Pseudoarchaeology says Vikings came to Australia

Anna Salleh
ABC Science Online
Wednesday, 29 August 2007

There are many stories about secret visitors landing on Australian shores. But what's the evidence?

Many people believe Vikings, Phoenicians or Aztecs visited Australia because archaeologists aren't good at marketing their version of the past, argues one professional.

Sydney-based archaeologist Denis Gojak will talk about how researchers can combat such 'pseudoarchaeology' at the Australian Archaeology Conference in Sydney next month.

"There's a real passion for stories about the past," says Gojak.

"I think it's a failing in our profession that this need is being fulfilled through these other means."

Gojak says many people who stumble across stone artefacts or engravings that remind them of ancient civilisations think they are evidence of arrivals in Australia before the Dutch and English.

"There are claims of everything from ancient Egyptians, which would be about 2-3000 years ago, through to Romans, Vikings, Phoenicians and South American civilisations like the Inca."

He says this "broad folk idea" of secret visitors tends to be based on wildly speculative claims about isolated objects and "structures" discovered in undocumented circumstances.

"Because they don't have any context, it's easy to make up their backstory," says Gojak.

The Mahogany Ship

Stories tend to be passed from person to person, changing as they go, says Gojak, giving the example of the mystery of the Mahogany Ship, a wreck first seen on the Victorian coast in the 1870s.

"Its legend has grown phenomenally over the years," he says.

The ship was reportedly made of a red timber resembling mahogany, suggesting an exotic timber from far away.

Gojak says over time, the ship's size grew, especially once it was reported to have been buried under shifting sands and its exact location lost.

There are no photographs and the last eyewitness report was around the beginning of last century, he says.

Nevertheless in the 20th century an amateur historian argued the wreck was of a Portuguese exploratory voyage some 200 or more years before Captain James Cook's arrival.

Despite extensive and costly searches no remnants of the boat remain, says Gojak.

He says since the rise in popularity of the idea that the Chinese discovered the world in 1421 the Mahogany Ship has been reinterpreted as a Chinese junk.

Pseudoarchaeology

Gojak says claims like those about the Mahogany Ship can be described as pseudoarchaeology.

He says there is no doubt that maritime exploring nations like Portugal and Spain were sailing around the Indian Ocean and the Southern Pacific in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Egyptians down under? (Image: iStockphoto)
"It's not outside the realms of possibility at all that they may have come to Australia," he says.

"But so far no one has presented any good evidence that they actually did arrive."

For example, he says, there are no documents in Portuguese records suggesting they bumped into a great southern land. The Dutch and English, by contrast, were very proud of the fact.

He also says there are no evidence of relics, such as bottles or pieces of ship equipment, you would expect to find if the Portuguese had landed.

Gojak says most archaeologists prefer the simpler explanation, which is also more consistent with other facts, that the Mahogany Ship is the remains of a whaling boat.

He says other claimed evidence of secret visitors can also be explained.

For example, an Egyptian statue found in Sydney's historic Rocks area is more likely to be a souvenir from a visiting sailor, says Gojak.

He says putative ancient Greek axe heads have been explained as naturally occurring rocks, an alleged pyramid has been explained as agricultural terracing and a supposed Portuguese port was actually a documented agricultural building from the 1840s.

In one case a park ranger caught someone engraving rocks with Egyptian hieroglyphs, says Gojak, but unfortunately these reports are downplayed by those who want to believe the Egyptians were early visitors to Australia.

Better marketing of archaeology needed

Gojak says the success of pseudoarchaeology means archaeologists need to do a better job at satisfying the public's desire for great stories about the past.

"Archaeologists and historians can tell stories that are just as interesting and exciting," he says.

"There's an obvious market there for us to better tell our version of the past."

Gojak says archaeologists have an ethical duty to encourage a view about the past that is founded on good evidence.

It is not that people who explore pseudoarchaeology are unintelligent, says Gojak.

"Often they have quite a good education, they are observers, thinkers and speculators," he says.

But they are just not good at critical evaluation of evidence.

"That's not just a problem in archaeology. It's a problem in all facets of life."