sailed by way of Gibraltar to England to bring tin from Cornwall,
and by 500 B.C. the Carthaginians were well acquainted with the
Atlantic coast of northern Africa.

At some time or other, long before the Christian era, a ship
belonging to one of the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean was
probably blown to the shores of America by the steady
trade-winds. Of course, no one can say positively that such a
voyage occurred. Yet certain curious similarities between the Old
World and the New enable us to infer with a great deal of
probability that it actually happened. The mere fact, for
example, that the adobe houses of the Pueblo Indians of New
Mexico are strikingly like the houses of northern Africa and
Persia is no proof that the civilization of the Old World and the
New are related. A similar physical environment might readily
cause the same type of house to be evolved in both places. When
we find striking similarities of other kinds, however, the case
becomes quite different. The constellations of the zodiac, for
instance, are typified by twelve living creatures, such as the
twins, the bull, the lion, the virgin, the crab, and the goat.
Only one of the constellations, the scorpion, presents any real
resemblance to the animal for which it is named. Yet the signs of
the zodiac in Mediterranean lands and in pre-Columbian America
from Peru to southern Mexico are almost identical. Here is a list
showing the Latin and English names of the constellations and
their equivalents in the calendars of the Peruvians, Mexicans,
and Mayas. *

* See S. Hagar, "The Bearing of Astronomy on the Problems of the
Unity or Plurality and the Probable Place of Origin of the