Who discovered America?

Great Debates
1

I’m pretty sure this is really new, so I hope nothing’s been started on this, but apparently there’s a man in Great Britain who discovered some old documents and charts that seem to suggest the Chinese were the first to discover America. Apparently, all these pre-date Columbus by about fourty years. This brings up a few questions.

How do you think this would effect American history? Apparently they didn’t do much with the knowledge, so you can’t really say they “discovered it,” more like glanced at it. Kinda like Leaf Ericson. And already, people are starting to turn Columbus Day into something evil, so I’m curious as to how this might pan out in the grand scheme of children’s history books.

Also, supposedly this discovery came during a time when China was starting to distance itself from the outside/Western world, and that’s the professor’s interpretation as to why this information was never fully followed up and lost over the years. Is it just me, or does that sound silly? Why would a country, even one trying to cut off influences of “inferior Western Culture” pass up something like this? They discovered a whole new country, with new trade and new wealth and possibly knowledge. How could they just pass that up? That’s where a lot of the scepticism from his peers comes from, I believe, and it’s a valid point. What do you guys and gals think?

2

Unless someone provides evidence that any contact between the cultures had an actual effect (e.g., introduced new diseases, introduced new technology, spurred a change in culture by opening or closing the attitudes of those contacted toward their own culture), then, as you note, any such contact is no more than a historical artifact in the manner of the Viking stead at L’Anse Aux Meadows.

I am surprised at the mention of historical reports. There has been speculation regarding Chinese contact with Central America based on some pottery and other tantalizing, but ambiguous, artifacts.

It really does not affect American history (beyond knocking down a few more Euro-centric notions of what different people in the world were capable of doing without the “bright light” of European civilization).
As to your second, point, however, it appears that the Chinese did simply turn away from the rest of the world. In the fifteenth century, Chinese ship-building was superior in most ways to European ship-building. The Chinese sent out exploratory cruises to much of what is now Indonesia and Sri Lanka. They also planned to put together a fleet to visit Madagascar although I do not remember whether that fleet was built and sent or stopped during construction. Then, for reasons that are poorly understood, the Emperor (or the Imperial staff) simply decided to define the world as China, alone. They dismantled their ship-yards and ordered that no ship capable of a journey beyond the coast be built.

It certainly seems silly (from our perspective) in hindsight. It also certainly harmed the development of China by permitting later Europeans to use naval power to hamstring the ruling of that country. However, that does seem to have been the case.

During the period before the destruction of their fleet and shipyards, however, the Chinese were capable of having visited anywhere in the Pacific or Indian Oceans. Unfortunately, along with the destruction of their fleet, they appear to have destroyed records of the voyages their ships had undertaken, so we have only rumors and archaeological records to indicate where they actually went.

3

(I should note, that in the absence of actual records, there has also been some fairly wild speculation about what the Chinese did do. We know that they engaged in journeys up to the 15th century that they were not capable of doing in the sixteenth century. We have fairly good indications that they destroyed their large-capacity shipyards. We know that when the Europeans arrived, the Chinese had laws forbidding their own ships from leaving the coast. Much of the rest is based on speculation.)

4

What exactly do you mean by discovered ?

If you mean, first contacted by humans, then the strongest evidence for earliest contact is for the Paleo-Indian people roughly between 9500 and 9000 BCE, when several families (at least) moved from the area we know as Alaska into the North American interior.

Personally, I favor the evidence at Meadowcroft rock shelter, which shows humans stopping there in roughly 17000 BCE. I think it was simply one family or band of hunters.

5

The reference is to trans-Pacific contact in the fifteenth century, long after the Asian-American migrations of people had ended.

6

  1. Yes, I agree that the real discoverers of America were the Paleo-Indians.

  2. Yes, I agree that other discoverers of America didn’t have a significant impact, but

  3. There are a LOT of potential candidates for pre-Columbian non-Indian discoverers of America. I have several books devoted to such folks. You can write a book alone about existing monuments to such possible pre-Columbian discoverers of America (There’s a statue to Leif Ericson in Boston, the Norumbega monument in Masssachusetts, the monument to Prince Henry Sinclair in Westford, MA, the monument to Prince Madoc in Louisville, Kentucky, the Kensington Rune Stone in Minnesota…)

  4. I wouldn’t be at all surprised about early and undocumented contacts, either. I can easily see European fishermen pushing off for long spells at George’s Bank and not wanting to tell others about such a great fishing spot. Or traders with American goods selling to a small and high-priced market.

7

Discovered?

Was it ever missing?

Humans have been on this continent for a long time - since they walked over the land bridge to follow their food.

As for when people started arriving in boats and realizing they were on a different continent, I don’t think it will have any cataclysmic effects on the modern day Americas that people got here before the Europeans.

8

There is also a theory that links the West Coast Salish to the Ainu/Jomon peoples, apparently they share a certain rare genetic signature. The Salish are also the only First Nations known to be heavily bearded BEFORE European contact.

The Haida/Tlingit peoples had trade routes extending down the Aleutian Islands chain that took them to Japan. And the Inuit traded back and forth across the Bering Strait - until European-style governments made them stop.

9

[hijack]
tomndebb
You’re quite right. Chinese history seems to be a baffling series of missed opportunities. The abortive Chinese “age of discovery” is a case in point. As I understand it, the Chinese didn’t just sent out two or three relatively small ships. Rather, they sent out enormous flotillas that consisted of dozens of ships and thousands of people. In effect, it was an expeditionary force capable of conducting serious trade and even, I suppose, planting colonies.

Had the Chinese pursued this, China would have established the bases and controlled the trade routes that were later dominated by the Portuguese. The Indian ocean would have been a Chinese lake. Instead, China was eventually dismembered by barbarian upstarts from countries too small to have made a decent Chinese province. Funny thing, history.
[/hijack]

10

This topic is also being covered in General Questions in the Chinese beat Europeans to America? thread.

11

In answering this question we have to qualify what we mean by 'discovery ’ a little bit. It doesn’t neccessarily mean to be the first human to notice something in any capacity whatsoever. You could say, “I discovered this great little restaurant”, but obviously you’re not the first person to go there.

You could say that Leif Ericson ‘discovered’ North America, but only in a very limited scope and duration. Word did not spread to the educational centers of Europe and within a few generations it had become ‘undiscovered’–forgotten–except or a few legendary sagas.

The Chinese may have landed in the Americas at one point, but the extent to which that amounted to a discovery in their own context has become completely obscured.

The Paeo-Indians naturally discovered lands in North America bit-by-bit as they migrated across the Bearing Strait and on down, but as they went forward the lands they left behind became forgotten. And their ability to place where they were at any point within a broader geographical context was extremely limited, thus greatly limiting the validity of a claim of ‘discovery’. If they had sent a map back to the nearest university in Eurasia, that would be something else.

As for Columbus, you could say he scientficly discovered America, or that he discovered ‘where America was’ in relation to the rest of the world (although we know that’s not quite true, he made the critical breakthrough which allowed the correct conclusion to be made shortly thereafter).

12

Give Columbus credit; when he discovered America, it stayed discovered.

13

Did Amerigo Vespucci come before or after Columbus?

I’m fuzzy on my dates.

14

They were contemporaries. As I recall he helped in the outfitting of Colombus’ voyages and was an enthusiastic proponent of the attempt to find a ‘Western passage’. His own voyages, five of them, were from ( I believe ) 1497-1505, mostly to Brazil and the Guianas, though he may have swung by the U.S. on the first.

  • Tamerlane
15

I always found it kind of interesting that Columbus is currently the more famous explorer, but that the Americas were named after Vespucci.

16

**sqweels wrote:

The Paeo-Indians naturally discovered lands in North America bit-by-bit as they migrated across the Bearing Strait and on down, but as they went forward the lands they left behind became forgotten. And their ability to place where they were at any point within a broader geographical context was extremely limited, thus greatly limiting the validity of a claim of ‘discovery’. If they had sent a map back to the nearest university in Eurasia, that would be something else. **

Oh, c’mon Sqweels!! There were no maps of the world at that time. Writing wouldn’t exist for millenia later, either. And there wasn’t a university in either Europe or Asia to send either to, even if maps or writing did exist.

To say that they didn’t “do” these things limits the validity of their claim is absurd!

17

FREYR

I agree with sqweels in this.

There is no doubt that the North American continent has been populated to some degree for tens of thousands of years. (And please, don’t call me on exact time spans. I’m not trying to establish an exact paleological record, but just trying to make a point).

But whatever peoples there were traipsing around the countryside in 50,000 BC did not have contact with the rest of the world (South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, etc)

Fast forward to the Native Americans. True, thriving cultures; but still almost completely isolated from the rest of the world. There were isolated contacts, from the Chinese, European fishermen, Leif Erickson…whomever. But they were isolated contacts, and as far as either the North American inhabitants or the rest of the world were concerned, the other didn’t exist.

It wasn’t until Columbus and other explorers of that era (Columbus just happens to be the most famous) that WORLD-WIDE GENERAL AWARENESS of the fact that, “Hey, there’s a continent over there!” became common knowledge. This is what is generally meant by the “discovery” of North America.

No one is disputing that there were inhabitants of this continent loooong before Columbus; but that’s just trying to re-define the argument: when did the world’s awareness of North America happen?

Let’s say that somehow the Native Americans travelled over to Europe, and their (the NA’s) culture was sufficiently compelling that the Europeans gave up their militaristic, exploring, conquering (etc) ways, and settled into an agrarian lifestyle like that of the NA’s. We would be reading about Chief Red Cloud’s “discovery” of Europe…which would not be ignoring the vast histories of Rome, Greece, China, etal. It’s just that that would be the defining point where the two main continents became aware of each other.

18

here are a few sources that claim America was discoved not by Columbus or by China, but by African and Spanish Muslims.

here is one that claims America was discoved and (un)discovered numerous times throughout human history. It covers all theories from early Egyptans with fishing fleets, to Junks from China, to Columbus’ ultimate and final discovery. I personal liked the one about an Irishman named “Orry” (sniff, poor guy).

But, the main outline is that theoricaly, anyone with a row boat and luck could have survived a trip over. So it is not unlikely that at sometime in human history someone did discover America before Columbus (minus the native tribes who were the first).

However, Columbus might have been the first to come back.

19

Wait a minute…

Wasn’t it the Vikings to first come back? or maybe the Chinese…

Now I’m confused agian…

20

The Norse established ‘permanant’ settlements in Newfoundland, which suggest multiple trips, and the Greenland settlers made occasional forays to the NA coast for timber.