Mystery as 800-year-old Spanish coins found in middle of USA that ‘predate Christopher Columbus by 200 YEARS’ – leaving experts baffled
They were picked up by an unwitting tourist
ARCHAEOLOGISTS have been left scratching their heads over Spanish treasure that appears to have travelled through time.
A tourist strolling through a US national park found two coins that predate the arrival of Columbus by at least two centuries.
The coins, one minted in Madrid in 1660 and the other made around the 1200s, were found lying on the floor at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Utah.
Christopher Columbus and his band of Spanish explorers didn't set foot in the Americas until 1492, leaving experts baffled as to how the treasure got there.
Archaeologist Glen Harmon, from the national park service, said: "A visitor was hiking in one of the canyons around here and he found these two strange things."
The man returned them to the park after he took them home and realised they were old Spanish coins.
"Based on the design we're very confident that one of the coins - the larger one - is called the 16 maravedi.
"Experts we were talking to identified it as being minted in Madrid, based on its marks, probably in 1662 or 1663, which puts it in the reign of Philip IV.
"The other coin – and we haven't got a confirmation back on this yet – looks like it might be something dating from the mid-to-late 13th-century."
Experts are unsure how the ancient cash made it to the park hundreds of years before Spanish explorers for there in 1776.
They're working on three main theories.
One is that they may have been carried over by early Spanish settlers and traded with Native American tribes and lost in the canyon.
This is an exciting prospect as there is little documented evidence of early Spanish settlers in the US, archaeologists said.
"The earliest Spanish presence in the Glen Canyon area is 1776 when Father Atanasio Dominguez and Father Silvestre Velez de Escalante came through," Harmon added
"But they were nowhere near the area where these coins were found, that we know of.
"Does this point to an early Spanish presence that is unknown or really poorly documented? That's one possibility."
However, it's also possible that the coins were traded with a native American tribe and then later lost at the canyon.
"That would also be really cool just to see that kind of connection between the early Spanish and native Americans at that time," said Harmon.
Other theories suggest the coins were brought to American by tourists long after they were minted, and later lost in the canyon.
In other archaeology news, the first beer ever brewed in the UK was unearthed in January.
Future archaeologists will likely dig up our leftover chicken bones to date modern life in Britain, according to one expert.
And here are gruesome snaps of "bog bodies" found perfectly preserved after 1,000s of years.
Have you ever found hidden treasure? Let us know in the comments!
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