Who discovered America?

Question

Was is Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, The Spanish, The Vikings or Norweigan, the Native Americans, the big game hunters who crossed the Bering Land Bridge, or someone else? I have heard many different opinions of who discovered America other than just Christopher Columbus, who do you think discovered America and why?

Answer 1

Dinosaurs!







g-day!

Answer 2

Obviously it depends on your perspective, as the other posters have noted, but lemonfire and Rachel do not know what they're talking about because Columbus did not come before The Vikings. Leif Erikkson most certainly 'discovered' America for the Europeans around the year 1000 AD, five hundred years before Columbus.

You ladies need to study some history and even go to L'Anse aux Meadows, the Viking settlement you can still see in Newfoundland.

However, yes, 'Native' American tribes crossed the Bering Land Bridge 10,000 years ago and existed here long before anyone else.

Answer 3

There's A LOT of debate on that. Who lived on the land first? Definitely the Native Americans. Which of the Europeans technically discovered the Americas? Christopher Colombus. But he thought it was India. (Christopher Colombus was working for the Spanish Ferdinand and Isabella, so they go together). Amerigo Vespucci actually figured out that it wasn't India. Hence, it is called "America". I don't know anything about the big game hunters who crossed the Bering Land Bridge and the Vikings and Norweigans definitely didn't discover America.

Answer 4

This is more of a question about the definition of "discovery" than it is about the populating of the americas. If, by discovery, you are asking the ethnocentric questions of when the continent became widely known among europeans, then there is some debate. Europeans may have settled in North America as early as the 10th century.
If you are asking who the first people to populate the americas were, you are asking for a seperate debate. Many feel that it was populated by asiatic men who crossed the Bering land bridge, others belive that it was populated much sooner (PBS has a great site on the peopling of the americas.)

Answer 5

Obviously whoever "discovered" the Americas was the first people to colonize it. No one knows for sure who that is. Presumably someone of East Asian origin who either crossed the Bering land bridge or more likely followed the kelp highway along the coastline in boats. These were the ancestors of modern Native Americans.

Columbus and others may have newly "discovered" it, because it was previously unknown to them, but they were not the first discoverers.

Answer 6

America was highly and diversly populated before the white man discovered it. There is no telling who was here first. In South America there are cave painting that appear to show people that have ******* characteristics. On the west coast some very old remains show Japanense characteristics. In the mid west Asian. All of these different races were here long before whites and are all discovers of America.

If you are talking about the first white people I belive it was Leif Erickson about 500 yrs before Columbus.

Also I recently saw a History Channel show that gave convincing evidence that a Chinese sailor had been to America very early on. I can't remember the dates but it is believed that some very old maps were copied from his orignals.

Answer 7

It wasn't Chris or Amerigo, and while the Vikings were here before them it wern't them either ( excuse the slaughter of the english language) nor was it what most call the "native americans" . While they would not appriciate the evidence getting out and try very hard to not let it get out because that would change their status queo, the facts are that yes there is plenty of evidence that the Indians of America while they did play a very large and important role in our history as a country and while they were here before most of our ancesters there is simply to much evidence that says they were not the first ones here. Not by a long shot. Even as recently as the early 1900 hundreds there were indian tribes claiming that there were people that were here before them. Not dark skinned people either. Two groups to be exact large giant like people one with red hair and the other with black. According to these Indians these two groups of people fought each other to extection. And physical evidence has been found to back up their story. It was given to the Simthsonian and has been lost.

A tablet in Brazil was found by a farmer in his feild that when transalated was from sematic people a group of early explorers to the New World for the old about the time of Christ.

Evidence has been found near the Rio Grande River in Texas that indicates that the Chinese were here long before the "Natives" maps in China have been found that when studied the closest place anywhere in the world they resemble is North America.

The Kenniwick man has caucasion features. It is yet to be detirmened who his decedents are or if he even has any living here in the Americas.
Just to name a few.
Don't take this as me trying to take from one and give to the other. My only intereste is to see that the evidence that is out there is really studied and gets the right to be studied. It is only fair that those bones get a chance to say what they can to us as well. Not covered up because it is not politically correct to let them speak because Indian forbid they may have a different story to tell.

Answer 8

No one discovered it. It was never missing. Columbus never set foot on this land. So hes out of the question.

There are findings to suggest that the Vikings were the earliest non-natives to step foot on this land. It's all theory...really.

Answer 9

Well, by definition Native Americans would have first occupied the land, and they entered via the Bering land bridge.

Answer 10

Christopher Columbus the others came later

Answer 11

The welsh.
Prince Madoc landed there long before Columbus - there are records of welsh speaking indians.