Scientists are strange, is enough to find a small viking stone in canada as proof for viking presence but seeing pyramids and megalithic structures all over the world is not enough to convince them that ancient civilizations on different continents including america were communicating.
There are multiple archaeological proof of Norse presence in Canada - L'Anse aux Meadows is the remains of a whole village. Furthermore we also have historical evidence in the form of the Vinland Sagas, which is Icelandic tales about the discovery of 'Vinland' and encounters with the natives. Taken together the evidence is solid.
In comparison there are no historical sources that talk about pre-columbian communication between old-world and american civilizations, and no archaeological evidence either. The word "pyramid" is indeed used by later times to describe buildings both in America and in Egypt, but apart from a similar basic shape, they are fundamentally different in architecture and use.
The only reason to assume pre-columbian communication is basically that it would be cool if it were true. That is not good enough for historians though.
We tend to call the simple version of those "mounds". There's a lot of them in the world.
Square pyramids are what you get when you make a mound out of rectangular dressed stone. Making cones or other types of pyramids out of dressed stone is much harder because they demand more complicated shapes.
Norse presence in Artic North America is neither controversial or new. This discovery isn't terribly surprising, considering their settlements in Newfoundland and Greenland. That said, there's no evidence to suggest there was any meaningful exchange between the Norse and sub-Artic indigenous nations.
I think he's suggesting that the idea of building pyramids spread through some form of communication, not that the pyramids themselves were used for communication.
I don't agree with that, myself -- a pyramid is a fairly simple shape, and could easily have occurred to different groups of people.
It's not only the shape but also the construction technique, very large stones cut with high precision in both egypt or south america http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumapunku
I don't share givan's belief, but I would note that this depends heavily on the complexity of the idea. If, for instance, manuscripts with identical detailed stories were found in two distant civilizations from the same time period, I would consider that evidence that the civilizations had interacted.
Pumapunku was built thousands of years after the pyramids in egypt. Plenty of time for banging rocks together to determine which one is the harder and figuring out that using flat stones and sand is great for polishing.
Hail, Protong!! Szukalski would be proud, but I have to say I do agree with you that, on the surface, it seems like much prejudice can be expressed in archeology, too. Well, we humans are frail; it takes a lot to change peoples minds about things.
