In August, 2008, Linguists, Archaeologists, Cartographers, DNA experts and thought leaders from many differing fields will gather to share their recent work, their views and their theories regarding early trans-Atlantic contact of peoples of the Americas with those of Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

The Atlantic Conference will take place on August 15th-17th, 2008 in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Since the 1933 discovery of a flint spearhead unearthed at Clovis, New Mexico, scientists, academics and just about everyone else became entrenched in the idea that North Americans arrived on this continent exclusively via the Bering Straight land bridge. The mammoth skeleton that lay beside the Clovis point was carbon-dated to 11,500 years ago and there seemed to be no other find that pointed to older human habitation in North America. This theory became so accepted that archaeologists stopped looking for older artifacts.

But, all along, our native friends have told a different story. They speak of many waves of migration and even purposeful intermarriage between the peoples of Europe and those of North America, and it was not just a one way street. People were going both ways.

Many different people throughout the world have, in the past couple decades, arrived at conclusions that point to ancient contact from both sides of the Atlantic. Scientists and academics who ascribe to such theories are knows as Diffusionists. This term is used to describe anyone who is interested in pre-Columbian(1492) contact between peoples across the Atlantic or Pacific oceans.

This is a subject that still raises the hackles of ‘independent inventionists,’ those who believe the Americas were populated exclusively from migration across the Bering Straight land bridge about 11,500 years ago. This group is also affectionately known as the ‘Clovis-First’ mentality.

In 1961, Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad identified a settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland as being of Viking origins. That, however, is the only pre-Columbian contact via the Atlantic Ocean that traditionalists are willing to consider.

Recently, NOVA ran a very popular documentary called “America’s Stone Age Explorers.” Curator of Archaeology and Chairman of the Anthropology Department at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. was one of the key scientists featured in the documentary. He, Bruce Bradley of the University of Exeter and other experts present a compelling argument that the Clovis spear point is very similar to those carved by the Solutrean peoples who lived in what is now France and Spain during the last ice age.   

And this is only one small piece of the evidence piling up to topple the Clovis-First theory of North America’s first inhabitants. The Atlantic Conference will gather world-renowned cartographers, linguistic archaeologists, DNA experts, and key tribal leaders from Native North American tribes such at the Mi’kmaqs who have a rich oral history telling of three waves of contact across the Atlantic, beginning about 200 A.D. And they say it was not just a one-way street.

The list of speakers who have already committed to a featured speaking role in the Atlantic Conference is impressive -

Dr. Dennis Stanford is Curator of Archaeology and Chairman of the Anthropology Department at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. He has devoted his career to early American prehistory, and done field work from Alaska to Monte Verde in Chile, where the oldest human remains in the Americas were found. With his Smithsonian colleague Bruce Bradley, he is working on the possibility that Clovis points, first found in North America around 11,000 years ago, derive from similar flaking techniques developed thousands of years earlier in Spain. Dr. Stanford is also one of the eight archaeologists suing the U.S. government to make the Kennewick Man available for study. An article on his theories about the link between European and American flaking technology can be found at this link. -- part of a Smithsonian web site called "Northern Clans, Northern Traces." His recent publications include the book Ice Age Hunters of the Rockies (1992, Boulder: University Press of Colorado). He is working on a book about his theory of an early North Atlantic crossing.

Dr. Benjamin B. Olshin is a professor of philosophy, history, and history of science at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Initially, his work looked at Greek and Roman texts dealing with cartography and exploration in the Atlantic Ocean. Later, his research turned to early European maps and texts concerning Atlantic exploration, and as a Fulbright scholar, he studied Portuguese navigations and cartography in Lisbon, Portugal. A skeptic by nature, he is nonetheless interested in an open-minded attitude towards evidence, and believes that a "systems" approach is needed to sort out the many claims concerning early ventures into the oceans. Despite his European focus, Dr. Olshin has also written on early Chinese navigation and cartography.

Garth Norman is President of the Ancient America Foundation (AAF) for professional and scriptural archaeology research, and is Director of Archaeological Research Consultants (ARCON Inc.). He began his professional archaeology career in 1965 and worked as a research associate with the BYU-New World Archaeological Foundation’s Izapa, Mexico project, completing the major work on the Izapa Sculpture project in 1976, which includes the Stela 5 Tree of Life stone. These are statues depicting bearded figures. It is a fact that American Indians do not have enough facial hair to grow beards. He has graduate degrees in Ancient Scripture and in Archaeology/Anthropology, and has had a life-long research interest in archaeology exploration of the Book of Mormon. He is working on a book focusing on the origin and development of early mesoamerican temple centers.

Stephen J. Augustine is Hereditary Chief on the Mi'kmaq Grand Council, Curator of Ethnology for Eastern Maritimes, in the Ethnology Services, Division of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, Gatineau, Quebec. He is uniquely qualified to speak to the Conference about Native traditions including Member Tou. Stephen Augustine obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and Political Science from St. Thomas University (New Brunswick) in 1986, and also holds a Master of Arts in Canadian Studies from Carleton University (Ottawa, Ontario). In his role as a Hereditary Chief on the Mi'kmaq Grand Council, and by Elders' training since an early age, Stephen J. Augustine has a thorough command of traditional practices, his language, and the history of his people.

Edo Nyland, a world renowned Linguistic Archaeologist, is digging up artifacts of language. He is a well-known author of such books as Linguistic Archaeology: An Introduction. He identified a subset of the Basque language, the core words of which have come through five millennia in almost unchanged form, as the nearest equivalent of the Neolithic universal language which has been spoken in Europe and the Near East before the 'babylonian speech confusion.' His presentation for the Atlantic Conference will be  regarding be the translation of a large encoded inscription in West Virginia, written in Basque about 600 AD.

Scott F. Wolter P.G. will be speaking on the Kensington Runestone, carved in 1362. Alice B. Kehoe refers to Wolter as "a hard scientist...who understands the methodology of science and inference, from data, to the best explanation. As Kehoe says, "The notion that the Kensington Runestone is a hoax is not supported by contemporary data."  

The event is being organized by leaders of the Sinclair family from Scotland, Canada and the United States. The Sinclair family has, for many years, tried to track down hard evidence of a legend of one Prince Henry Sinclair who may have crossed to Atlantic and landed in Nova Scotia in 1398, nearly a hundred years before Columbus.

Contact
Steve St. Clair, one of the founders of the event –
U.S. Phone – (917) 676-6788
Email – This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

Web Site: http://www.atlanticconference.org

A pdf with more information is here –
http://www.stclairresearch.com/FlyerSmall.pdf

About the Atlantic Conference -
The Atlantic Conference is a not-for-profit company whose sole aim is to further the study of early trans-Atlantic contact. The organization is run by Steve St. Clair of the US, Mark Staveley of Canada, Niven Sinclair of the U.K.
Steve, Mark, and Niven are not scientists. We are amateur historians.

Niven is a recently retired entrepreneur from the U.K. who has devoted decades  to understanding the history of the Sinclair family. His tireless efforts have uncovered and interpreted documents, relics and much more for Sinclair and Native families worldwide.
Mark is a PhD Candidate at the Memorial University of Newfoundland (St. John's, NL) where he is studying Computer Science and Computational Chemistry. Mark's research involves the creation of tools that will uniquely identify and categorize different chemical structures and reactions based on extracted computational information.

When he's not running his advertising firm (late at night when he really should be sleeping) Steve runs the Sinclair family worldwide DNA project and applies a rigor  to it inspired by the works of specialists like those who will speak at the Atlantic Conference.