There is direct written evidence to prove that Phoenicians discovered America. In particular, a story by Diodorus of Sicily is known, which tells us about that. Plato, Aristotle, Strabonus, Apuleus, Seneca, Plutarch, Elian were all aware of America. Phoenician culture merged with the whole antique civilization, and the Phoenicians’ voyages to the New World were made as late as in the Roman epoch.
We have direct archaeological evidence of those voyages. In particular, genuine Phoenician inscriptions and artifacts of Phoenician origin were found in America. Among them there are Roman and Carthaginian coins, as well as stone statues and stellae with images of Phoenicians and Africans carved on them. There also exist some botanic evidence of the ancient contacts in question. For example, the Maya are known to have cultivated cotton growths which had in fact been crossed with Egyptian ones. Lentils were discovered in Greece, Palma Christi was found in Mexico and manioc - in Tropical Africa. On the other hand, some Pompeian frescoes depict typically American plants, such as sweetsop and pine-apple.
Phoenicians discovered most of South and North Americas’ coastline. The rivers took them far inland. Throughout several centuries they maintained trade with Native Americans. Later on, though, America was “undiscovered” again, the reason being that Carthaginian and Roman authorities took no interest in colonizing the continent.
The Phoenicians considerably contributed to Native Americans’, in particular, Mexican, culture. For instance, Mexican feathered snake Quetzalcoatl is of obviously Phoenician origin. The legends directly mention that the Snake “retired to its motherland, the land of red and black”, as Egypt and Phoenicia used to be called in ancient times. Presumably, some other Meso-American mythologemes are of Phoenician origin as well. In particular, here belongs the myth of how the Earth was created out of water by God-Light.
Evidently, through Theopompus of Chios, Elian kept the Phoenicians’ findings about the ancient Native American civilizations for the coming generations.
The main argument to prove that the discovery of America should be attributed to the Phoenicians is the fact that a Phoenician sailors’ site was found there. It is also necessary to make a full chemical analysis of every iron ad bronze item found in ancient Native American tombs. Yet, first and foremost, the deeply-rooted hyper-critical isolationist approach to the pre-Columbian epoch should be abandoned.