Professor
George Carter
Texas A&M University - College Station- Texas - USA
15-2-1982
Dear
Professor Carter,
I
thank you for your letter of January 21. Good to hear from you and thanks for
your further information.
I
will send you a copy of my bookThe Pekin
Bantam in Australia under separate cover. by surface mail. I will
take a little time to get to you by that medium, perhaps 2 to 3 months. Air
mail rates in Australia are very high for packages. Please overlook the
typographical errors for I had to type the stencils myself and am not a very
good typist. However I had to get the message across one way or another and
printing costs are pretty high also.
Now
about Picuris. I assume Picuris is in Mexico? Could you give me approximate
location. Also Gran Quivira. That
1400 at Picuris makes it pre-Columbian?
I
have written to Mc Kusick to the address you gave me. I don’t know where
Finsterbusch got this information on Dutch and introduction of cocks.
Mrs
A.C.Banning-Vogelpoel of the Netherlands with whom I correspond, a poultry
authority from that country, advised me as follows and I quote:
"In the 17th century (before Roggeveen who in 1722 discovered
Easter Island) Dutch pirates commanded by Olivier van Nordt came and brought
in Asiatic fowl. These pirates being driven away in the beginning of the 17th
century from the Sonda Islands by the Dutch Government provisioned at Bali and
took live fowl and pigs with them and exchanged these with the Araucana
Indians for other things. The Dutch pirates staid for about 25 years in Chile."
I
think her reference was van Gink. I would agree with you as to the probability
of Asiatic fowl came to the America before 1500. Regarding Bullock’s bone.
They reckoned at the Smithsonian Institution about 250 years old (1934)
Wetmore. I will write and mention about the C14 dating tests. They could do
something about it. It could be interesting.
OK
on being retired and writing the newspaper column. I don’t have much time to
spare as I’m working on this treatise. It’s coming along OK. Your info has
been of great assistance.
I
have just been working over Jànossy’s paper on the fossil remains of Gallus
(Pleistocene period) in the Carpathian Basin, Hungary. Very important I
consider. Thanks for your info on the shipwreck off Rio de Janeiro. I think
that Heyerdahl proved that ocean comings and goings were possible long before
Columbus both in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Don’t know whether
you have read his book Tigris. The
papyrus-boat built in Mesopotamia sailed into the Indian Ocean. From memory he
imported someone from South America to build it.
That’s
about it for the moment. Start looking for the book in about 2 to 3 months.
Regards.