The potential of lost written history is fascinating to me. The Phoenicians of Carthage had boats which were capable of crossing the Atlantic and were known to take journeys well past the straights of Gibraltar, but a lot of their written history has been lost thanks to the Punic wars of Ancient Rome. It would be a fascinating lost episode of history if the Phoenicians "discovered" the Americas well before Vikings or other Europeans did. For all we know, this could have happened but accounts were simply lost to time.