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Masquerades as History in 'Quest of Great White Gods' : IN QUEST
OF THE GREAT WHITE GODS, Contact Between the Old and New World
From the Dawn of History by Robert F. Marx with Jenifer G. Marx
; Crown; $24, 352 pages   Who really discovered America,
Columbus or King Solomon?  To hear Robert F. Marx tell it,
Columbus may have been beaten to the New World by the sailing
ships of Solomon or Alexander the Great or one of a dozen other
ancient peoples for whom the same claim is made, ranging from
Arabs, Basques and Carthaginians to Russians, Tibetans and
Welshmen.  "Given the growing body of evidence," Marx insists in
"Quest of Great White Gods," "there seems little doubt that long
before Columbus, not only did 'bearded white gods' reach the New
World, but black and yellow gods, too."  Marx, a self-described
archeologist and historian, is a man in thrall to history--or at
least some profoundly romantic and slightly weirded-out version
of history. At the heart