Re: Opinions on this KGC "Vault"
Dear lastleg;
And therein lies the point, my friend. Suppose for a moment that members of the tribes of Israel actually DID set foot in the Western Hemisphere. We know from the historical record that the peoples of the Middle East were very highly advanced, technology-wise, at least for their time and that they had already been firmly entrenched in the Iron Age for several centuries, whereas the peoples of the Americas were still in the grips of the Stone Age.
Certainly, this clash of technologies would have had profound consequences for the people who possessed the lesser technology. This fact is plainly evident when we study the Spanish conquest of the Americas, my friend. A mere HANDFUL of Conquistadores were able to subdue and enslave an entire CONTINENT with precious little more than an amazing amount of gall, guile, courage, reckless abandon and a vastly superior technology.
If we were to roll back the clock another 1,500 years, the differences between the peoples of the Biblical Middle East and the Americas would have been even more profound than they were at the time of the Conquistadores.
By the same argument, if a small group of Norsemen landed on the Eastern Seaboard of what is now the United States of America, certainly they would have been considered to be as Gods among the Stone Age natives. Imagine what sort of havoc that a small group of men, armed with the very latest in Iron Age weaponry and armored in Iron Age chain mail, with heavy oak shields, would have been able to do to any number of men armed only with Stone Age weapons and no body armor whatsoever. To the Norsemen, it would have been something akin to slaughtering lambs in a pen my friend, as the natives would have been virtually defenseless against a highly armed, highly motivated, finely skilled and fiercely war-like tribe of Europeans.
Also, by the same token, we know that the Norse did settle in the West as is plainly evidenced by the archaeological remains in Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland. We also know that the Norse remained there for about 500 years, at least in Greenland, therefore we may assume that the native populations had been subdued very early on and were supplanted by the conquering Norsemen.
From an historical point of view, any time there is a clash of cultures, the culture with the superior technology always comes out on top, and always with disasterous consequences for the people with the lesser technology. In light of these facts I find it very difficult to believe that a group of explorers from an entirely different culture and technological era would have been able to roam about in an entirely new environment without thoughts of conquest or subjugation of the natives, just going with the flow and blending in perfectly, leaving behind only a coin here and rune there to mark their passing. In a perfect world perhaps this could have happened, however in the real world, man is simply not constructed this way.
Your friend;
LAMAR
Why would a group of explorers , such as the Hebrews or the Phoenicians, bother even carrying around coins with them to begin with? Were they planning on doing some souvenir shopping for the wife and kids? Of all the things they COULD have carried with them, why in the world would they have bothered carrying coins? 
