Ancient Romans in South America?

[Panzersharkcat]

No. The Olmec were around for about a thousand years before Rome. Wikipedia has a long list of pre-Columbian civilizations. Here are the South American ones.

[Thanas]

The main reason I doubt any such contact arrived alive is because Roman ships only carried fresh water and foodstuffs for a few days due to the relatively short travel distance in the mediterranean. The ship also would most likely not have carried grain given that those trade routes ran through Gaul or from Britain to the Rhine.

[Sea Skimmer]

It takes ~3 weeks to starve to death and you can get freshwater from rainfall and fish from the ocean. Lack of supplies on its own is not a plausible reason for contact to be impossible. Doubtful, maybe, but the main reason I doubt the claims in the original article is because it specified a pair of ships. One ship would be vastly more likely since the Romans seem to have had no possible reason for convoys in the Atlantic.

[Simon_Jester]

Individuals have survived for weeks or months at sea in small boats- like Skimmer says, rainwater and fish. A larger crew might have more trouble; then again they might luck out on rainfall and would probably have more and better vessels to store rainwater in.

[Thanas]

It takes ~3 weeks to starve to death and you can get freshwater from rainfall and fish from the ocean. Lack of supplies on its own is not a plausible reason for contact to be impossible.

How long do you think it takes for a ship that took several weeks to go from Rome to Alexandria in optimal conditions to drift all the way across the ocean?

Doubtful, maybe, but the main reason I doubt the claims in the original article is because it specified a pair of ships. One ship would be vastly more likely since the Romans seem to have had no possible reason for convoys in the Atlantic.

They might however have travelled in pairs from the start and gotten blown out. That a ship which travelled near the shoreline of the spanish coast however could have been blown out to the Atlantic is what is pretty hard to believe for me.

[Sea Skimmer]

How long do you think it takes for a ship that took several weeks to go from Rome to Alexandria in optimal conditions to drift all the way across the ocean?

The wind is never optimal for that trip given that land blocks the direct route; it is often optimal for a direct path from West Africa to Brazil. Furthermore why should we assume that every ship in the Atlantic and possibly making a voyage to the Canaries or Azores would be supplied no better then one cruising in the Mediterranean? That’s just irrational. You meanwhile seem to just completely be ignoring the fact that you can get supplies from the sea and rain and greatly extend your survival time, potentially indefinitely and certainly for a matter of days or weeks unless you are unlucky. One group of men in an open life boat from Roger B Taney[/ii] torpedoed and sunk in the Atlantic survived over a month and traveled around 2600 miles before being rescued with almost no supplies or equipment.

They might however have travelled in pairs from the start and gotten blown out. That a ship which travelled near the shoreline of the spanish coast however could have been blown out to the Atlantic is what is pretty hard to believe for me.

Why? The prevailing wind blows south and then out to sea. The ocean current in that region also flows south… and out to sea.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... c_Gyre.png
http://www.humanities.uci.edu/mclark/Hu ... umbus7.jpg

These currents and winds are a major factor in the later buildup of the Portuguese Empire in NE Brazil. The hardest part of the voyage would be the last ~500 miles because at that point the current and wind is more likely to shift to the west than south west because it doesn’t want to cross the equator. Anyone who got that far though, isn’t going home easily. Its more then a little interesting BTW that you argue that the ships steer poorly and aren't very seaworthy, and then question that they'd ever pulled out of control into the open ocean. Seems like one big contradiction to me.