There have been many historical stories about America since its existence. While the answers to some of these stories are obvious, others can be quite confusing. Since the history of the country is very deep-rooted, it carries many different historical events and stories with it to the present day. Although the issue of who found America among these historical events is highly debated, it still carries its own mystery behind it.
So, we did a detailed research on who discovered America in order to clarify this mystery and to reduce the question marks that remain in our minds even if we can’t. Now that we have simply explained the foreword of the subject, we can now return to the question of ‘who discovered America’.
The historical story known to everyone:
The answer to who discovered America is really a veil of secrets. So much so that although there are many claims and debates on this subject, many of them fall and still continue to be discussed among those who do not. But the biggest known and accepted claim is that Christopher Columbus discovered America. The fact that it is launched in this way even in the schools of foreign countries makes this claim quite rooted. So was Columbus really the first explorer or was there anyone who set foot on American soil long before him?
One of the most accepted claims is that Christopher Columbus discovered America before other Europeans with his discovery in 1942. Contrary to this, modern researchers claim that the discovery predates Columbus, although there is not much that has been conclusively proven. One of the most well-known claims is about a group of Icelandic explorers. It is claimed that this group, led by Leaf Erikson, discovered America exactly 500 years before Columbus.
Of course, there are many claims that Erikson was not the first to make this discovery, just as there are claims that Erikson made the discovery before Columbus. Researchers who have an idea on this subject reveal that many people from the continents of Asia and Africa set foot on the lands of America before both Erikson and Columbus. Among these assumptions, there are even people from Ice Age Europe, but things progressed a little differently because the conditions of that time were not very suitable for exploration and naming continents, or because the plans were not in that direction.
Other theories about the discovery of America:
In the 19th century, when Catholicism was widespread, a Catholic organization called the Knights of Columbus wanted to reward Columbus for his achievements . This circumstance, which formalized Columbus’s discovery of America by Columbus, marked the start of the national Columbus day, as well as the appearance of Columbus as a catholic hero. Perhaps this is one of the biggest factors that kept Leaf Erikson back in the race.
Although it is one of the known facts that Erikson was the first person to reach the continent, we have mentioned that there are also those who claim the opposite. Among these claims, there is a fleet of the Chinese state. According to the famous historian Gravin Manzies, a Chinese fleet led by Admiral Zhang He reached and discovered American territory in 1421. As proof, he showed a map from 1418. While Manzies has put forward a very strong theory with this evidence, this theory is still unproven and continues to be debated.
Another known open-ended theory is that of the Irish monk St. About Brenden’s discovery. Around 500 AD St. Brenden embarked on a journey to North America in an unsuitable, presumably primitive ship in the conditions of the time. Of course, although such a theory exists, the only thing that supports this theory is a book from the 9th century.
Who really discovered America?
When European explorers arrived in the New World as it was known in history, they realized that many people had set foot on these lands before and even lived there. This proved that there was someone who had made this discovery before them. But America had to be discovered somehow.
The Bering land bridge played a major role in the last ice age. Connecting present-day Alaska to present-day Russia, this bridge was a very important road used for transportation in its time, even though it is still under water today. The Bering Bridge, which functioned from 30,000 years ago to 16,000 years ago, during this long period of time, naturally allows many people who are curious to use this bridge. It is not known exactly when the first humans to make the crossing crossed, but it is among the closest estimates made between 20,000 and 25,000 years ago.
The effects of archaeological excavations are also very large in information about discovery. Archaeological evidence for the discovery of the Americas shows that humans arrived in the Yukon (North America) 14,000 years ago. In fact, even though information is suggested to prove that people may have lived there 24,000 years ago in caves discovered in the Yukon, this information about the discovery of America was far from being established.
The discovery of America is really such an enigmatic situation that even the Americans who were first believed in their time are quite different from today. The first Americans, known as the Clovis people until the 1970s, were a people named after an 11,000-year-old settlement near New Mexico. Although later information proves that the Clovis people were not the first American people, many researchers still believe that the Clovis people played a major role in the discovery of America. Even this situation just mentioned proves that others set foot before Columbus.
Before Columbus discovered America, there were many nomadic tribes living in light land according to the myths. Studies on this subject in the last decade indicate that the first humans on American soil lived in highly complex and organized societies.
Columbus did not learn that he had discovered America in one of his many expeditions, and instead thought that he had reached an island off the coast of India. This wrong way of thinking caused him not to be able to recognize the continent and naturally not to give its name. 5 years after Columbus’s discovery, the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who was exploring on behalf of Spain, realized that this continent, unlike Columbus, was not India and was a completely separate continent. Of course, upon such a discovery, Amerigo Vespucci named the continent after himself.
The explorer who gave America its name: Amerigo Vespucci
One of the brilliant explorers of his time, Vespucci, between 1497 and 1504, in the Age of Discovery on behalf of both Spain and Portugal He participated in two expeditions. In 1503 and 1505 pamphlets were published under Vespucci’s name containing accounts and descriptions of the discoveries mentioned and other discoveries made by Vespucci. While historians were generally skeptical of the accuracy of these pamphlets, Vespucci’s reputation was greatly enhanced because the books were so popular.
During an expedition in 1501, Vespucci noticed something, or at least claimed to have noticed it. During the Portuguese expedition, it was one of his biggest claims that Brazil was part of a new continent for Europeans and he named this continent the ‘New World’. This idea gave the cartographer Martin Waldseemüller recognition for his achievements by applying Vespucci’s form of “America” in 1507 to a map showing the New World for the first time. Other cartographers did the same, and in 1532 the name America was officially affixed to the newly discovered continents. It is not known whether Vespucci was aware of these awards.
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