if people can travel across the atlantic solo with crude boats now, why wasn't america discovered earlier?

Question

Think of it..people have crossed the Atlantic in crude Kon-tiki like canoe -ish replicas, so whay did it take huge spanish galleons do make the discovery?
Do you think ancient romans made the trip? Considering they had
advanced technology, and they found Roman coins buried on the east coast.....don't you think that a disdinct possibility?
Also, some say that ancient Celtic tribes from Ireland made it
to America? Some say they did around 600AD, and that there was an Indian tribe they formed that the colonialists encountered, with red hair, which could only have come from the european landmass.................................................
so, was Columbus just the last in a long line of european discoverors(I didn't even mention the norsemen, which would be another whole book, though they ebat Columbus by almost 400
years(1100-ish)

I stand corrected..the Vikings were already in what is present day Canada about 1000AD.....this is before they were Christianized, so strangely enough, they believed in Thor and Odin when they came over here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings

Let's not forget that it was the asiatic "Indians" that crossed the land bridge that truly discovered America....

Or I could go farther and say it was the
first large mammals that crossed the land bridge before the first Indians that "discovered" America.....or go even farther and say it was the first dinosaurs that crossed "Whatever" when the tectonic plates and landmasses were totally different than they are today that discovered
America...don't forget, if the large mammals didn't "discover" america at the same time and slightly before the indians.
like the siberian wooly mammoths, they would have had nothing to eat and hunt, so hurray for the wooly mammoths

shawn, very good points, and sorry for my digressions......I also think that Pre-Columbus, discoveries were just random accidents..remember....no astrolabes
or latitutude or longitude maps.......actually the first modern world maps were lat and long grids of oceans for future travellers to find that same gold or the same indians
to expropriate as slaves.....so beforehand it was just hit or miss.....so you can define Columbus as the first MODERN discovererer, with an elaborated grid pattern and instruments to mark his territory for future exploitation and expropriation for all those lovely kings and popes....

Batman, Amerigo just had good PR.......
and I think we could all use his "agent"....
I wonder if it was Simon Crowell.....
Well, at least the country Columbia was named after Columbus, as well as a few
cities and islands...........

Answer 1

I was taught in elementary school that Columbus discovered the Americas. Then I was taught that he was not the first European to reach the Americas. Columbus was the first to claim the Americas for another country. That is why he gets the credit. I was in elementary school 50 years ago so what you are saying is nothing new.

Answer 2

As you seem to have several questions within one paragraph, I will try to answer what I think might be the main question-Why wasn't America discovered earlier?.
As humans our ability to travel far distances was never in question in the earlier times. Think of yourself growing up and think of a bubble. On your first day of school the fear you had was akin to the first travelers of the globe. As small steps were taken and safety reached, the further they went the next time around.
You have stated that you did not want to get into the Norseman, but alas you might want to look up Newfoundland, Canada to find out landings and approximate dates of a North American landing very pre Columbus if you are curious.

Answer 3

As far as I'm concerned, you would say that no matter when it was discovered. I mean think about it, if the Enperor Nero had stopped killing Christians to sail across the Atlantic in the first century AD, you would still be here asking "Why didn't anyone get this far before Nero, after all they had boats?" So the real question is "When did they first make boats?" or maybe "Why weren't boats invented earlier?"

Answer 4

My response was going to be... Christopher Columbus was NOT the first dude to "find" America... the Vikings were here centuries before him and they came in glorified canoes. Plus you've got your Pacific Islanders that claim to have made it here around the same time in their canoes...

Regardless, anyone who made it was either scalped or assimliated by the Injuns!!

Answer 5

Seems like you answered your own question. Better yet; heres a question for you:
If all of these people made it to this continent before, why is it named after Amerigo Vespucci?
This man came even after Columbus, his frist trip was 1499.
How did he get both north and south america named after him....?

Answer 6

they were not that couragus in those days