The Americas stayed ‘discovered’ at least as long ago as the 11th century. Columbus took a trip to Iceland as part of his research, and of course made his famous gaffe regarding the circumference of the Earth.
The reason the colonization happened after 1492 is, prior to that time, that nice edge given by firearms didn’t exist. Moving into an area already occupied, against a population with analogously advanced weaponry, didn’t work so well.
And the natural climate change cycles produced conditions that either encouraged or hindered travel, and led to increases and decreases in population.
I like your concise, to-the-point post-natural climate changes, and the effect they would have on travel and trade with distant places are ignored by a lot of those in the field of archaeology.
If a relatively small volcanic eruption in Iceland shuts down air travel in today’s world, it isn’t really that difficult to imagine what havoc a tsunami, lava flow, rain of ash-or just a Siberian express weather event-would cause, possibly shutting down ocean and land travel and trade in some areas for awhile, never mind something major. We know that Greenland was green about 1000 years ago, and there were grapes grown and wine made in Britain...
Huh?
Columbus kept a written record, an objective fact.
That record caused other people to act on his knowledge, an objective fact.
The Americas have now been explored by many nations and various people, of a wide variety of cultures, an objective fact that continues to be expanded to this day.
There is zero empirical evidence anyone elze made it.
The people who may have made it are under historical speculation, as in “it’s possible” but.....
Leif might have made it.
Some wayard Kon Tiki might have made it.
They never made the return trip and thus Chris gets a gold star next to his name.
As far as how the people who already lived here fared, Chris didn’t get em all.
Later people made that happen and well, lifes tough.
The Lakota had no mercy on their Canadian cousins, the Souix, and kicked them out of what would later become Canaduh.
That happened about 300 years ago and the claim by the Sioux about “Ancestral land is a bunch of bunk.
The Americas stayed ‘discovered’ at least as long ago as the 11th century...
You miss the point about “Discovered”.
As far as I know the first written accounts come from Chris.
No other kingdoms went in search of the place until then.
Nor did any Puritans...