If Columbus did not discover America, who would have?

Answer 1

I presume that you are referring to the re-discovery of the Americas by Europeans in the 15th century. My guess that it would be a toss-up between John Cabot and Pedro Álvares Cabral. Cabot discovered Newfoundland in 1497, while Cabral wound up in Brazil in 1500, by accident I must add. I think that Cabot was influenced by Columbus's voyage, but Cabral was trying to get to India by Vasco da Gama's route, so I'll lean towards Cabral.

Answer 2

Columbus was not actually the first foreigner to "discover" America. The Vikings "discovered" it a long time before Columbus did, though they did not stay. Now, if neither the Vikings nor Columbus hadn't discovered it, then probabaly either the British, the Spanish (who actually hired Columbus) or the Dutch would have, I suppose. These nations had the best means and navy to do trading and would have probably ended up by mistake in America, like Columbus.

Answer 3

I'd say the Spanish already discovered it since they were in both North and South America before Columbus. After all it's a proven fact that some archaic buildings in Europe were decorated with flower and leaf designs of plants found only in the America's before Columbus "discovered" it. Besides, might as well say the Spanish did since Native Americans will never get any credit.

P.S. Do people still think Columbus was really looking for India? Come on! No one could be that far off the map unless it was intentional! :)

Answer 4

Actually, Columbus did not "discover" America....he ended up in the West Indies. In his first journey, Columbus visited San Salvador in the Bahamas (which he was convinced was Japan), Cuba (which he thought was China) and Haiti (where he found gold)!! Oh...and to clarify one more thing, it was pretty much accepted by Columbus' time that the world was ROUND...they had GLOBES! So he did NOT sail to "prove the world was round..." On May 20, 1506, Columbus died in Valladolid, fairly wealthy from the gold his men had accumulated in Hispaniola. He was still convinced that his journeys had been along the east coast of Asia (India).

Read "The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus" it is a collection of his log books and journals.

Leif Erikson & the Vikings were most likely, the first europeans to discover, what is now, North America.

There are some theories that the Chenese "discovered" America. There is a book called 1421: The year China discovered America. It explores this possibility.

Answer 5

It was discovered by the Vikings about 4 centuries before Columbus, and the Chinese in the early 1400's. And Columbus didn't really discover America, he discovered Hispaniola which is somewhere down around the Dominican Republic.

Answer 6

Columbus, technically, did not discover what is known today as "America."

In fact, the Asian tribes that crossed the Alusian Islands (thousands of years before Europeans landed) and migrated to South, Central, and North America 'discovered' what is known as the 'Americas'. They would be considered the 'natives' although they probably were not native to these lands - which makes them the 'discoverers', wouldn't you say?

The first recorded European 'discovery' of the Americas was that of Nordic/Scandanavian tribes who'd crossed the Atlantic and stumbled upon Greenland, the Eastern Canadian coast, and what we know now as Newfoundland and Maine. They abandoned their make-shift quarters hundreds of years before Columbus made it to the Bahama Islands.

Answer 7

The second of three sons of Erik the Red, and the first European coloniser of Greenland, little is known of Leif Erikson's early years. However, he reputedly sailed from Greenland to Norway in 1000, where he was converted to Christianity by King Olaf I. The following year, Erikson was commissioned by Olaf to promote Christianity to the Greenland settlers.

What happened next remains unclear. Some think that he sailed off course and landed in North America at a region he called Vinland (possibly Nova Scotia). However, according to the more reliable Groenlendinga saga, Erikson learned of Vinland from the Icelander Bjarni Herjulfsson, who had been there 14 years earlier. Herjulfsson, driven far off course by a fierce storm between Iceland and Greenland, had reported sighting hilly, heavily forested land far to the west. Herjulfsson, though possibly the first European to see North America, never landed.

There is quite compelling evidence that the Chinese explorers sent by the Emperor Zhu Di landed in both the West Indies and mainland America in 1421. You'll need to read "1421 The Year China Discovered the World" by Gavin Menzies for full details.

Answer 8

Actually the American Indian had already discovered it before Columbus got here!

Answer 9

Before the European colonization of the Americas, a process that began at the end of the 15th century, the present-day continental U.S. was inhabited exclusively by Native Americans and Alaska Natives, who arrived on the continent over a period that may have begun 35,000 years ago and may have ended as recently as 11,000 years ago.The first confirmed European landing in the present-day United States was by a Spaniard, Juan Ponce de Leon, who landed in 1513 in Florida, and as part of his claim, the first European settlement was established by Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles on the site of a Timucuan Indian village in 1565 at St. Augustine, Florida. The first successful English settlement was at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, followed in 1620 by the Pilgrims' landing at Plymouth, Massachusetts. In 1609 and 1617, respectively, the Dutch settled in part of what became New York and New Jersey. In 1638, the Swedes founded New Sweden, in part of what became Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania after passing through Dutch hands

Answer 10

The only thing that Columbus discovered is that he was lost!

(He was looking for a shorter route to India)