Day: August 21, 2014

I’ve used my research about Meriwether Lewis as a springboard to study theories about how people populated North and South America. Scholars propose and debate theories from the outlandish to the plausible.

I enjoy them all.

I’ve written about the Welsh prince Madoc and the theory that his clan crossed the Atlantic in the 1100s and founded the Mandan tribe in South Dakota. Nobody’s ever found a shred of evidence to prove that tale.

But maybe the Mandans had blue-eyed, fair-haired folk for a different reason. Maybe that line of DNA came from the Vikings.

Archeologists have uncovered a Viking ship mired in Mississippi mud in the river near Memphis, Tennessee.Continue Reading