeno letters are fakes perpetrated by another Zeno some time after Columbus' voyage to America. If the authors addressed these issues and put forward their views as to why they do not agree with them I think I would have been able to take them more seriously.

Another issue I have with the authors is their rather quaint view of Native Americans. Whatever the actual social conditions and beliefs of the Micmac (which I am not familiar with), extending this pre-lapsarian condition to "all Native Americans" shows ignorance of the bloody and imperialistic nature of many tribes and confederations of tribes.

In the end the book seems to be a kind of cheerleading for the Sinclair family, despite the fact that the mainstay of the evidence - the Zeno narrative - is, to put it mildly, questionable. On the other hand, as always with Nigel Patterson, it is well read.