Old news (~2013). Australian Geographic had a feature on it years ago. Here's one of their articles: <a href="https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/history-culture/2014/08/mystery-of-ancient-african-coins-found-in-australia/" rel="nofollow">https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/history-cultu...</a><p>Apparently they also found Chinese coins <a href="https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2014/08/18th-century-chinese-coin-found-in-arnhem-land/" rel="nofollow">https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2014/08/18th-ce...</a><p>Personally, having studied Chinese history, travelled the area fairly extensively, and read all of the Ming Dynasty texts around Zheng He's voyages (~1400s), I am sort of convinced it would have been unthinkable for the Chinese <i>not</i> to have visited northern Australia, since (a) presence of land should have been well known / established through local knowledge, currents, clouds, winds, and seabird migrations; (b) they went to so many other places, it seems insane they would stop just after the equator when they already had compass-aided navigation and strong (for the period) navigational astronomy. Still, stranger things have happened...
The whole article is full of sensationalism.<p>1. The only connection to Kilwa is the size and shape of the coin, that's flimsy at best.<p>2. It's not evidence of direct contact, there are plenty of instances of coins from one place ending up in another with no direct contact.<p>3. Trade between Northern Australia and Indonesia is already somewhat well established.<p>4. Similarly Indian ocean trade has been going on for thousands of years.<p>This might be a cool find and further evidence of trade between Australia and Indonesia but it's not rewriting history.
In case you have to check like I did, Kilwa is in present day Tanzania.<p>The Portuguese colonized the east African coast but were run off by the Arabs and Africans in the region. Intermarriages between Arabs and the local Bantu led to the creation of a new tribe, the Swahili
A similar case for those interested: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_penny" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_penny</a>
Whatever the significance of this coin found is, I find it extremely faszinating how many archeological finds turn up in recent years which show how much "globalization" existed in ancient times. Even without direct long distance connections, trade connected most human societies.<p>But also individuals seem to have travelled further, than one would imagine in absence of travel infrastructure. It has been known for long time how the vikings traded with the mediterranean, but recent findings about stonehenge show, how big the sphere of contribution was.<p>For all societies which had ocean-going ships doing off-costal travels, I would expect them to have occasionally travelled much further, than most history-writing accounts for. Besides the known viking settlements off the American coast, it would actually be quite surprising, if not a few ships had reached the mainland. So I would not be surprised about any artefacts being found in America, pointing at pre-columbian contacts.
Coins last a very long time. A 2000 year old Roman coin could be lost by a Spaniard in the new world in the 16th century. The strike date only provides an upper bound on how long ago the coin was placed. The lower bound is the present.
Is it completely impossible for a coin to fall into the ocean in Kilwa (Tanzania) and just get washed to NE Australia? 1000 years is a long time and could account for a lot of movement in the ocean.
The misleading headline (likely not written by the author) is meant to imply the possibility of some sort of hitherto-unknown 1300s trade route.<p>In fact, the article indicates that the most likely scenario is Portuguese traders blown off course from Timor in the 1500s, but the lede is buried quite far down.<p>Very interesting nonetheless, but bs headlines and buried ledes piss me off.