Mongolians first to discover America claims professor (fwd)

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Mongolians first to discover America claims professor

12:01 | 11/ 01/ 2008
http://en.rian.ru/world/20080111/96196977.html

BEIJING, January 11 (RIA Novosti) - A Mongolian professor of history has said
America was discovered by the Mongolians and not Christopher Columbus, as is
popularly believed, the Xinhua news agency reported late on Thursday.

Professor Sumiya Jambaldorj from the Genghis Khan University in the Mongolian
capital, UIan Bator, performed a study proving the similarity between American
place names and words in the Mongolian language.

"About 8,000 to 25,000 years ago, Mongols with stone tools crossed the Aleutian
Islands and arrived in America," Jambaldorj was reported as saying.

The academic said that over 20 place names in the Alaskan Aleutian Islands could
be Mongolian.

"Many names of places and rivers in the U.S. state of Alaska are believed to be
Mongolian," he said.

The news agency said there were similar words in a Native American language and
Mongolian, e.g. "hagaan," which means "ancestor" in Mongolian.

Jambaldorj said there was much in common between the ancestors of the Mongolians
and the Native Americans, adding that some types of stone tools found in the
Aleutian Islands had also been discovered in the Gobi desert area of Mongolia.