Humans have been able to follow coastlines in small boats for 40,000+ years and open ocean waters for at least 30,000 years this is well proven in not only the orient but also the Pacific indigenous groups. Europeans at the time were as technologically advanced or more so during the last ice age. The Pre-Clovis points are a dead match for what the Northern Spaniards were making and stone technology is passed from human to human each culture had unique points and tools that was passed on the the next generation.
Across Atlantic Ice: The Origin of America’s Clovis Culture
"Across Atlantic Ice: The Origin of America’s Clovis Culture. The book puts forward a compelling case for people from northern Spain traveling to America by boat, following the edge of a sea ice shelf that connected Europe and America during the last Ice Age, 14,000 to 25,000 years ago."
What I find interesting is the juxtaposition of the fading lions of capitalism, the Venetians, and the new crowd, the Tudors as established by the engine of capital, Henry the VII. In both the “City of Fortune, How Venice Ruled the Seas” and “The Winter King” a study on Henry the VII and the founding of the Tudor dynasty, the close 1490-1510 cooperation between the Venetians and the Tudors is detailed showing how close they were in that age in circumventing the Papal forces in the central Mediterranean and the Muslim control in the east.
I think we can go back to Henry the II almost 400 years earlier to see the beginnings of the Venice-Britain efforts and what they spawned. Columbus, of Genoavise extraction, shipped out of Portugal and Spain as the Genoa Republic competed with the Venetians. The Venetians and the Muslims tied up the Silk Road path from the east and prompted the eastern European nations to round the Horn of Africa and venture elsewhere for a way around that duo.
This article is another confirmation of the capitalistic connection of Venice and Britain leading to the modern era more so than the artistic Renaissance of Florence.