Posted on 09/27/2014 8:41:05 PM PDT by Theoria
Discoveries must be followed up or they are NOT “discoveries.” .............................. The people who were here discovered it, the ones that came later were conquerors looking for spice, gold, cheap labor and to spread Christianity. (Pretty much in that order)
Nobody has been to the moon in 40 years. Is it discovered?
Was it discovered before anyone had been there?
Columbus’ discovery wasn’t unique because he found new continents. That there was land across the Atlantic was somewhat common knowledge. The “discovery” was that people were living there, in cultures distinct from Europe, Asia, and the Indian subcontinent.
Probably, since it would be a pretty short list...
Perhaps?. The Icelandic sagas “Saga of the Greenlanders” and “Saga of Eric the Red” document “Vinland”. While there are some discrepancies between the two; the accuracy of these sagas was proven when they were used by archeologists to locate the Norse settlement at L’Anse Aux Meadows in Northern Newfoundland. This settlement only lasted about 8-10 years. It’s existence and the Sagas pretty well document the Norse discovery of the Americas 500 years before Columbus. However, I am not aware of any of this information ever being taken back to Europe.
About 986 a Norseman attempting to sail from Iceland to Greenland missed Greenland and saw land further west, but did not go ashore. His name was Bjarni (perhaps an ancestor of Bjarni Fife). Leif Ericsson knew about Bjarni's discoveries before the voyage he took which led to the discovery of "Vinland."
I think there is a medieval Danish historian who mentions something about these discoveries but don't remember if he knew about Vinland or only about Greenland.
Wait! This part is scary:
...Stanley Chojnacki, a University of North Carolina expert on gender relations in 14th-century Venice....
&&
Expert on gender relations?
... another attempt to delegitimize Columbus.
***
Perhaps. But, no matter what may be learned about earlier “discoveries” of America, it was not until Columbus’s voyages that things really started poppin’. So they can’t take that away from him.
My thoughts were similar to yours when I read this. See my #29.
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