all these anti-Columbus people seem to think that if Columbus hadn’t come Europeans would have never come. They fail to realize that sooner or later someone, probably the Chinese would have come. How do you think the Indians would have fared under Chinese rule?
“They fail to realize that sooner or later someone, probably the Chinese would have come.”
Well, if Columbus hadn’t come, the Portuguese would still inevitably have discovered and colonized Brazil just a few years later. They had a colony on Cape Verde, which is directly between Africa and Brazil, they were sailing regularly up and down the coast of Africa, and they were using new sailing techniques that involved sailing away from land and into the Atlantic to take advantage of the Trade Winds. So combine those three facts and the Portuguese discovering Brazil becomes just a matter of them rolling the dice enough times to get lucky.
The Americas were basically hiding in plain sight -- it was just a matter of when and who, not if America were to be discovered.
Consider that the Vikings made it to Newfoundland long before Columbus sailed.
The whole anti-Columbus thing is totally ridiculous and baseless-the issue shouldn’t be who discovered the Americas-but who DIDN’T...
Archaeological evidence from Canada to Chile and everywhere in between shows that Columbus was a late-comer to the Americas-he was able to give Spain the ability to be the first to exploit the resources he found because he had the backing of royalty who had unlimited gold and influence to claim the place before their enemies did and get first dibs on all the goodies like treasure and slaves-none of the previous visitors in 1000’s of years had backing and resources like that, so they either just settled down to live here or left-although it appears the Vikings made a good run at claiming it...
Read Pohl’s “The Time Patrol”