Professor from Chile claims ancient Greeks colonized his country!

(NovoScriptorium: Whether true or not, information like this is at least interesting, because it is not a funny Greek that makes the claim but a native of the country)

“In 1974, arts professor César Navarrete, published a book entitled ” The Greek origin of the Araucanians (original title ” el origen griego de los araucanos) under the pseudonym Lonko Kilapán.

As the official historian of the Araucanian race, Lonko Kilapán reveals that an expedition started from Sparta between 800 and 600 BC travelling towards the east. The expedition crossed over to Asia Minor and followed the route towards the Far East; passed through the north-east of India and descended to the region of Laos (deriving from the greek word ΛΑΟΣ; pronounced laos which means “people”). From there they descended further down to the peninsula of Malaysia and sailed in the Pacific Ocean. Moving through the  islands (Indonesia, Micronesia, Melanisia and Polynesia they were able to reach the island of Galapagos and from there they entered south America (Peru).

According to Lonko Kilapán, they decided to settle on a similar latitude to that of Greece; between the 42nd and 35th south parallel (Macedonia is situated on the 42nd northern parallel and Crete on the 35th). They named the area Phyli (Greek word ΦΥΛΗ meaning “race”). From this term the word “Chile” is derived. The Greek settlers learned the local language and  appplied some grammatical rules from their own.

Lonko Kilapán is not the only one that has written about the Greek origin of some of the indigenous people of America. Writer Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa (1532-1592), in his book “Historia Indica” states that it can be deduced that the ancient Greeks reached America as in the land of Yucatan and Campeche the indigenous dressed like Greeks and used many Greek letters and words including the word “Teos” (ΘΕΟΣ, pronounced theos meaning “God”). Lonko Kilapán also states that although the Araucanian language was not written it is estimated that it used many Greek words since one can still find today traces of Greek in about 20% of the words used”

(NovoScriptorium: One may find the book here http://www.worldcat.org/title/origen-griego-de-los-araucanos/oclc/912676042)