To be fair, the author is definitely not arguing that America was discovered by Africans 3000 years ago. He is just providing some background regarding the controversy of who discovered and named the Americas. He also writes:
> Further, other discoveries of America have been credited to the Irish who had sailed to a land they called Iargalon, the land beyond the sunset, and to the Phoenicians who purportedly came here before the Norse.
I think his use of "it has been argued", "have been credited to", and "purportedly" in this context are not weaselly, and are fine in reference to unsubstantiated arguments that people have made. The author is clear though that the only two undisputed discoveries of the Americas prior to Columbus were by the Asian forebears of Native Americans and the Norse:
> They were of course preceded by the pre-historic Asian forebears of Native Americans, who migrated across some ice-bridge in the Bering Straits or over the stepping stones of the Aleutian Islands.
> the remains of an 11th-century Norse settlement in Newfoundland, excavated in the 1960s, that forms the only undisputed evidence of the first European presence in the New World.
> I think his use of "it has been argued", "have been credited to", and "purportedly" in this context are not weaselly, and are fine in reference to unsubstantiated arguments that people have made.
No, it IS weaselly. Unless there is any substance to the argument at all, it's like saying "it has been argued that the earth is flat."
Maybe say "it has been argued without evidence" like journalists do /s
On its own, "it has been argued that the earth is flat" is simply a factually correct statement. There is nothing weaselly about it. What would make it weaselly would be the context that it is used in, and the deceptive intent of the person saying it.
Similarly, in this article the author simply mentions - almost as an aside - that "a black African discovery of America, it has been argued, took place around 3,000 years ago, and influenced the development of Mayan, Aztec, and Inca civilizations". It is a factually correct statement (in that it has indeed been argued) [1].
There are no other mentions of this theory in the article, no attempts made to substantiate or repudiate it, or build on it, and it's only tangentially related to the main point of the article.
Furthermore, in his closing the paragraph, the author says something that makes me believe he's skeptical about many of the alternative claims that he brings up:
> No definitive conclusions can be reached. Too many claims are, for lack of hard evidence, based on speculation. Theories about the true origin of the name are ultimately historical fictions, whose authors are inclined to impose their own political, cultural, or national agendas on the name and its origin.
Why do you say that the author is being "weaselly" here? What is his ulterior motive? And what other contextual evidence do you have that the author intends for us to take the statement at anything more than face value - that it's an alternative version of history that some people believe to be true?
There are lots of other opinions in this thread that it's a false thing to say. It implies that the theory is respectable just by listing it. The fact that someone said something ridiculous is not worth mentioning.
I don't know what other arguments would make an impression on you, so why don't we just drop it?
Ok - I was hoping to get you to engage with the actual content of the article, but I'll just get to the point:
* Mentioning that a belief exists is not the same thing as endorsing it. And arguing that they are the same is an affront to open and rational discourse.
* A major point of the article is that many historical claims are fiction that are based more on speculation, and political, cultural, or national agendas than hard evidence. So it goes double that mentioning a historical claim in this context is not an endorsement of its accuracy.
* The fact that people are so hung up that they would call the author a weasel based on the mere mention that "a black African discovery of America, it has been argued, took place around 3,000 years ago" - regardless of the context in which it is used - says a whole lot more about their own beliefs and biases than the author's. They are basically reinforcing the whole point of the article.
Or, to quote the article one last time:
> To hear Americus in the name; to hear the Amerrique Mountains and their perpetual wind; to hear the African in the Mayan iq' amaq'el; to hear the Scandinavian Ommerike, as well as Amteric, and the Algonquin Em-erika; to hear Saint Emeric of Hungary; to hear Amalrich, the Gothic lord of the work ethic; to hear Armorica, the ancient Gaulish name meaning place by the sea; and to hear the English official, Amerike — to hear such echoes in the name of our hemisphere is to hear ourselves.
> Further, other discoveries of America have been credited to the Irish who had sailed to a land they called Iargalon, the land beyond the sunset, and to the Phoenicians who purportedly came here before the Norse.
I think his use of "it has been argued", "have been credited to", and "purportedly" in this context are not weaselly, and are fine in reference to unsubstantiated arguments that people have made. The author is clear though that the only two undisputed discoveries of the Americas prior to Columbus were by the Asian forebears of Native Americans and the Norse:
> They were of course preceded by the pre-historic Asian forebears of Native Americans, who migrated across some ice-bridge in the Bering Straits or over the stepping stones of the Aleutian Islands.
> the remains of an 11th-century Norse settlement in Newfoundland, excavated in the 1960s, that forms the only undisputed evidence of the first European presence in the New World.