What DID Columbus do?

The Vikings and their descendants had two colonies on the continent, one of them which lasted for almost 500 years just prior to Columbus’s discovery.

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Not to argue your point, but it should be noted that the Viking settlement, which reach a population 0f 5000 (actually discovered by the Inuit) initiated several hundred years of contact and trade.

Its rather ironic that it was the native Americans that discovered Europeans rather than the other way around.

Sure there is. The reason was spelled out in a Mallard Fillmore comic several years ago, (in the '90s) during the time when people first started questioning just what kind of “hero” Columbus was. I don’t have a link to the strip in question, but basically it went like this:

Mallard and some random liberal are watching television in a bar. On the TV is a reporter relating a story about Columbus’s treatment of the natives, and questioning whether we should be celebrating Columbus Day. The liberal fellow becomes irate, bellowing about “How dare they criticize Columbus! He was a hero!” and so on. Mallard is impressed, and tells the guy, “It’s refreshing to see somebody who doesn’t go for this latest round of political correctness.” The other guy replies:

“Darn right! I work for the government, and anybody who gets me an extra day off from work is a hero in my book!”

I often wonder how history might have been different if Erikson or other Vikings had explored a little further and followed the coast west and south. North America is much colder for a given latitude than Europe. If they’d discovered what’s now Virginia instead of trying to settle in Newfoundland/ Labrador, they might have attracted more settlers with news of a lusher, more habitable area.

Or were Scandinavians simply used to putting up with a four-month growing season? :stuck_out_tongue:

its not often that I can correct someone of your stature , but the West Indies are part of North America.

He meant the mainland. The Bahamas, where Columbus first landed, is in North America, too.

I personally wouldn’t consider Greenland to be “on the continent,” any more than New Guinea is part of the continent of Australia, given the width of the strait that separates it.

Pretty trivial at best. How much trade from Greenland ever reached Europe? How much trade from the Vikings got beyond Greenland itself?

That’s a stretch. The Vikings had come to where the Skraelings lived, not the reverse, even if the Skraelings didn’t make themselves known for a while.

You are quibbling definitions. No, they are not at all part of the North American continent in the geological sense. They are not part of the same continental shelf. According to some classifications, they are considered to belong to the geographical region of North America.

To be precise, if you insist, John Cabot was the first European after the Vikings to reach the mainland of the continent of North America in the geological sense. Happy?

Why do people keep misstating this simple fact? Columbus landed during his fourth voyage on the northern coast of what are now Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. These countries are all part of the continent of North America.

Please, please, please, folks, learn basic history.

Nah. The Norse didn’t have the ships for a full-scale colonization. Even Greenland was barely in contact with Europe - meaning Iceland - seeing a ship about once a generation. There’s no way they could have ferried enough people across the Atlantic for a viable settlement.

I know the Greenlanders lost contact with Europe towards the end, but I find it hard to believe that “seeing a ship about once a generation” was the norm for the 400 years or so they lived there. Do you have a cite for that claim?

We all know basic history and geography. That is why I said he never reached North America except in the “most trivial and pedantic way”. Bouncing off of some new lands in what is technically Central America would be admirable if it weren’t for the fact that he still thought he was in Asia even after the 4th voyage. Colombus was a great captain of primitive cruise ships but he never made any real discoveries because he had no idea where he was going even after the 4th voyage.

Jury Rules: Crackpot of the highest order and just an historical oddity.

Rail at him as much as you please. The fact remains. He is writ large in the history books and that ain’t gonna change.

With respect, I don’t see how someone who establishes a colony (no matter how long lived) has reached a land in “the most trivial and pedantic way.” I recommend you re-read your history of what Columbus did in North America; it’s at least as important as anything that Cabot did, for example, and quite obviously more than “trivial.” :rolleyes:
Now, SOUTH America is a whole different issue.

I also don’t see that the fact that Columbus was mistaken about the nature of his discoveries somehow invalidates their significance. He did make the new lands known to Europe, which many others followed up on. No one else really promoted the idea that they were an entirely new continent until the early 1500s. Did all these other explorers “not discover anything” because they also thought they were in Asia?

Amerigo Vespucci is credited as being the first to really understand that Columbus had found a “New World” (although there is some controversy whether he actually wrote the letter that promoted this idea) and that is why the Americas ended up being named after him rather than Columbus.

Columbus did not merely “bounce off” Central America, he rather thoroughly explored the coastline for a great distance. He did miss a couple of major opportunities though. Off Honduras he captured a canoe that evidently came from the Maya civilizations to the north. If he had turned west instead of east he could have ended up being the one to discover the high civilizations of Mesoamerica. (And who knows, he might have ended up getting his heart cut out on an Aztec altar, which would have been a suitably ironic end.) In Panama, he was told of the Ocean on the other side of the Isthmus by the Indians, and could have anticipated Balboa by more than a decade, but was too obsessed with finding gold to send out a scouting party.

One of the factors we have to take into account was how likely it was that another mariner would have stumbled on the Americas in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth centuries.

By way of evidence, look at how the Portugese Pedro Álvares Cabral (this article) pretty much bumped into Brazil by accident.

Note the way in which it happened: “The fleet of thirteen ships left Lisbon on 9 March 1500, and following the course laid down, sought to avoid the calms off the coast of Gulf of Guinea. On leaving the Cape Verde Islands, … they sailed in a decidedly southwesterly direction. On 22 April a mountain was visible, to which the name of Monte Pascoal was given; on the 23 April Cabral landed on the coast of Brazil, and on the 25 April the entire fleet sailed into the harbor called Porto Seguro.” (emphasis added)

Now, it may seem odd to believe that someone would “stumble” across the Atlantic, but consider the relative positions of Portugal, Africa (around which the Portugese were sailing regularly) and the easternmost part of South America.

So why was Cabral going so far west if he was trying to get around Africa? Because if you look at the way the trade winds blow, you will see that between Portugal and the Equator, they blow south-west: that is, directly towrds the new world! Then there is an area of calm around the Gulf of Guineau, but the winds south of the equator tend to blow northwest.

Mariners in the age of Cabral had gotten the hang of going further west to get a better break with the winds when going around Africa.

Also, in the age of sail, you did not always choose your route exactly. Strong winds often chose for you. Cabral probably noted that he was swinging a little further west, but probably did not mind as long as he was heading south as well.

You will note that Cabral and his 13 ships (much more than Columbus) were NOT blown off course by a hurricane. Indeed, the article says the “entire fleet” sailed to Brazil once they spotted it.

Now, consider this article about the trade winds and currents here Consider especially the last two paragraphs:

"For eighteenth century navigators, the Atlantic trades winds, and the currents they generated, provided a reliable means of crossing from the Canary Archipelago and then heading north with the equatorial current through the islands of the Lesser Antilles into the Caribbean.

It also gave voyagers a way of reaching the Cape of Good Hope without having to sail against the northerly South African Current. They could cross the Atlantic, head southwards of Cabo São Roque with the Brazil Current and then sail back across the Atlantic to the Cape of Good Hope with the Southern Connecting Current. "

**Conclusion: The Atlantic winds, the currents, the lay of the land. . . . . everything made it more of less inevitable that Europeans of the fifteenth century with their improved navigation and sailing techniques would happen onto the Americas.

And that is exactly what happened a mere 8 years after Columbus’ voyage.**

I agree. Yes, CC may have been a Crackpot, but he was also damn lucky, a great navigator, and a brilliant salesman.

Note this other line from the wiki site “Cabral perceived that the new land lay east of the line of demarcation made by Pope Alexander VI (see Treaty of Tordesillas)…”- don;t you find that just a tiny bit suspicous? It sounds to me like he was deliberately sniffing around for interesting new islands and the like that lay on the Portugese sign of the Line. It thus appears that there was nothing accidental about this and he wouldn’t have been out there sniffing around if it hasn’t been for Columbus.

If you follow the link at the bottom of your page, it send you to another wiki page, where we find this tidbit "It is uncertain if Pedro Álvares Cabral was blown westwards to the Brazilian coast while navigating to the Cape of Good Hope, or the whole expedition was a secret mission to find new lands in the Atlantic as a response to the Spanish claims that Amerigo Vespucci had visited the Brazilian north coast in July 1499 and Vicente Yáñez Pinzón in November 1499. According to the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), Spain could not claim the lands.]"

Sure Columbus was lucky. Most discoverers were lucky in some way. But whatever the quibbles and criticisms, the fact remains that his discovery led to European exploration and colonization of the Americas.

Columbus was a giant of the age of discovery!
First, he was a careful navigator-he studied the accounts of mariners, and noted the presence of the westward-blowing winds in the latitude of the Azores.
-he had sailed to Iceland, sometime around 1477, and (probably) learned of the Norse voyages to Greenland
-he was alearned man, and corresponded with the famous geographer Martin Behaim, of Nuremburg
True, he miscalculated the circumference of the world-but in terms of boldness and enterprise, his voyage was an achievement of genius!
And, despite his imprisonment (on trumped-up charges), he was a man who made history!

While some may allege that Cabral was “sniffing around” it is equally possible that he just happened to go far enough west by accident. But in any event, the point I am getting at is that the winds, the currents, etc. all push a ship towards the Americas at those latitudes.

My point is that SOMEONE was bound to fall on it when the Portugese and others started going out into the Atlantic in a south-westerly direction in order to round Southern Africa.