Can Discoveries Happen Twice?

“One of the great themes of historical literature over the past five centuries has been the assessment of the European discovery of the Americas as one of the two greatest events in human history.” (2). A similar, better-known pronouncement was penned by Francisco Lopez de Gomara, Hernan Cortes’s private secretary

     Throughout all of our years that we are taught about world history, we are led to believe that Columbus was one of the greatest explorers of all time. In my mind there is no question about whether Christopher Columbus discovered America; of course he did, its Columbus! However, this is a highly debated issue and through writings by authors Jeffery Hart and James W. Loewen we will investigate the true importance of Columbus.

Thomas King’s chapter “Forget Columbus” surrounds the idea that the preconceived notions that Americans have about their own history, and the Native Americans who have resided here for centuries, are wrong. Columbus never discovered America. The

This concept of discovery was not new. Europeans thought they had the right to claim their discovery. They thought of the new world as a wilderness waiting to be tamed, but this land as not empty. It was home to countless American-Indian people, who hunted, farmed and raised children on the land. These native residents disagreed, they viewed the land is theirs. From the beginning,

When Columbus sailed to prove that the world was round, according to the website Livescience.com, he was late by two-thousand years. Ancient Greek mathematicians already have already proved that the world was round and not flat. Also according to this website, Columbus’s education was self taught and he believed that Europe was wider, and that Japan was further away from China’s coast. These are the reasons that he was going to try and find shorter trade route to Asia. When a student hears Columbus’ name they may instantly think that he was the first person to discover America. Although there were millions of Native Americans who were living in the New World, Columbus is the man who is getting all of the credit for finding the New World. There were also other travelers who had discovered America before Christopher Columbus.

I believe that the Vikings were in fact the first to discover America. The key word is “Discover” for the native Americans did not discover America, they just lived there. Also the Vikings were not very creative and named things very obviously, so why would they call the new land Newfound Land, if it was inhabited by people, it wouldn’t be new. The only reason that they don’t get credit for it is because of the things they did like attacking England. They were disliked by just about all countries, so why give them credit for discovering America?

Even though Columbus was not the first person to step foot in the America’s, he was the first person, from the Eastern Hemisphere, to discover it. For example, when we discover a new species on an island, we may not have known that it existed, but the other living creatures there knew that it did. While Rebecca Dobbs in Document B is right that the Americas were not empty by any stretch of imagination and people lived there and knew about this part of the world, others did not know about it. However, in a letter to Queen Isabelle, Columbus states that they have landed on an island and the people there

When columbus first found the Americas little did he or anyone in this case know everything that would happen in the next few years he would rewrite history and change it to how we know it now.

To start, Royal’s first points out that America was not “discovered” by Columbus as was taught in grade school, it was filled with thriving Native American tribes. As he wrote, “Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of different indigenous groups lived here at the time of Columbus 's arrival, and historians estimate the total population of the Americas at somewhere between 20 million and 100 million” (Royal 44). This population counts indicates a high-level society, in order for this many people to survive. This disproves many people’s incorrect

-The Americas were not discovered. They were not discovered because people/ the natives already lived there. They say that the Americas were discovered because they were not known to the Europeans until they were trying to get to Asia and got to the Americas instead. The Europeans then conquered the Americas.

The Europeans were originally unaware that the Americas even existed. Explorers had accidentally landed on North America centuries before the discovery of the New World. Christian Crusaders played an important role in the indirect discovery; they wanted to have the goods that they had no previous knowledge of.

The U.S history goes far back yet we been honoring the wrong man for this discovery. Every year we thank Columbus for what he did in 1492, but do you know what really happened on those month/ years Columbus spent in North America. Columbus only murdered Millions and only was in the “Discovery” game was just for gold. The real person we should thank is Leif Erikson A Viking who rightfully claimed the land in the early 1000ands. Leif Erickson was a Viking from Greenland and sailed to many places and accidentally landing in North America. Leif Erickson spent the winter their building a base for his expedition after the winter he traveled back to Green land Never to return. He named this new world Vineland due to its excessive Grapevines. After

Most history textbooks take Christopher Columbus and put him on a pedestal. These textbooks make Columbus the fantastic hero who was the first person to discover the Americas. These textbooks were wrong in idolizing Columbus. One text called The Lies my Teacher Told Me contradicts these textbooks. The text states that there were already many different groups of people that landed in, explored, or colonized the Americas. The first group of people was the ancestors to the Native Americans that were living there when Columbus came in 1492. Also the Norse established a colony in Greenland for 500 years (Loewen, 8). While there, the Norse explored parts of North America (Loewen, 8). This evidence proves that Columbus was not the first person to discover the Americas. Columbus began the demise of the current Indian cultures in the area. While Christopher Columbus and the

Whenever you hear about the European Exploration, or ‘The Age of Discovery’’ you hear a lot about what the Europeans gained from it, while they did learn a lot from this and gather a lot of new resources they were not the only ones affected. The Age of Discovery affected more areas that just Europe, it also affected the Americas and Africa. To prove this we must first know what European Exploration is.

The Americas were conquered not discovered. Although Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas, the continent was already inhabited by its indigenous people. Once Europe realized