THE BANJO OF SYRACUSE

THE  BANJO OF SYRACUSE

It has recently been disclosed that a strange instrument, similar to a four stringed Plectrum banjo, has been languishing in the basement of a local museum in downtown Syracuse, New York state.

The city of Syracuse is situated in a part of North America that was inhabited by native Americans four to five thousand years before the arrival of the white man.

In the 1600's the area was inhabited by five nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, being the Mohawks, Senecas, Onondagas, Oneidas and Cayugas.

The first white men were the French who arrived in 1615 with Samuel Champlain, and the British began to take an interest in the area in the early 1700's.

The city of Syracuse was founded close to Lake Onondaga, on part of the Onondaga salt spring Reservation. The city has had several names, with the first being "Salt Point", a name derived from the numerous salt deposits in the area.

The current ethnic breakdown of the local population indicates that the original native inhabitants have almost totally abandoned the area, and in is interesting to note that over a quarter of the population (27.9%) can trace their recent ancestry to the continent of Africa. The Irish also constitute a large proportion at 15.9 % together with the Italians 14.1 % and Germans 12.2 %.
This is despite the area experiencing high snowfall throughout the winter months, being influenced by the nearby great lakes and the Atlantic seaboard.

Returning to the instrument that is very similar to a four string Banjo, it was was originally discovered in 1830, by Irish navvies whilst completing the excavation of the Erie Canal.

The Banjo was introduced to the United States by the enslaved Africans who fashioned Gourd- bodied instruments like those they knew from their original homeland in western Africa.
At the time , the four stringed Banjo was being popularised by the American performer "Joel Sweeney", and it was automatically believed by those who unearthed the instrument from the Erie canal that the "Banjo" was a recent model that had been discarded by a local slave.

However, the Banjo was accompanied by other artifacts that until the present day had confounded all who had viewed them. The artifacts appeared to be grave goods, and parts of a human skeleton were entwined with the Banjo. However they did not resemble any other native American discoveries and so were placed in the basement of the local Museum and forgotten !

A recent survey of the contents of the museum re discovered the Banjo and other artifacts, including the bones, and theses have subsequently been Carbon dated, and to the astonishment of the investigating archaeologists, the date revealed was fifteen thousand years BC.

Further more, fluoride dating of a number of teeth that were still situated in the partial jaw that was with the skeletal remains, has shown that the deceased ancestor had grown up in the west of the continent of Africa, and could not have experienced an early life on the Norther American continent.

The study is not complete,but the existing evidence suggests that the "Banjo" and the person to whom the instrument was offered as a grave good, was of west African extraction and that western Africans must have travelled to the Americas via the Bering land bridge during the last Ice Age at the same time as their Asian cousins.

I eagerly await more details !!!!!!!!!!!!!