Who really discovered America?

Discussion in 'History and Culture' started by Jason Bourne, Feb 7, 2018.

  1. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    How about the many Sagas? At that time period most of Scandinavia was illiterate, but they had their Sagas. Oral tradition, passed down from generation to generation. The Scriptures were actually the same for many centuries, as were most of the tales of ancient Greece and Babylon.

    Eric the Red is known to have "discovered" Greenland. And his son Leif Erickson is known to have been the leader of the first expedition to Vinland. It was all recorded in Sagas, first passed orally then written down about 200 years later. Many historians pre-Columbus used them and their descriptions to make maps of the area, they just were forced to return home because the Little Ice Age made living in those areas impossible.

    The difference with Columbus is that he started a wave of exploration and settlement that continued to this day.
     
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  2. jdog

    jdog Banned

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    Much of history was passed down and preserved through oral methods. In the case of Vikings "discovering" America, that proof does not exist. There is no record oral or otherwise of Vikings returning to Europe and spreading the knowledge that North America existed.
     
  3. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Once again, there is proof. The Sagas were written down in the 1200's, and passed through much of Europe in the early years of the 14th century. But there was this other little thing called the Black Death that caused all such interest and desire to return to vanish. And by the descriptions it was believed to be yet another snow covered wasteland, like Greenland.

    Remember, even though Columbus knew he had not reached Asia by the time of his second voyage, even he never understood that he had actually "discovered" another Continent. Even he believed he had only discovered a series of islands until his last voyage in 1502-1504 when he finally explored along the coast of Central America.

    He had even passed along the coast of South America in his earlier 1498-1500 voyage, and believed the area around modern Venezuela was yet another island, like Cuba.

    You can not look at what they saw with modern eyes. You have to view it only knowing what they would have known. What the Vikings discovered and wrote about is now known as Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Baffin Island, Southhampton Island, and the very North-Eastern part of Quebec. Like Columbus, they thought they had discovered a series of islands. And when the Little Ice Age made all of them unlivable they thought they were of no value and abandoned. Just like they largely abandoned Greenland.

    The oldest existing record of their travels dates to 1075 (about 75 years after their discovery) when Adam of Bremen visited Denmark and wrote them down in his chronicles which still survive to this day. And his chronicles do not make it a very hospitable place to visit. "Eternal sun in the summer, eternal night in the winter", an area of "intolerable ice" and "immense and hazardous fogs". It was known, it is just that nobody cared. No more than they cared about going to Greenland.

    Columbus only went there because he was trying to find the Orient. And he kept going back because they found spices that was the entire reason for his going, and hints that there was a lot of gold to be found. If he had traveled further North instead of the more temperate Caribbean, odds are his travels would have been forgotten also.

    In essence, Columbus wanted Saffron. Instead, he found the Chili Pepper. And in a Spain recovering from hundreds of years of foreign rule, establishing new trade routes was critical.
     
  4. jdog

    jdog Banned

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    Again, you seem to have trouble understanding that in order to credited with discovery, your discovery must be made public. If you are contending that the Vikings made the discovery of North America public and the people of Europe knew of its existence you will need to do a better job of proving that.
     
  5. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    And telling one of the foremost chroniclers of the era, who then published it throughout Europe is not being "made public"?

    Yea, I take the time to do a lot of research and point out things like facts and names, you just write a few sentences say "you are wrong", ignoring the very evidence I present (including some very specific things like names and dates). This is pointless, enjoy living in your world.
     
  6. jdog

    jdog Banned

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    So you are saying the existance of North America was common knowledge in Europe prior to Columbus?
     
  7. Hoosier8

    Hoosier8 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Irrelevant really. The Vikings may well have been but they failed to colonize, which is what they wanted to do. History is written by the winners.
     
  8. yabberefugee

    yabberefugee Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I discovered America when I was born....it was new to me at that time.
     
  9. tecoyah

    tecoyah Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Clovis/Cromagnon followed by Native Americans followed by Vikings followed by misc. Europeans.
     
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  10. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    No
     
  11. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    A Mo-ist attitude.
     
  12. Creasy Tvedt

    Creasy Tvedt Well-Known Member

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    I think it's more appropriate and applicable to think of it in terms of "contact" rather than discovery.

    So who first made contact with already-populated America? The most-solid, and basically irrefutable, evidence points to the Vikings, and their short-lived settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. The Vikings brought iron to North America, and that's a fact.

    There may have been other instances of contact, but none made any mark of significance, so it's little more than a curiosity to consider them.

    Christoper Columbus' voyages were the first, and basically undisputed, instance of solid contact, and it definitely left a mark.
     
    Last edited: Nov 6, 2019
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  13. Blaster3

    Blaster3 Well-Known Member

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    elaborate, one word statements are meaningless and usually wrong
     
  14. Blaster3

    Blaster3 Well-Known Member

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    the term 'native' is amuzing, because how did they get there(here), did they just materialize out of thin air... at some point in time their ancestors arrived from somewhere else...
     
  15. Ritter

    Ritter Well-Known Member

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    Just bow down to your Nordic overlords already. :)
     
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  16. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    “No,” meaning Jason Bourne’s claim was incorrect.
     
    Last edited: Nov 6, 2019
  17. Blaster3

    Blaster3 Well-Known Member

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    state your side... prove your case... till then its non-sequitur
     
  18. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    I did.
     
  19. ARDY

    ARDY Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    i think the answer is clear.... the people who came over a land bridge from Siberia “discovered” America. If you are interested in which Europeans first came to America.... most likely those would be the Vikings. They certainly arrived on and colonized Greenland. And given the skill and exploratory inclination this required.... it seems likely that they also came the short further distance to Nova Scotia.

    The Vikings, however, seemed primarily interested in fishing and conquest, rather than farming. I think there was little added value for them to colonize Nova Scotia when Greenland already gave them great fishing.

    Nova Scotia did not offer better fishing, more arable land, nor rich opportunities for conquest.... therefore they stopped at Greenland

    it is also worthwhile to note the various motivations for mainland Europeans to colonize the America’s.... reasons that ultimately did not motivate the Vikings or sustain ongoing colonization

    —-search for gold
    ——Religious freedom separatists
    ——Plantations to produce sugar and cotton
    ——-Fur trapping

    regarding possible Chinese exploration
    Imo There is little evidence to support this
    There are no evidences in the pacific island indicating such exploration
    And given the much larger size of the pacific as compared to The Atlantic,
    The barriers to surmount were enormously larger
    Also, the various motivations for exploration and colonization were less consequential.

    as a thought experiment, consider the possible colonization of the moon or mars
    Technically, if we REALLY WANTED to colonize the moon, or mars.... we likely could do that.
    But the barriers are high, and the perceived payoffs are low.... so why bother?
     
  20. Creasy Tvedt

    Creasy Tvedt Well-Known Member

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    The Vikings colonizing The Americas was never a viable possibility, because it was just too darned far through seas that were at the far edge of the range and capabilities of a Viking longboat.

    Vikings were avid traders, and the distance from North America to Greenland and beyond was beyond what any sane Viking would consider "trading distance". Any Viking settlement in North America had to consider themselves an orphan society, and that was not an attractive proposition to your average Viking.
     
    Last edited: Nov 6, 2019
  21. Polydectes

    Polydectes Well-Known Member

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    Nobody really. Maybe Paleolithic man. It was really discovered to the western world by Columbus did. I wouldn't say the Danes discovered it they did have a settlement in the North. I heard they were refining iron they found in bogs.

    But I wouldn't call that a discovery because I don't think they realized it was two continents
     
    Last edited: Nov 6, 2019
  22. Polydectes

    Polydectes Well-Known Member

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    Vikings built a settlement in Canada. It's called Vinland.

    https://www.google.com/search?q=vik...motorola-rev2&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8
     
  23. Creasy Tvedt

    Creasy Tvedt Well-Known Member

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    Last edited: Nov 7, 2019
  24. Polydectes

    Polydectes Well-Known Member

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    But it's a viking settlement in Canada.
     
  25. Farnsworth

    Farnsworth Well-Known Member

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    Basque fishing fleets found lots of good fishing off the coasts of North America; their cod and herring business was famous in that day.
     

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