Inventio Fortunata

In this series of posts I have mentioned the Welsh prince Madoc and his mythical voyages to America, Legendary King Arthur (of Camelot and Knights of the Round Table fame) and his conquest of Iceland (plus a pre-Viking Celtic peopling of Iceland c.550 AD); I also mentioned David Ingram's 2,000 mile trek from Tampico, Mexico to Nova Scotia, Canada, where he saw elephants, gigantic eagles, strange beasts, horses, cattle, sheep, and also Indians that spoke Welsh. Today's post will look into the adventures of an English priest who sailed to the North Pole. All of these myths were used by John Dee to establish the precedence and rights of Elizabethan England over America.

The Franciscan Priest who visited the North Pole in 1360 AD

There is a lost book called Inventio Fortunata which recorded the Polar adventures of a priest in the Middle Ages. It was read by cartographers of the Modern Age who recorded its existence.

First Mention: 1508 AD

It was first mentioned in a marginal note by Johannes Ruysch in his map published in 1508: "It is written in the book of the 'Inventio Fortunata' that there is a very lofty rock of loadstone beneath the Arctic Pole, thirty-three German miles in circuit. Round this flows an indrawing sea, fluid like a vase, pouring water through openings below. About are islands, of which two are inhabited. Huge and broad mountain chains surround these islands, of which twenty-four will not allow of settlement by man." (Source). Loadstone is magnetite, a naturally magnetized mineral.

Second Mention: 1577 AD

This lofty magnetic island was known as Rupes Nigra, Latin words for "Rock" and "Black". As we will see below, Mercator showed it in his map. He also described it in a letter to John Deem written in 1577 (source). Mercator mentions the Franciscan friar and that he visited the Pole in the year 1360 AD.

1606 Mercator Hondius Map of the Arctic (First Map of the North Pole). Source - interactive map

Mercator begins his story describing the Circumpolar area and then he mentions King Arthur!:

"The islands adjacent to the North Pole were formerly called Ciliae (perhaps Thule), and now the Septentrionales
... Part of the army of King Arthur which conquered the Northern Islands and made them subject to him. And we read that nearly 4000 persons entered the indrawing seas who never returned. But in A.D. 1364 eight of these people came to the King’s Court in Norway. Among them were two priests, one of whom had an astrolabe, who was descended in the 5th generation from a Bruxellensis: One, I say: The eight (were sprung from?) those who had penetrated the Northern Regions in the first ships.
That great army of Arthur’s had lain all the winter (of 530 A.D.) in the northern islands of Scotland. And on May 3 a part of it crossed over into Iceland. Then four ships of the aforesaid land had come out of the North. And warned Arthur of the indrawing seas. So that Arthur did not proceed further, but peopled all the Islands between Scotland and Iceland, and - also peopled Grocland. (So it seems the Indrawing Sea only begins beyond Grocland). In this Grocland he found people 23 feet tall, that Is to say of the feet with which land is measured.
When those four ships returned, there were sailors who asserted that they knew where the magnetic lands (?) were."

So we have priests who descended from those who had settled the circumpolar areas during King Arthur's time. The Icelandic ships warned the king about the dangers and he didn't go on, but peopled the Orkneys, Shetlands, Faroe (between Scotland and Iceland) as well as Grocland (inhabited by giants).

The letter continues:

" [Arthur afterwards put on board a fleet of 12 ships about] 1800 men and about 400 women. They sailed north¬ wards on May 3 in the year following that in which the former ships had departed. And of these 12 ships, five were driven on the rocks in a storm, but the rest of them made their way between the high rocks on June 18, which was 44 days after they had set out. (More precisely, perhaps, some of them made their way.)
The priest who had the astrolabe related to the king of Norway that in A.D. 1360 there had come to these Northern Islands an English Minorite from Oxford, who was a good astronomer etc. Leaving the rest of the party, who had come to the Islands, he journeyed further through the whole of the North etc., and put into writing all the wonders of those, and gave the King of England this book, which he called in Latin Inventio Fortunatae, which book began at the last climate, that is to say latitude 54°, continuing to the Pole."

The letter then goes on to describe the islands, and seas, mountains, forests, short-statured people not more than 4 feet tall (1.2 m). Interestingly it tells of previous voyagers: "This Monk said that In two other places further inland he found a great piece of ship’s planking and other balks which had been used in big ships besides many trunks of trees which at some earlier date had been hewn down. So that he could say with certainty that there had formerly been habitation there but the people had now gone." and mentions Brazil trees: "All these four countries are high open lands (i.e. plateaus) except some mountains four fathom [sic] high. There are many trees of Brazil wood." A fathom is 1.8 meters or 6 ft. The text continues:

"In the midst of the four countries is a Whirl-pool... into which there empty these four Indrawing Seas which divide the North. And the water rushes round and descends into the earth just as if one were pouring it through a filter funnel. It is 4 degrees wide on every side of the Pole, that is to say eight degrees altogether. Except that right under the Pole there lies a bare rock in the midst of the Sea. Its circumference is almost 33 French miles*, and it is all of magnetic stone. And is as high as (the clouds?) so the Priest said, who had received the astrolabe from this Minorite in exchange for a Testament. And the Minorite himself had heard that one can see all round it from the Sea: and it is black and glistening. And nothing grows thereon, for there is not so much as a handful of soil on it. That was the writing and words of the Minorite, who has since journeyed to and fro five times for the King of England on business. They are to be found in a book called Inventio Fortunae, of which the Minorite himself was author."

* One French mile was known as a lieue or league, it varied according to the region (That is why the French, during the Revolution created the Metric system). It was equivalent to 2-3 miles or 3.6 to 4.8 km.

The four countries were islands that surrounded the Arctic region, they can be seen in the map below. The sea in this area was said to flow towards the pole (indrawing the water and ships into a vortex that flowed into the Earth). It was so strong, according to the letter, "that no wind can make a ship sail back against it." The Rupes Nigra island was made of magentic rock, a giant magnetic mountain that drew all of the compass needles towards the North (interesting explanation for the then unknown Earth's magnetic field). Minorite was the name given to a member of the Franciscan Order of friars, or Orders of Friors Minor, called so because minor means "lesser" in Latin and St. Francis of Assisi held that his followers should be frateres minores or "lesser brothers", living austere lives like he did.

Nicholas of Lynne

The misterious Minorite is believed to have been Nicholas of Lynne, a Franciscan friar. He was also an astronomer and mathematician who lectured in Oxford in the mid 1300s.

In this work, Hakluyt includes a chapter dedicated to Certaine testimonies concerning king Arthur and his Conquests of the North Regions and includes The voyage of Nicholas de Lynna, a Franciscan Frier, and an excellent Mathematician of Oxford, to all the Regions, situated vnder the North pole, in the yeere 1360 in the raigne of Edward the 3, king of England, the text is in Latin and also translated in the same text into English on p.249. Below is the English version:

"Touching the descriptions of the North parts, I have taken the same out of the voyage of James Cnoyen of Hartzevan Buske, which attegeth certain, conquests of Arthur king of Britaine, and the most part, and chiefest things among the rest he learned of a certain priest in the king of Norway’s court, in the year 1364. This priest was descended (In the fifth generation)’ from them which King Arthur had sent to inbabito these Islands, & he reported in the yeere 1360, a certaine English Frier, a Franciscan, and a Mathematician of Oxford, came into those Islands, who leaving them, & passing further by his magical Arte, described all those places that he sawe, & tooke the height of them with his astrolabe, according to the forme that I have set down in my map, and as I have taken it out of the aforesaid Jacob Cnoyen. He said that those foure Indraughts were drawne into an inwarde gulfe or whirlepoole, with so great a force, that the ships which once entered therin could by no means be driven backe againe, and that there is never in these partes so much wind blowing as might be sufficient to drive a cornmill. Geraldus Cambrensis hath certaine words altogether alike with these."

But John Dee seems to have believed the friar was another Franciscan known as Hugo of Ireland (Source), and Thomas Blundeville wrote in 1589 that he didn't believe that the friar had sailed to the Arctic. (Source): "Moreover the north side of the Promontorie Tabin hath 76 degrees of latitude, which place, whatsoever Plinie saith thereof in his fourth 'Booke of Histories', yet I beleeve that no Roman came ever there to describe the Promontorie. Neither doe I beleeve that the Frier of Oxford by vertue of his art of magike, ever came so nigh the Pole to measure with his astrolabe those cold parts, together with the foure floods, which Mercator and Barnardus doe describe both in the front and also in the nether end of their maps, unlesse he had some cold Deuill out of the middle region of the aire to be his guide. And therefore I take them in mine opinion to be meere fables."

Another option is that the information about the polar regions was collected by Ivar Bárdson who travelled to and from Greenland, starting in 1340, in charge of a see there. He must have had first hand information about the islands, seas, and neighboring Canada. He was in Norway around 1360 and could have met the Oxonian franciscan friar there, sharing his knowledge with him (Source).

Comments

The fantasy of the magnetic mountain island, the whirpools and subducting water at the pole make an amazing tale. The pygmies and giants also add to a story adapted to people who were transitioning from the Middle Ages to the Modern times of the Rennaisance and Humanism

The multiple islands, channels, icebergs and strong currents could portray a vision of North America: the tides along Canada's coast, the Estuary of St. Laurence River, Terranova, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, and the dark forests peopled with strange Native Americans would have excited the imagination of Medieval voyagers and chroniclers.

Interestingly the Brazil tree wood used to dye and tint in Medieval Europe appears in these stories, probably sourced from Brazil in South America, but assigned to these unknown Arctic regions.

There may be an ancient true story hidden in these sagas. It is possible that there were voyages of Monks to these northern islands (Greenland, Iceland, Faroe, Shetland and Orkneys) which also originated the myth of Saint Brendan and his mysterious Island. Then there are the Arthurian folkore of conquests of the norther island which may evoke ancient Celtic voyages west towards America.

Further Reading

B. F DeCosta. Inventio Fortunata. ARCTIC EXPLORATION WITH AN ACCOUNT OF Nicholas of Lynn, Read before the American Geographical Society, Chickering Hall, May 15th, 1880. Reprinted from the Bulletin of the Society.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Did King Arthur sail to Iceland and subdue it?

Welsh prince Madoc wasn't the only British royal to sail the Atlantic. Mythical King Arthur also sailed across it and conquered Iceland.

Geoffrey of Monmouth (c.1095 – c.1155 AD) in his work History of the Kings of England (see chapter 10, page 158) states that English King Arthur sailed to Iceland. He wrote the following:

"The next summer he fitted out a fleet, and made an expedition into Ireland, which he was desirous to reduce. Upon landing there, he was met by King Guillamurius before mentioned, with a vast number of men, who came with a design to fight him; but at the very beginning of the battle, those naked and unarmed people were miserably routed, and fled to such places as lay open to them for shelter. Guillamurius also in a short time was taken prisoner, and forced to submit; as were also all the other princes of the country after the king's example, being under great consternation at what had happened. After an entire conquest of Ireland, he made a voyage with his fleet to Iceland, which he also subdued. and now a rumor spreading over the rest of the islands, that no country was able to whithstand him, Doldavius, King of Gothland, and Gunfasius, King of the Orkneys, came voluntariliy, and made their submission, on a promise of paying tribute. Then, as soon as Winter was over, he returned back to Britain, where having established the kingdom, he resided in it for twelve years together in peace."

See the same book and quote but translated slightly differently from Latin here.

King Arthur is a mythical figure, probably based on a minor British warlord who fought against the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain in the late fifth, early sixth centuries AD. Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote about Merlin, the legendary Excalibur sword, and his wife, Gwinevere. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, he conquered Norway, Iceland, and some regions of France, and created a vast empire. He went to Insula Avalonis (Avalon) to heal a mortal wound, it was also the place where Excalibur was forged. Later additions included Camelot, Lancelot, and the round table.

Arthur is supposed to have lived around 450–550 AD.

If Arthur was a chieftain of the post-Roman Britons who had to defend their territory from the onsalught of Anglo-Saxons, and Jutes from the coasts of what is now Denmark and Northwestern Germany. These Britons were Latinized, Christian Celts who had to fend for themselves after Rome withdrew its last legions in AD 410. They were more civilized than the barbarians that attacked them, but they fared badly as the Germanic tribes settled in eastern England and pushed the locals westwards into Cornwall, Wales, Cumbria and the western Lancashire.

pre-Viking Celts in Iceland c.500 AD?

It is interesting to point out that according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Iceland was inhabited at that time ~450-550 AD.

The official records state that a Viking named Naddodd discovered it by chance ~861 AD (300 to 400 years after the dates given by Geoffrey of Monmouth!) and it was not settled until 874 AD when Arnarson arrived from Norway and established himself in Reykjavik.

There is of course an ancient account about Thule (Iceland) by the Greek explorer and navibator Pytheas of Massalia (~350 BC) who recorded in a book (now lost), On the Ocean his voyages. Scraps of this work were quoted by later writers. So we know from Strabo, about "Thule (which Pytheas says is a six days' sail north of Britain, and is near the frozen sea)" (source, also see footnote). He added that " Now Pytheas of Massilia tells us that Thule, the most northerly of the Britannic Islands, is farthest north, and that there the circle of the summer tropic is the same as the arctic circle.⁠163 But from the other writers I learn nothing on the subject — neither that there exists a certain island by the name of Thule, nor whether the northern regions are inhabitable" (Source).

But what has survived of Pytheas' account does not mention inhabitants in Thule.

Later, Roman scholar Tacitus wrote about General Agricola's conquest of the Orkney Islands, and that his fleet almost reached Thule: "Under Agricola a Roman fleet first navigated the shore of the furthest sea [84 AD], and confirmed Britain as an island, in the same voyage reaching the unexplored islands known as the Orcades and claiming them. Thule was merely sighted, as their orders took them only thus far, and winter was approaching. But they declared the waves sluggish, resistant to the oar, and likewise unresponsive to the wind, presumably because mountainous land, the cause and origin of storms, is scarcer, and the unbroken mass of deeper water is harder to set in motion." (Source)

Pliny the Elder also mentions Thule in his Natural History (source), as well as the the Orkney Islands (see § 4.103), and notes that the British Celts sailed to another island called Mictisis, he also mentions other islands from where people embark for Thule. It surely had inhabitants then (Source) - I have not found any other reference about Mictisis by any other author, ancient or modern. Try searching it in Google!

"The most remote of all that we find mentioned is Thule, in which, as we have previously stated, there is no night at the summer solstice, when the sun is passing through the sign of Cancer, while on the other hand at the winter solstice there is no day. Some writers are of opinion that this state of things lasts for six whole months together. Timaeus the historian says that an island called Mictisis within six days' sail of Britannia, in which white load is found; and that the Britons sail over to it in boats of osier, covered with sewed hides. There are writers also who make mention of some other islands: Scandia, Dumna, Bergos, and, greater than all, Nerigos, from which persons embark for Thule. At one day's sail from Thule is the frozen ocean, which by some is called the Cronian Sea. "

What was "white load"? Did they use hide-hulled osier boats? Pliny had mentioned them before; they are baskets made with flexible willow shoots (osier) covered with hides, or coracles. Rather flimsy to navigate the North Atlantic. White load is tin: "§ 34.156 [47] The next topic is the nature of lead, of which there are two kinds, black and white. White lead (tin) is the most valuable; the Greeks applied to it the name cassheros, and there was a legendary story of their going to islands of the Atlantic ocean to fetch it and importing it in platted vessels made of osiers and covered with stitched hides. It is now known that it is a product of Lusitania and Gallaecia found in the surface-strata of the ground which is sandy and of a black colour." (source)

There is no tin in Iceland or the Shetlands, Faroe, or Orkneys. The only source of tin other than Cornwall in the Sothwest of Britain, was in Nova Scotia (East Kemptville), it was the largest mine in the world until it closed. (Source).

But, the question is was Iceland inhabited in 450-550 AD, during Arthur's time?

There are written accounts by the Vikings that tell of Irish monks in Iceland when they arrived. For instance (Source): "Islendinga Bok c. 1. «Anciently there lived here Christian folk whom the Norsemen ealled Papar they afterwards went away as they could not endure the society of heathens and they left behind them Irish books bells and pastoral staves so that one could ascertain therefrom that they were Irish». Landnamabok «But before Iceland was peopled by the Norsemen there were folk here who were called by the Norsemen Papar they were Christians and it is thought that they came from the West over the sea for they left behind them Irish books bells and staves and many other articles from which one might conjecture they were West-men.»."

The Irish gaelic monks had established themselves in heathen Ireland starting in 431 with Bishop Palladius and Saint Patrick in 432 AD. Monasteries were built in the sixth-century ~500 AD, by St. Finian, St. Brendan, St. Comgall, St. Kieran, and St. Enda. They probably went north into the Faroe Islands and onwards to Icealand with an escort of Christian Celts ~500 AD (Source).

John Dee and English claims over America

This information was used by John Dee (1527-1608), a well known mathematician, astronomer, cartographer, and scholar of magic and the occult, to promote the English claims over America. He was a favorite of English Queen, Elizabeth I, acting as her adviser and astrologer. He coined the term "British Empire", championed the cause of exploring and claiming North America for England, and was an activist in favor of the Gregorian calendar (which was finally adopted by Britain in 1752).

Spain and Portugal had split the globe between themselves using the meridian that passed through a point 300 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands (Tordesillas Treaty, signed in 1494). Pope Julius II ratified this treaty in 1506. However, other nations like the Dutch and the English ignored it, especially after the break with Rome during the Protestant reformation.

Dee came up with the voyages of Welsh Prince Madoc, and the domination of Iceland and the Norsemen's territory by King Arthur, to set a precedent and legal priority for England's claim to North America, and the territories later occupied by the Vikings (Iceland, Greenland, Vinland, Markland), and the land mentioned by the Zeno brothers (Frisland and Estoitland).

He also used information from an account known as Inventio Fortunata which tells about an English Franciscan friar who was a mathematician at Oxford, who sailed to the North Pole on his own, in 1360 during the reign of Edward III of England. More details on this voyage in a future post.

Since Elizabeth I was a Tudor, and had Welsh roots (The House of Tudor came from the Tudors of Penmynydd, a noble family from Wales), Dee outlined her family tree showing that she was related to Arthur and Madoc!

Dee prepared maps for the English privateers and navigators like John Davis, Francis Drake, Martin Frobisher, Walter Raleigh, and Humphrey Gilbert, below is one of them, a North Pole view of the world, notice the ice-free Arctic Ocean, the magnetic mountain on the pole, and the many channels cutting across North America. Dee was convinced that a northern passage existed between Europe and the Far East. The map below was given by Dee to Gilbert in 1582-83. It can be enlarged by clicking on the source link.

John Dee's map for Sir Humphrey Gilbert, 1582-83. Source (click for interactive map)

For those interested in Dee and his British Empire project, I suggest reading the following paper published in 2024: The Artic Arthur and the American Avalon: John Dee’s Brytanici imperii limites (1578) and the North Atlantic island imaginary, by Stewart, B.; Buskes, G.; Cobben, F.; Geerts, W.; Nolten, M.; Verkoren, J. Leidschrift, 39(Februari (1) Er was eens… Sprookjes, folklore en mythes door de eeuwen heen Sprookjes, folklore en mythes door de eeuwen heen), 33-55. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/4198826.

Avalon in America

It is interesting to note that the southwestern tip of Newfoundland was named Avalon peninsula. Which is no other than the mythical island of King Arthur! This spot was the earliest site of English voyages (by Sebastian Cabot), temporary and later, permanent settlement. By chance it was named with an Arthurian placename.

It was named Avalon by Lord Baltimore, George Calvert, (1580-1632), who received a grant from the Crown to settle there in 1621 (many years after Dee's death), by chance, he chose the name Avalon because it was the land where St. Joseph of Arimathea was said to have landed in his mission to christianize Britain ~63 AD.

Back in 2014 I posted about mtDNA C1e haplogroup found only in Iceland. Amerindians have mtDNA C1b, C1c, and C1d but those who may have met the Vikings in Greenland (Innuit - Eskimo) don't carry it. They are unrelated to the Icleandic variant. mtDNA C1a is found in East Asia, and C1f found at extremely low frequencies in the eastern Baltic area. But neither are associated with the Iceland haplogroup. The options are: C1e has an Eurasian root and reached Iceland with its Viking peopling wave, or it is a Native American variant not yet detected in America. Considering its tree (see Fig. 3 in this paper), with C1e equidistant from C1f and C1d, I opt for an Amerindian variant, one that was thriving ~500 AD when Irish, English, or Scottish people navigated to and from America and Ireland and mixed with the natives, bringing it back to Iceland with them. It survived there and ended up in modern Icelandic people. The original Amerindian clade died out in America during the "Great Dying" after the discovery and conquest starting in 1492. However, C1d is particularly prevalent in South America, and at lower frequencies in Central and North America! (see heatmap here).

My next post will look into another Medieval English Polar explorer who sailed in 1360 to the North Pole.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

David Ingram saw elephants when he trekked from Mexico to Nova Scotia in the 1560s

As mentioned in my previous post, David Ingram mentioned the use of Welsh words by some natives he encountered during his long walk from Mexico to Nova Scotia. His story was recorded roughly 11 years after his adventure took place and you can read it online here (The Third Hawkins Voyage. [First Narrative by a Survivor.] The relation of David Ingram, of Barking, Essex...), recorded in 1582. See page 161 onwards.

David Ingram was born in Barking, Essex, England around 1542. He set out to make some money and live adventures with English privateer John Hawkins in 1567. But the endeavour didn't go as expected. After an encounter with the Spaniards, Ingram and one-hundred crewmates were left stranded in Tampico, Mexico (see map) in 1568. Hawkins returned to England and planned to come back and rescue his men. But a round trip would take several years. Facing the ire of the Spanish, the unfriendly natives in Mexico, and knowing that English ships sailed to and from Newfoundland, he and several mates set out on foot to walk from Mexico to the coasts facing Newfoundland in Nova Scotia. This would become a 2,000 mile hike (3,200 km).

He and his companions walked for 11 months, and never stopped more than 3 or 4 days at any campsite.

1570 map with the area Ingram walked. Source

Highlights of Ingram's story

Interesting things he noted in his story:

• Native spears had iron heads: "Their weapons are darts headed with iron... They have short broad swords of black iron, of the length of a yard, or very near an ell; bearing edges thicker than backs of knives : somewhat like the foils in our fence schools. They have crooked knives of iron" (p. 164) First report of Amerindians using iron!
• "Their Ensign [flag] is a horse’s tail" (p.164). Were they European or Pre-Hispanic horses?
• "They have in every house, scoops, buckets, and divers other vessels of massy silver; wherewith they do throw out water and dust, and otherwise do employ them to their necessary uses in their houses. All which this Examinate did see common and usual in some of these countries; especially where he found the great pearls. There are also great rivers; at the heads of which, this Examinate and his companions did find sundry pieces of gold, some as big as a man’s fist; the earth being washed away with the water." (p. 165). Silver, pearls, and gold. So many riches!!
• "There is also a great plenty of buffes [buffaloes], bears, horses, kine, wolves, foxes, deer, goats, sheep, hares, and conies. Also other cattle like ours, and very many unlike ours, to this Examinate unknown, the most part being wild." (p. 167-168). Horses and cattle!
• "This Examinate did also see in those countries, a monstrous beast twice as big as a horse, and in proportion like to a horse, in mane, hoof, hair, and neighing; saving it was small towards the hinder parts like a greyhound. This beast hath two teeth or horns, of a foot long, growing straight forth by their nostrils. They are natural enemies of the horse. He did also see in that country, both elephants and ounces. He did also see one another strange beast bigger than a bear. He had neither head nor neck. His eyes and mouth were in his breast. This beast is very ugly to behold, and cowardly of kind. It beareth a very fine skin like a rat, full of silver hairs." (p. 168) Very interesting Elephants, monsters with sabre teeth or horns, others bigger than a bear!.
• "There is also another kind of fowl in that country which hunteth [haunteth] the rivers, near unto the islands. They are of the shape and bigness of a goose ; but their wings are covered with small yellow feathers, and cannot fly. You may drive them before you like sheep. They are exceeding fat, and very delicate meat. They have white heads, and therefore the countrymen call them Penguins, which seemeth to be a Welsh name [!]. And they have also in use divers other Welsh words [!]. A matter worth the noting." (p. 169). The penguin (the great auk, Pinguinus impennis, now extinct, and the Welsh words!
• "There is also a very strange bird, thrice as big as an eagle, very beautiful to behold. His feathers are more orient [brilliant] than a peacock’s feathers; his eyes are glistering as a hawk’s eyes, but as great as a man’s eyes : his head and thigh as big as a man’s head and thigh. It hath a crest and tuft of feathers of sundry colours, on the top of the head, like a lapwing, hanging backwards. His beak and talons are in proportion like eagles, but very huge and large." A gigantic thunderbird?

Ingram is credible in many ways, because he describes maize (corn), the American bison or buffalo, tornadoes (which he describes as tempests, whirlwinds), and great rivers (he had to cross the Mississippi River). It seems that he dis walk across what is now the U.S. and eastern Mexico.

Finally, David Ingram and two companions named Browne and Twide reached a river roughly 200 miles west of Cape Breton (see map) and by the sea found a "French Captain, named Monsieur Champaigne : who took them unto his ship, and brought them unto Newhaven [Havre] in France; and from thence, they were transported unto England, Anno Domini 1569" He named the ship as Gargarine that traded " fine furs ; and of great red leaves of trees almost a yard long and about a foot broad, which he thinketh are good for dyeing. Also the said Monsieur Champaigne had there, for exchange of trifling wares, a good quantity of rude and unwrought silver."

The Elephant. Was it a Mammoth?

We all know there are no elephants in America. Even Haklyut considered Ingram's story as far-fetched, so he omitted it in his book's later editions. But, what if it wasn't an elephant, and instead he had seen a mammoth? Then there is the creature twice as big as a horse with horns or fangs. Some megafaunal animal? a smilodon (sabre-tooth felid) or a mastodon (elephant-like). The beast bigger than a bear could have been a e short-faced bear (Arctodus simus), all of these animals died out roughly 11,000 years ago. Could some have survived until 1568 AD?

The gigantic eagles, 3-times larger than regular ones, could have been surviving teratorns.

Iron smelting

Native Americans made copper, gold, and silver artifacts. Copper was used in the Great Lakes area, where pure native copper was exploited by the Old Copper Culture that flourished between 7500 and 1000 BC. They mined and cold-worked the copper (no smelting) into spearheads, fishooks, axes, and decorative articles that they traded.

The Vikings used a simple technique to obtain iron, a process called bog iron smelting. It uses bog ore, found in bogs which is smelted in a simple clay oven (bloomery furnace) roughly 3 feet high (90 cm) it produces iron which can be forged. The process was also used by the first American settlers well into the early 1800s.

Could the natives have learned this technology from the Vikings (or Madoc's Welshmen)? Or did they learn it themselves. Their iron tools would have rusted away centuries ago, leaving no trace. Alternatively, the natives could have peddled goods with European voyagers in exchange for iron which they fashioned into their spears and knives.

Horses and Cattle

Ingram mentions buffalo, the American bison, and cattle, and horses. By 1568, there were horses in America. The Spaniards brought them after the discovery of America in 1492. But, did he encounter pre-Hispanic horses and cattle? He also mentions sheep.

Their Route

Did Ingram and his companions follow a well-established trail, used for trade in pre-Hispanic times. There were trade routes moving turquoise from Arizona and New Mexico into Mexico. Copper around the Great Lakes. Which one did Ingram follow? Where did he cross the Mississippi?

Comments

Tall story? True? I believe him, though his recollections may have become fuzzy after 13 years. He also embellished his tale and must have added fantasy, fiction, and imagination to the facts.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

The Welsh discovery of America, the Madoc myth

Online you can find many pages dedicated to a Welsh prince named Madoc, who set sail from Wales roughly one century before his country was conquered by the English, and settled in North America.

I came across an interesting book, that predates these webpages by 150 years: America Discovered by the Welsh in 1170 A.D., by Benjamin H. Bowen (1876).

Google results: Madoc.

It is fun to read, and mentions among other things, the white, bearded indians of Baroa (on page 140) (I have posted about them), von Humboldt's reference to white Indians in the Orinoco region. It describes linguistic links, and stories told by those who settled and explored North America.

There is a also a long epic poem "Madoc" published in 1805 by Robert Southey (1774-1843) that details the mythic voyage from Wales to America, but not to what is now the U.S., but to Mexico, where he met the Aztecs (Aztlan). But is it based on facts?

Lhoyd's History of Wales, 1584

There is a much older written reference about Madoc by David Powel, published in 1584, and it is found in his work The historie of Cambria, now called Wales: a part of the most famous yland of Brytaine, written in the Brytish language aboue two hundreth yeares past: tr. into English by H. Lhoyd... Corrected, augmented, and continued out of records and best approoued authors, by Dauid Powel (see pages 166-167), quoted below.

The book, in its introduction, says that the official Welsh records it mentions were compiled by Caradoc of Lancaruan and later continued until 1270, and conserved in two Welsh abbeys. It was later translated into English by Humffrey Lhoyd (1527-1568). David Powel added onto Lhoyd's work.

The story of Madoc is the following: When the Welsh King Owen Gwyneth died in 1170, his sons and heirs began fighting among themselves for the throne. One of them, Macoc opted out and set sail across the Atlantic to find a new place to settle and reign over. Below is the story of his adventures:

"...Madoc another of Owen Gwyneth his sonnes left the land in contention betwixt his brethren, and prepared certaine ships with men and munition, and sought aduentures by seas, sailing West, and leauing the coast of Ireland so far north, that he came to a land unknowen, where he saw manie strange things. This land must needs be some part of that countrie of which the Spaniardes affirme themselues to be the first finders sith Hannos time; for by reason and order of Cosmographie, this land, to the which Madoc came, must needs be some part of Noua Hispania or Florida. Whereupon it is manifest, that that countrie was long before by Brytaines discovered, afore either Columbus or Americus Vesputius lead anie Spaniards thither. Of the viage and returne of this Madoc there be manie fables fained, as the common people doo vse in distance of place and length of time rather to augment than to diminish: but sure it is, that there he was. And after he had returned home and declared the pleasant and fruitfull countries that he had seene without inhabitants; and vpon the contrarie part, for what barren and wild ground his brethren and nephues did murther one another: he prepared a number of ships, and got with him such men and women as were desirous to liue in quietnes, and taking leaue of his freends tooke his iournie thitherward againe. Therefore it is to be presupposed, that he and his people inhabited part of those countries; for it appeareth by Francis Loues, that in Acusanus and other places, the people honored the crosse: whereby it may be gathered that Christians had beene there, before the comming of the Spaniards. But bicause this people were not manie, they folowed the maners of the land, they came vnto, and vsed the language they found there.

†‡† This Madoc arriuing in that Westerne countrie, vnto the which he came, in the yeare 1170. left most of his people there: and returning backe for more of his owne nation, acquaintance and freends, to inhabite that faire and large countrie: went thither againe with ten sailes, as I find noted by Gutyn Owen. Gutyn Owen. I am of opinion that the land, wherevnto he came, was some part of Mexico: the causes which make me to thinke so be these.

1 The common report of the inhabitants of that countrie, which affirme, that their rulers descended from a strange nation, that came thither from a farre countrie: which thing is confessed by Mutezuma king of that countrie, in his oration made for quieting of his people, at his submission to the king of Castile, Hernando Curteis being then present, which is laid downe in the Spanish Chron cles of the conquest of the West Indies.

2 The Brytish words and names of places, vsed in that countrie euen to this daie, doo argue the same as when they talke togither, they use this word Gwrando, which is, Hearken or listen. Also they haue a certeine bird with a white head, which they call Pengwin, that is, white head. But the Iland of Corroeso, the cape of Bryton, the riuer of Gwyndor, and the white rocke of Pengwyn, which be all Brytish or Welsh words, doo manifestlie shew that it was that countrie which Madoc and his people inhabited."

The footnotes 1 and 2 were taken from Sir George Peckham's true Report of the late discoueries, published in The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. by Richard Hakluyt. See p. 14. (and here, Chapter III)

Context

It has been suggested that this reference to Madoc and America during the Elizabethan period was created to set a precedent and first discovery by the British Welsh people and justify England's colonial pretences in America during Queen Elizabeth the First's time. In 1586 the English established the short-lived English colony of Roanoke Island, in what is now North Carolina, and it failed. However, in 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh named the eastern coast Virgina, in honor of the Queen. Sir Humphrey Gibson claimed Newfoundland for England in 1583. Was Madoc "invented" to justify the English Crown's claim? (see p. 281 in the work quoted above, which uses Madoc to justify these territorial claims.)

Peckham quotes David Ingram, a British sailor who said he walked 2,000 km (3,200 miles) from Tampico in the Gulf of Mexico to Maine - Nova Scotia in 1566-69. He lived among the natives. It was Ingram who mentions the word "Gwrando" a Welsh greeting used by the natives. He also mentions them using the same name to identify penguins. But note that these are not those found in the southern Oceans, but the great auk (Pinguinus impennis), which was known as penguin or garefowl. It was exterminated by the mid-1800s. It is not related to the Southern penguins which were named after them, as they looked very similar (black and white, swimming, flightless birds). The English word "penguin" comes from the Welsh "pen" "gwyn" "white" and "head", respectively. Referring to the auk. Ingram was rescued by a French ship in 1569, in Nova Scotia. His journey was recorded, but that will be the subject of another post.

Other later mentions of Madoc

Madoc Leaving Wales. Source

The image above comes from A Popular History of the United States (p. 66 onwards) by William Bryant and Sydney Gay (1888), which tells about Madoc and of reports from the late 1600s of a pale-skinned Native American tribe speaking a British language in North America. With later reports from the 1770s and 1780s, a tribe called Mandans, who had Welsh traits:

"Among them were in use certain words in which is a resemblance or a fancied resemblance to the old British language. In the manufacture of their pottery and in the making of blue beads they are said to have shown a superiority over the ordinary savage. Mr Catlin believed them to be a cross theory and between the Indians and the Welsh and is inclined to accept a theory favored also by some other writers that the Mandans are the descendants of the Mound Builders and that the builders of those numerous earth works were the people originating in Madoc's Colony. The boat they used Catlin says was more like the coracle of the Welsh than the canoe of other Indians and he asserts that in complexion in the color of their hair and eyes they seemed rather to be allied to the white than the red race"

Closing Comments

Madoc's voyages is an interesting story. But, is it True? It would be hard to find Welsh genes among the surviving Native Americans of the East Coast. They were decimated and expelled from their territories as the European settlers occupied the eastern seabord. Then the Indian Removal Act promoted by President Andrew Jackson and signed by him on May 28, 1830 led to the forced removal of all surviving Native American tribes in the East, to what is now Oklahoma, beyond the Mississippi River.

Did the Welsh bring Old World diseases with them? Did they share their European technology like iron smelting, farming, dogs, horses, or cattle with the natives? If they did, it seems that just as with the Vikings before them, who set up a small settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, in Newfoundland c.1000 AD, the Natives didn't adopt the new knowledge, and probably liquidated the settlers, or expelled them.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

The Legendary Islands of the Atlantic - Babcock (1922)

Just a short Sunday post. Back in 1922 the American Geographic Society published the book Brasil and the Legendary Islands of the North Atlantic by William H. Babcock.

Babcock gives a sound, scientific view on each of these mythical islands, from Atlantis to St. Brendan's, and Brasil to Antilla, and the Seven-Cities Island.

Mayda

The island of Mayda, is a new one for me, and is, according to Babcock, very likely an early reference to America:

"Perhaps Nicolay and Zaltieri were right in thinking that Mayda was America, or at least was on the side of the Atlantic toward America. The latitude generally chosen by the maps would then call for Avalon Peninsula, Newfoundland, often supposed to be insular in early days; or perhaps for Cape Breton Island, the next salient land feature. But that is an uncertain reliance, for the observations of pre-Columbian navigators would surely be rather haphazard, and they might naturally judge by similarity of climate. This would justify them in supposing that a region really more southerly lay in the latitude of northern France — for example Cape Cod, which juts out conspicuously and is curved and almost insular. Or by going farther south, although nearer Europe, they might thus indicate the Bermudas, the main island of which is given a crescent form on several relatively late maps. But we must not lay too much stress on this last item, for divers other map islands were modeled on this plan. We may be justified, then, in saying that Mayda was probably west of the middle of the Atlantic and that Bermuda, Cape Cod, or Cape Breton is as likely a candidate for identification as we can name."

Original Caption in the book:Fig. 12—Section of the Prunes map of 1553 showing Mayda (in latitude 48°), Brazil, and Estotiland (“Esthlanda”). (After Kretschmer’s hand-copied reproduction.). Babcock

The book mentions Greenland and Markland, reported by the Vikings (who settled the first and visited the second, possibly New England), and the mysterious islands of Estotiland, Frisland, Icaria, and Drogio reported by the Zeno brothers. And also the coins and statue found on Corvo Island in the Azores. The final chapter is devoted to other vanished islands like Buss, Stokafixa, Grocland, Helluland, Daculi, Bra, Saintly Islands, and Islands of Demons.

Antilla

Interestingly, Babcock supports the idea that Antilla was actually the West Indies and America: "Antillia is Cuba; Reylla, Jamaica; Salvagio, or Satanaxio, Florida; I in Mar, one or more of the Bahamas. Early in the fifteenth century some Iberian navigator, probably Portuguese, visited these islands and made the report that resulted in the addition of these islands to divers maps. They, in turn, were among the inciting causes of the undertaking of Columbus."

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Did 250 persons people America?

I came across a paper (Fagundes NJR, Tagliani-Ribeiro A, Rubicz R, Tarskaia L, Crawford MH, Salzano FM, Bonatto SL. How strong was the bottleneck associated to the peopling of the Americas? New insights from multilocus sequence data. Genet Mol Biol. 2018;41(1 suppl 1):206-214. doi: 10.1590/1678-4685-GMB-2017-0087. PMID: 29668018; PMCID: PMC5913727.) that after statistic analysis concluded that the group that peopled America contained 250 individuals.

The number surprised me, seems to small! But the paper is conclusive "Our results suggest that, in agreement with previous studies, the effective size of the Native American population was small, most likely in the order of a few hundred individuals, with point estimates close to 250 individuals, even though credible intervals include a number as large as ~4,000 individuals."

Notice that the paper mentions "effective" population. This is a geneticist term that is defined as follows (Source): "Effective population size (Ne) is the size of a hypothetical ideal population with the same level of inbreeding or gene frequency divergence under random genetic drift as the actual population under consideration"

Ne is smaller than the census population (Nc) or actual number of individuals in a population because many individuals in a population may not reproduce and pass on their genes to the next generation. Factors like sex ratio, family sizes, survival of offspring, etc. influence the relationship between Nc and Ne.

As usual the methods lists that the authors took a relatively recent date for the peopling of America: "The lower limit for population split was set at 15 thousand years ago (kya)".

I am glad that the paper used samples taken from real Native Americans and not admixed "Latino" (European and Amerindian) people. However, the "Great Dying" altered the diversity and genetics of America. No pre-Hispanic samples were included in this paper. There was a greater diversity in the Americas before 1492. Those that survived, were those who adapted to the stress introduced by Old World diseases, famine, forced labor, war, displacement, etc. caused by the European conquest. Many lineages vanished as they couldn't adapt to the changing scenario (Natural Selection in action. Well done Darwin!).

Anyway, it is an interesting paper that does not go into too many details. The supplementary materials don't clarify much. I am an engineer, and know how to make sense of data, and graphic charts. But it seems that most genetic studies rely on "black boxes". They input some parameters, feed data, and the program they use provides an output. Who validates it is correct? Then we have vacuous comments with phrases and jargon like Tajima, Fu, π, etc. that put off a layman and sound scientific. Yet, they make me wonder. The output depends on the quality of the data that is input.

The point is, did a group of 250 effective population (maybe 1,000 census population) people America? I'd say NO.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

The D9S1120 9-repeat allele: unique to Amerindians?

There is a particular genetic signal that is unique to Native Americans and is only found among some Western Siberian groups, it is thd 9-repeat allele. As with all unique Amerindian traits, I wonder why was it lost elsewhere and conserved in America.

A paper by Kari B. Schroeder et al., (2009) [Haplotypic Background of a Private Allele at High Frequency in the Americas. Mol. Biol. Evol. 26(5):995–1016. doi:10.1093/molbev/msp024.🔓] looked into its uniqueness and tried to explain why it is exclusive to a specific geographic region, and where, and when did it originate.

The paper notes the presence of a "high-frequency private allele, the 9-repeat allele at microsatellite D9S1120, in all sampled Native American and Western Beringian populations has been interpreted as evidence that all modern Native Americans descend primarily from a single founding population... All chromosomes with the 9-repeat allele share the same haplotypic background in the vicinity of D9S1120, suggesting that all sampled copies of the 9-repeat allele are identical by descent. Ninety-one percent of these chromosomes share the same 76.26 kb haplotype, which we call the "American Modal Haplotype" (AMH)." (underlined is mine).

Interstingly this AMH is found elsewhere at low frequencies (7.44%) versus 39.39% in the Americas and Western Siberia. The paper suggests that this "dramatically higher frequency of the AMH in populations possessing the 9-repeat allele is consistent with the high frequency of the 9-repeat allele in these populations and with the presence of the 9-repeat allele on the AMH." Suggesting a link between both AMH and the 9-repeat allele.

The AMH vairant is found at the following frequencies elsewhere:

• 12.63% South Asia
• 5.79% in East-Central Asia
• 9.54% in Europe

It is an out of Africa mutation because "the AMH was only observed on a single chromosome in Africa, in the Mandenka population" (they live in Western Africa: Senegal, Ivory Coast, Gambia). Interestingly, "it was not observed in Oceania."

What is the 9-repeat Allelle?

The 9-repeat allele, or "9RA" is located at a specific spot on chromosome 9, (called a locus), known as the D9S1120 locus.

It is a short tandem repeat or STR or "microsatellite", which means that 2 to 6 base pairs of DNA sequence are repeated several times, in this case, nine times. Base pairs, these bases are the building blocks of DNA, made of nitrognous bases: Adenine (A), Guanine (G), Thymine (T), and Cytosine (C). They link A with T and G with C. Below is an example, the base pairs GA and TA 2bp-long is repeated four times (top). There are processes by which they can expand by mutations (in this case, from 4 to 8 repeats as shown on the bottom of the image). They can also contract, say from 12 repeats to 9, a "slippage diminution" mutation (More on this below).

Repeated base pairs (STR). Copyright © 2026 by Austin Whittall

Many Repeats!

As Fig. 4 in the paper shows, the 9-repeat is one of many. See Fig. 4 below: The caption is important, it reads "(A) Native American and Western Beringian populations and in (B) Asian populations. Only populations in which the AMH was observed are shown. The overall height of the bars represents the total frequency of the AMH by population."

The study noted that the AMH occurs with a 12-repeat allele in 62% of the sampled populations of South Asia. It is the shortest allele outside of America-Western Siberia found at frequencies higher than 1%. As you can see, there are 10, 4, 15, 16, 17, 19, etc. repeats across the globe.

The authors suggest that the 12-repeat lost 3 of them to become the 9-repeat found in Amerindians: "...the 12-repeat allele is the shortest allele that could have been ancestral to the 9-repeat allele. It is possible that a longer allele was ancestral to the 9-repeat allele... Because STR contractions greater than three steps are less likely than three-step contractions (Xu et al. 2000), we therefore view the 12-repeat allele as the most likely ancestor for the 9-repeat allele. Given that the 12-repeat allele on the AMH is most frequent and widespread in South Asia, the mutation that resulted in the 9-repeat allele possibly occurred in an ancient population that shared relatively recent ancestry with the ancestors of modern South Asians."

This loss (from 12 to 9 repeats), is called a "slippage-diminution mutation" or a "contraction via slipped strand mispairing" or "polymerase slippage". This mutation reduces the numbers of repeats and can happen spontaneously in a random manner (See Phillips, C. et al. (2008), D9S1120, a simple STR with a common Native American-specific allele: Forensic optimization, locus characterization and allele frequency studies, Forensic Science International: Genetics, Vol 3:1, 7. 13🔒)

Origin

Based on the fact that the 12-repeat allele is the most frequent one in the Old World, the authors ask where did it come from? Their answer is the following:

"The relatively low frequency of the AMH and the absence of the 12-repeat allele on the AMH in East-Central Asia have potentially interesting implications for our current understanding of Native American source populations. The frequency of the AMH in South Asia is more than twice that in East-Central Asia. Although the highest population frequency of the AMH outside of the Americas/Western Beringia is observed in the Uygur, a group of Turkic speakers who live primarily in northwestern China, and in Mongolians sampled in Outer Mongolia, the AMH reaches similarly high frequencies in populations farther to the southwest (Burusho, Kalash, and Sindhi of Pakistan). Moreover, across the world, the shortest alleles on the AMH (aside from the 9-repeat allele) are widespread in South Asia and in the Middle East."

This is interesting! its origin is to the south and west of the supposed Siberians that peopled America! The authors add:

"The possible origin of the 9-repeat allele on the AMH in a population that shared recent ancestry with the ancestors of modern South Asian populations suggests an early divergence of the ancestors of modern Native Americans from those of modern Asian."

Age

The paper then considers its age, which is always a problem, because the scholars have to fit this date somewhere between 13ky (the orthodox date for the entry into America) and 40ky (the date when humans reached eastern Asia on their way to America).

Their first "simple point estimate was 8,699 generations. Then they computed and calculated (i.e. fiddled with the data) and "Under the different best models, the mean TMRCA of the 9-repeat allele ranged from 293 generations to 1,596 generations; using a generation time of 25 years resulted in a TMRCA of 7,325–39,900 years ago."

Intersting how their Best models agree with the orthodox window of 13 - 40 ky!! for the arrival of modern humans in western Siberia and their entry into America.

They continue and refine the timeline: "Averaging over all of our best models, the mean TMRCA is 513 generations ago or about 12,825 years ago. The 95% confidence intervals for all of the best models produced ages for the MRCA of the 9-repeat allele, that range from 144 to 1951 generations ago, or approximately 3,600–48,775 years ago."

And conclude, conveniently, that: "Our point estimate of 12,825 years is also similar to recent estimates from mtDNA data, using a substitution rate based on an internal rather than interspecific calibration, for a population expansion in the Americas between about 10,000 and 12,000 years ago."

But with the simple point estmate of 8,699 generations the age would have been: 217,475 years BP, and furthermore, the paper states that "Our less conservative estimate of eight recombination events since the MRCA of all sampled copies of the 9-repeat allele doubles the genealogy length for the 9-repeat allele to 17,426 generations." This would mean an age of 435,650 years!

These two older dates of 217 and 435 ky are far older than the accepted date for Modern Humans in East Asia, but fine if we consider Denisovans or Neanderhtals. Were they the source of thiss 9-repeat allele in our autosomal DNA?

Beringian isolation - again!

They also justify the Beringian standstill theory! "our observations are best explained by a period of isolation for the founding population, during which multiple mutations may have reached a high frequency and some loci may have experienced multiple mutations, followed by a range expansion".

Natural Selection

If this 9-repeat allele gave those carrying it a better chance at surviving and passing it on to their offspring, you would expect natural selection to act, increasing this allele's frequency (as it did in Amerindians) within the population. However, the authors state that they did not find andy selection forces acting upon it.

The repeat is found on chromosome 9, and the notation to define its location is 9q21.31. This means it is on the long (q) arm of chromosome 9, within band 21, sub-band 3, sub-sub-band 1).

The paper states that "high-density genomic data... has led to the detection of regions of the genome that show potential evidence of natural selection. Analyses of such data have not identified any regions on 9q21.33 that show strong evidence of selection... In conclusion, there is no evidence from functional considerations that would lead to a hypothesis of selection in the region of D9S1120 for Native Americans."

Further on, however they revisit natural selection: "One could imagine that the 9-repeat allele rose to high frequency, due to positive selection, in a population ancestral to both modern Native Americans and Western Beringians prior to an expansion into different habitats within the Americas. However, this scenario would still support our primary assertion that the distribution of the 9-repeat allele is best explained by descent from a single population. Hence, in the absence of compelling evidence for selection, the existence of plausible neutral models by which the observed distribution of the 9-repeat allele could have occurred suggests that the simplest explanation for the unusual distribution of the 9-repeat allele is that all Native American and Western Beringian populations have inherited a very large portion of their ancestry from a single population."

My Comments

This final phrase "a single population" and the age that was omitted (200 - 400 ky) points at an ancestor of modern humans, found in Southern, Eastern, and Central Asia, the Denisovans. They also admixed with Neandertals who could have contributed to the presence of this allele in Europe and the Levant.

Regarding Natural Selection, the gene closest to the 9-repeat is AGTPB1, shown in Fig. 2C in this paper. This gene is critical for correct neurological functions, and also "In addition to its role in neuronal maintenance, AGTPBP1 is critical for spermatogenesis; disruption in its function leads to defects in germ cell development and male infertility" (Source). If the repeat somehow preserved these functions, it would make it a target for selective pressure (ensuring fertility and brainpower).

The presence in one Western African is intriguing. Its absence in Polynesians too! Did it come from some archaic hominin in Africa, at very low frequencies and is found at extremely low proportions in Africa. The first Out Of Africa event (that led to H. georgicus) probably took the AMH variant with it. It survived in Eurasia, did not make it into Melanesia or Polynesia, but was carried across Siberia into America before the arrival of modern humans. That is why it is only found in America (the Western Siberians are surely a back migration).

Did Denisovans or Neandertals carry it? Is it found in ancient remains of Amerindians? At what frequency? Did the "Great Dying" after 1492 increase its prevalence or was it always high? These are some questions that may clarify the history of this allele.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

mtDNA F as another very rare founding lineage in America

The article New Native American Mitochondrial DNA Haplogroups by DNAeXplained published on March 2, 2017, describes the mtDNA haplogroups attributed to the Native American groups. It mentions the well known ones (A, B, D, and X) and the possibility that M is also a founding lineage (as mentioned in my previous posts). It also suggests that there is a chance that mtDNA haplogroup F is also an Amerindian haplogroup.

mtDNA F

"The Dark Horse Late Arrival – Haplogroup F
I debated whether I should include this information, because it’s tenuous at best.
The American Indian project at Family Tree DNA includes a sample of F1a1 full sequence result whose most distant matrilineal ancestor is found in Mexico.
Haplogroup F is an Asian haplogroup, not found in Europe or in the Americas.
Haplogroup F, according to the Genographic Project, expands across central and southern Asia. According to Doron Behar, F1a1 was born about 10,863 years ago +- 2990 years, giving it a range of 7,873 – 13,853.
Is this Mexican F1a1 family Native? If not, how did F1a1 arrive in Mexico, and when? F1a1 is not found in either Europe or Africa.
...The Genographic project has no results for F1a1 outside of Asia.
I have not yet extracted the balance of haplogroup F in the Genographic project to look for other indications of haplogroups that could potentially be Native."

The homeland of haplogroup F is, effectively, Asian, as you can see in the following heatmap.

mtDNA F haplogroup heatmap. Source

It is found from Madagascar (surely taken there by the Austronesian migradion ~2000 years ago) to Central Siberia, China, Japan, and Mongolia. Tenuous presence in New Guinea, The gaps are also interesting. It is not found in India, the Middle East, or Australia, and absent in the eastern tip of Siberia (near Bering, and Kamchakta). It is also said to have been spread by the Mongols or the Huns westwards (notice the hotspot in Croatia!)

Regarding its presence in America, it could have arrived recently through migration of East Asian people to America. Since the early 1500s, Mexico was in contact with South East Asia through the Spanish colony of the Philippines. They also traded with Eastern Asia, so there must have been some admixture.

It could also have reached America in Prehispanic times, and suffered many bottlenecks, and after the effects of the "Great Dying" that took place after the European discovery of America, it probably almost vanished and is found at extremely low frequencies.

Identifying this haplogroup in ancient pre-Hispanic remains would be certain proof of its antiquity. Until then we should assume it it modern.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

MtDNA Haplogroup M in America - part 2

Today's post continues looking into the subject of mtDNA haplogrop M among Native Americans. As mentioned, there are no further papers on the subject, but genetic ancestry-genealogical websites provided some additional information.

In DNAExplained.com while explaining Native American mtDNA haplogroups, it states that M is not commonly thought of as being Amerindian, however after mentioning Malhi's 2007 paper, it provides some fresh data:

"One additional source for haplogroup M was found in GenBank noted as M1a1e “USA”, but there were also several Eurasian submissions for M1a1e as well. However, Doron Behar’s dates for M1a1e indicate that the haplogroup was born about 9,813 years ago, plus or minus 4,022 years, giving it a range of 5,971 to 13,835 years ago, meaning that M1a1e could reasonably be found in both Asia and the Americas. There were no Genographic results for M1a1e. At this point, M1a1e cannot be classified as Native, but remains on the radar.
Hapologroup M1 was founded 23,679 years ago +-4377 years. It is found in the Genographic Project in Cuba, Venezuela and is noted as Native in the Midwest US. M1 is also found in Colorado and Missouri in the haplogroup M project at Family Tree DNA, but the individuals did not have full sequence tests nor was additional family information available in the public project"

Behar's age data comes from Table S5 (online as pdf here see p.34) shown in the following image from the paper Behar DM, et al. A "Copernican" reassessment of the human mitochondrial DNA tree from its root. Am J Hum Genet. 2012 Apr 6;90(4):675-84. doi: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2012.03.002. Erratum in: Am J Hum Genet. 2012 May 4;90(5):936. PMID: 22482806; PMCID: PMC3322232.

mtDNA M1

Regarding M1, as it has an original source in North Africa and the Horn of Africa Area (see the green colored areas in the following heatmap from Pennarun et al. 2012

(paper)

mtDNA M1 haplogroup heat map. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic Licence

This means that people from this area could have migrated to the American Midwest (Colorado and Missouri), Cuba or Venezuela at any time from Somalia, Tunez, Egypt or Morocco after the discovery of America.

The Punic connection

For those who believe in the pre-Columbian exploration of America by Phoenicians or Carthaginians, notice that Tunez was the spot where Carthage was located. No M1 in Lebanon (homeland of the Phoenicians), but plenty on the coastal areas of Algiers, Morocco and Tunez, part of the Carthaginian territory until Rome vanquished it in 200 BC, after the Punic wars.

Slave Trade?

However, unless the samples from the Midwestern USA are dated as pre-Columbian, I am inclined to believe in recent admixture of M1 in that region or even people who were captured by the Arab slave trade (starting in the 7th-century AD) along the East African coast and moved them around their empire in Arabia, Levant, North Africa and Spain. The European slave trad across the Atlantic (15th-century - early 19th-century) was based on the Western coast of Africa, where M1 is very infrequent, or absent.

A paper (Lee, E. J., Anderson, L. M., Dale, V., & Merriwether, D. A. (2009). MtDNA origins of an enslaved labor force from the 18th century Schuyler Flatts Burial Ground in colonial Albany, NY: Africans, Native Americans, and Malagasy?. Journal of Archaeological Science, 36(12), 2805-2810.) reported the mtDNA results from a cemetery located on a homestead in New York state, with the remains of people who are assumed to have been slaves working on the estate. Of the seven individuals tested, four of them had L2 or L3 mtDNA haplogroups, which are Subsaharian African and definitely belonged to African slaves. One of the remaining three samples were from a Native American with X2 haplogroup and is asigned to a member of the Micmac tribe. The other two remains, "share mutations with individuals from Madagascar (Hurles et al., 2005). Only one is confirmed as subhaplogroup M7 (SFB9) and we were unable to identify the specific subhaplogroup within M for the other individual." The link with Madagascar is tenuous in my opinion. The authors add:

"Subhaplogroup M7 (SFB9) is commonly found in east and southeast Asia (Kivisild et al., 2002) but this haplotype, along with SFB12, closely resembles lineages found in Madagascar (Hurles et al., 2005). The individual from burial 12 was determined to be of African ancestry from the morphological analysis. Historical documents suggest several hundreds of people from Madagascar being imported for the slave labor force by the end of the 17th century as a result of an illegal trade between New York merchants and East African pirates (Matson, 1998; Platt, 1969). While there has been a report of a Native American haplogroup M from British Columbia of approximately 5000 years old (Malhi et al., 2007), based on the historical evidence of the region it seems more likely that these individuals are of Malagasy origin rather than Native American."

Checking out the paper cited above (Hurles ME, Sykes BC, Jobling MA, Forster P. The dual origin of the Malagasy in Island Southeast Asia and East Africa: evidence from maternal and paternal lineages. Am J Hum Genet. 2005 May;76(5):894-901. doi: 10.1086/430051. Epub 2005 Mar 25. PMID: 15793703; PMCID: PMC1199379.) I was not able to identify how Lee et al. defined a Magalasy origin for the remains. Below is the data from both papers.

Madagascar and the Austronesians

The point that is overlooked is that the Island of Madagascar was peopled around 2000 years ago (~350 BC-500 AD) by people who sailed from what is now Indonesia, with Austonesian genes. The M variant in Madagascar came from Indonesia.

In fact, (Toomas Kivisild, Helle-Viivi Tolk, Jüri Parik, Yiming Wang, Surinder S. Papiha, Hans-Jürgen Bandelt, Richard Villems, The Emerging Limbs and Twigs of the East Asian mtDNA Tree, Molecular Biology and Evolution, Volume 19, Issue 10, October 2002, Pages 1737–1751, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.molbev.a003996) provide interesting data about the M7 variant:

"Haplogroup M7, although characteristic for East Asian populations, has not been found in the northeast of the continent. It is also very rare in Central Asians. This haplogroup has been detected so far in China and Vietnam, the Korean peninsula and Japanese islands, as well as among Mongols, the West Siberian Mansi, and island Southeast Asia. Koreans possess lineages from both the southern and the northern haplogroup complex and share M7a with Japanese, Ainu, and Ryukyu islanders. The geographic specificity of the boughs and twigs of M7 (see fig. 2 ) is most intriguing: M7c1c is specific to island Southeast Asia and M7b1 is of Chinese provenance, whereas M7a, M7b2, and M7c1b are found almost exclusively in Korea and Japan. In fact, M7 is one of the prevailing haplogroups not only among Japanese (of Honshu and Kyushu) but also for Ainu and Ryukyuans, thus testifying to a common genetic background. There is very little haplotype sharing in M7 across the distinguished populations except for the ancestral types of the (named) nested clades (see fig. 3 ); in particular, no single type is shared between Ainu and Ryukyuans."

The image below shows M7 variants a, b, and c. Their estimated age and their geographic dispersion as well as frequency (slice size). Notice "a" is in the Japanese and Korean area, "c" is Borneo, Philippines and the Majuro people of the Marshall Islands, indicating an eastward flow into the Pacific (did it go further east towards America?) The "b" variant is found in China, Vietnam, Thailand, and Taiwan. The ages are M7 = 61,000 ± 17,000. M7a = 37,000 ± 20,000. M7b = 56,000 ± 24,000. M7c = 41,000 ± 20,000.

Which subvariant of M7 was found in the old New York farm cemetery? The tree below from Kong et al. 2003 shows the SNP markers that identify the different variants. I used this source, because the images in Kivisild et al. 2002 are not clear enough to read the SNPs.

Comparing the information, I only found one marker that coincides, the transpositon at position "146" in the New York sample of M7 (T → C), which is also shown as a marker for M7c in the image above. So the NY person carried the variant spanning the Philippines, parts of Indonesia like Borneo, and the Marshall Islands and parts of China M7C. It also reached Madagascar, see this heatmap of M7c with its current global distribution.

This variant could have reached America 20 kya crossing through Beringia, through people from Northern China, Mongolia, Japan, etc. If so it could have been the one discovered in Lake China by Malhi, which vanished there without a trace (perhaps some of it managed to make its way to the 18th or 19th century New York).

It could also have arrived via Madagascar to New York, with slave trade, but the number of slaves transported from Madagascar to the US was very small -despite the claims of the authors of the cemetry paper. The odds that two slaves from Magalasy would have ended up on the same farm is on the Hudson River is quite improbable, yet, possible. The transpacific route from the Philippines to Mexico during Spanish Colonial times cannot be discarded either. The possibility of transpacific pre-Hispanic voyages from Island South East Asia to America is slim, but can't be ruled out.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

mtDNA Haplogroup M in America - 2007 paper revisited

Back in 2014 I posted about Ancient migrants into America carrying mtDNA M haplogroup 5,000 years ago. In it, I mentioned the only study published, in 2007*, on the analysis of remains from a site in British Columbia, Canada (China Lake) and reported finding mtDNA haplogroup M, and suggested, due to the age of the reamains, that it was, together with haplogroups A (A2), B (B2), C (C1b, Cc, C1d9), X (X2a), and D (D1) one of the founding maternal lineages in America.

This groundbreaking paper reported the following:

"We analyzed two mid-Holocene (∼5000 years before present) individuals from North America that belong to mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup M, a common type found in East Asia, but one that has never before been reported in ancient or living indigenous populations in the Americas. This study provides evidence that the founding migrants of the Americas exhibited greater genetic diversity than previously recognized, prompting us to reconsider the widely accepted five-founder model that posits that the Americas were colonized by only five founding mtDNA lineages."

* Malhi, Ripian et al. (2007), Mitochondrial haplogroup M discovered in prehistoric North Americans. Journal of Archaeological Science 34, 642-648. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2006.07.004

Nineteen years of Silence

I find it surprising, that in almost 19 years after the publication of the original paper there haven't been andy new studies, research, publications, or confirmation (or refutation) of this finding... What is going on?

Citations

But Malhi's paper was noticed. I checked Google Scholar and saw that there were 85 papers that cited Mahli et al. Yet, none of them seem to deal with this new founding haplogroup.

Mahli's paper specifically thanks the support provided by the "Canoe Creek, Soda Creek, and Dog Creek Bands who allowed the DNA testing of their ancestors". A similar paper, also published in 2007, reported the presence of haplogroup A in 5,000 year-old remains from Big Bar Lake, British Columbia, In this case the haplogroup is one of the recognized founding lineages and the authors stated that "Testing for mitochondrial DNA indicated haplogroup A, which is widespread in living Native Americans. Comparative mtDNA data suggest long-standing genetic continuity in the Pacific Northwest, but with evidence for a genetically diverse population in existence at 5000 BP."

This scientific ratificaton is what Native American communities are looking for, and what they like: continuity and "original people" confirmation. The paper also notes the support from the first people: "Collaboration between anthropologists and the Canoe Creek and High Bar First Nations"

I did find a publication ( Ancient DNA In Canada Reveals New Founding Lineage of Native Americans, Mammoth Trumpet, April 2007, Vol 22 No. 2 p.18), that mentions Malhi's paper and gives advances of his findings. It says, among other things: "These remains are 5,000 years old, and mtDNA recovered from the bones belong to haplogroup M. Like the other five Native American haplogroups, M has its roots in Asia, so it is consistent with the accepted model of the peopling of the Americas that has Asian groups migrating across Beringia, or along the Pacific rim, and into North America. This discovery, however, calls into serious question other aspects of the traditional model. Dr. Malhi and his co-authors write, “Our discovery demonstrates that a more genetically diverse group of migrants colonized the Americas than previously thought and supports the hypothesis that significant undocumented genetic diversity likely still remains in the Americas.” In other words, the discovery of a previously unknown haplogroup not only demonstrates that ancient America was more genetically diverse than modern native America, it also increases the likelihood that more undiscovered haplogroups remain to be revealed by additional research." It also informs that the native tribes and the scientists agreed to rebury the remains after the studies. So, maybe that is why no further research was conducted on them.

A 2015 symposium included a paper by Alexa Walker, Brian Egan and George Nicholas (DNA & Indigeneity Proceedings, p. 5. The Changing Role of Genetics in Indigenous Rights, Tribal Belonging, and Repatriation. Oct. 22, 2015, Vancouover, BC, Canada) which gives a very brief summary of the discovery: "China Lake Ancestors In 1982, two individuals dated to over 6,000 years ago were found in a single burial site near China Lake, British Columbia. Genetic results found that both individuals belong to haplogroup M. Prior to this study, haplogroup M had not been found in any ancient or living North American populations. The results indicate that we still have much to learn about human expansion into the Americas. Further reading: Malhi et al. 2007."

Mahli also attended the symposium and his presentation can be read on page 49 (Partnerships with First Nations of British Columbia on Studies that include DNA Analysis). He again mentions the finding: "However, the China Lake individuals were found to possess a mitochondrial genome not currently found in sampled Indigenous individuals from the Americas. This lineage may either be in very low frequency or it may not exist anymore, possibly as a result of European contact and colonization."

Another paper published in Science (Victor Moreno-Mayar, 2018), in its Supplementary material (see p. 3), gives more details when it mentions the Big Bar Lake mtDNA results adding that "the two individuals recovered from the roughly contemporaneous, nearby China Lake site (the two sites are separated by just ~25 km), which could only be identified to mtDNA superhaplogroup M but excluding haplogroups C and D, a lineage common in East Asia, but otherwise unknown in the Americas. But, once again, it is citing the original, and for now, only paper on this subject, Malhi's 2007 work."

mtDNA M Haplogroup

I will summarize an interesting paper on this haplogroup by Marrero P, Abu-Amero KK, Larruga JM, Cabrera VM. Carriers of human mitochondrial DNA macrohaplogroup M colonized India from southeastern Asia. BMC Evol Biol. 2016 Nov 10;16(1):246. doi: 10.1186/s12862-016-0816-8. PMID: 27832758; PMCID: PMC5105315.

There are no "ancient and autochthonous mtDNA M lineages in western Eurasia", which is strange because the Out of Africa migration had to pass through this area in its initial dispersal, and the M haplogroup is ancient, splitting from the basal African L haplogroup at the time of the Out of Africa migration. The mtDNA M haplogroup is found in Australia, South East Asia, India, China, Arabia, Central Asia, Siberia. It is also found in some parts of North Africa and Europe (due to a back-mirgration from Asia).

The authors support a northern route for its dispersal and not a southern one that followed the coast of the Indian Ocean.

There are M1 lineages in the Mediterranean regions of Europe and the Middle East, and are believed to have arrived there from North Africa during the Paleolithic. And reached Africa from Southern Asia. The M haplogroup curently found among the Finno-Ugaric people in Lapland, the Urals, Northern Russia and Hungary is very recent, and due to a migration originating in East Asia (the Huns settled in Hungary, and we have the Mongols of Gengis Khan too!). There are also historic mixtures of Indian M variants in Mesopotamia and in the Roma (gypsy) people in Europe.

The Expansion route out of Africa: across the Middle East. the authors consider the archaich "fossils of early modern humans at Skhul and Qafzeh" as the first to successfully leave Africa, carrying the L3 haplo with them. They marched with a Northeastern course, and are associated with the early modern humans found in China ~100 ka. The authors propose an older age than generally accepted for the M haplogroup and say: "...we opine that the geneticists should resynchronize the mtDNA molecular clock with the Levant and East Asia fossil records instead of consider them as result of unsuccessful migrations."

These early migrants went north, reaching the Altai Mountains, admixed with Neanderthals and Denisovans there and then headed south due to the harsh weather there, crossing China into Southeast Asia, across Sunda, into Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, and Australia. From SE Asia they headed towards the NW, into India. Later "...in subsequent mild climatic windows, demographic growth dispersed macrohaplogroup M... northwards, most probably from overlapping areas that in time colonized northern Asia and the New World."

The maps below (fig. 2 in the paper) show the original dispersal (a) and the later one (b) including the backflow of M1 into Africa (dashed line).

Could these archaics, with Denisovan and Neanderthal admixture have continued their trek from Altai towards Beringia and then into America, 100,000 years ago? Did they carry the M haplogroup to America? Are the remains from China Lake in Canada the last of a long lineage that was stamped out by later arrivals c. 20 kya?

Considering also that the M haplo is also found in Melanesia... could it suggest an ancient +5ky old transpacific contact between Melanesia and British Columbia?

Continues in my next post.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall ©