Don’t miss Philip Beales’ talk about building a replica Phoenician boat and then crossing the Atlantic, 15th January at 10.30am

Philip Beales’ 15 year journey to prove that the Phoenicians reached the Americas 2,000 years before Columbus.

In 2019 Philip Beale set out to prove that the ancient Phoenicians could have crossed the Atlantic 2,000 years before Christopher Columbus. As captain and expedition leader of the Phoenicians Before Columbus Expedition, Philip Beale tells the exciting story of arguably the most ambitious voyage in experimental archaeology since Kon-Tiki.

The lecture will cover how the replica Phoenician ship, the Phoenicia, was built in the ancient Phoenicia stronghold of Arwad in modern day Syria, carefully following the procedures of ancient boat builders, as discovered by archaeologists.

The second part covers what the ancient Greek, Phoenician and Roman scholars such as Aristotle, Eratosthenes, Ptolemy, Marinus of Tyre, Hipparchus and Strabo knew about the Atlantic and the Lands to the West and how most of this knowledge was lost. Philip will also comment on the legacy of Columbus and the current controversy as to his real country of origin.

The final part of the lecture tells the story of how the Phoenicia and crew made the 6,000 mile voyage from Carthage in modern day Tunisia to the Americas over the six months from September 2019 to February 2020.

Coffee will be served from 10am and the talk will start at 10.30am.