The Vinland Map

     In the essay written by Jeffrey Hart entitled, “Discovering Columbus”, he argues strongly that, in fact, Columbus did discover America. He starts off by describing Columbus as “a genuine titan, a hero of history and of the human spirit.” He goes on to say

“In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” One of the first things we learned in primary school was that Christopher Columbus discovered America. But they also made us read Christopher 's Journals (1493) such as “ They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks ' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned... . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane... . They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.” where he described how they met the “Taino indigenous peoples of Hispaniola.” However we as students never questioned how is that Columbus “discovered” America while in his journals (1493) he states that he encountered with peoples that lived there before he arrived , even though it wasn 't really America. Discover is define as “ to obtain sight or knowledge of for the first time.” There are many evidences that validates that Columbus did not discover America;One, is the inaccuracy in his studies, they believed and studied that Earth was flat and smaller than it actually was, while “

According to Loewen they got his name right, and not much else. Lies points out that there were many groups of explorers that had "discovered" America before Columbus. He probably used some of their information as a basis for his plans to sail west. A full eight pages are devoted to other possible explorers. These groups include ancient groups from Indonesia, Japan, China, and Phoenicia. More recent groups include the Vikings, British Islanders, West Africans, and Portuguese fishermen. There are varying levels of evidence connecting these groups to pre-Columbian America, but still enough to throw doubt into the mix. Columbus got the credit because of the way in which Europe responded to his "discovery."

12 October 1492- Columbus arrives in the Americas- Christopher Columbus had the support of King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I. Columbus set sail in April of 1492. It took him nearly six months for him to touch land. Although Columbus was not the first to actually discover the Americas, he has been given that credit despite there being evidence that Vikings actually discovered the Americas around 1000 AD. “Icelandic legends called sagas recounted Eriksson’s exploits in the New World around A.D. 1000. These Norse stories were spread by word of mouth before becoming recorded in the 12th and 13th centuries.” (History.com/Vikings) The significance of Columbus coming to America over the Vikings is that following the voyage of Columbus, is when settlers really began to start traveling to the Americas and “a new phase of civilization began.” (Reference.com)

Norwegians are credited with being the first Europeans to discover North America. Live Eriksson cam to America in A.D. 1000, which was nearly five centuries before Columbus. The Norwegian immigration to America began in 1825 in which several dozen Norwegians left Stavanger headed for America on the sloop Restauration,

In Ted Binnema’s “How does a Map Mean?” the author describes how maps are used as a way of understanding how a particular society functions. In Old Swan’s map, it is evident that it was done by groups of individuals and not just one particular person given there are places on the map that Old Swan was unaware of. Therefore, maps are a portrayal of an entire community’s knowledge of their land and not just one individual. Given this, it appears that it is not about what a map means but how it is used to establish meaning for those who wrote it. Each map is created in a different way and it is useless to try to understand it without first placing ourselves in the mindset of the cartographer(s) who wrote it. Furthermore, some indigenous maps are created using many others and to completely appreciate them, it is best to assume that they were created to be understood by the people at the time and hence, this can be why they seem puzzling to modern readers. For instance, in trying to understand Fidler’s map, because Arrowsmith was completely consumed with modern cartography, he was unable to decipher the cartographic style of Old Swan’s map (which Fidler based his maps on as well as others (five maps total) ).

People tend to say that “Colombus discovered America in 1492” but , they never gave credit to the people that was there first. A lot of Native Americans was living on the land first. A lot of vikings visited the lands first. Christopher Colombus just came and took over everything. Christopher

Columbus was an illustrious hero in America history books since most people didn't know the truth. But as time goes and people begin to read, they realized that he was the person who discovered America. He set sail on a dangerous journey across the Atlantic Ocean with three ships: the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. His crew almost called a revolution, but then land was spotted in 1492

Columbus gets a lot of credit for "discovering" land that already had people living on it, a land that has already been encountered by other people way before Columbus was even born. In 70,000 to 12,000 B.C. Siberia explorers sailed to Alaska. In 10,000-600 B.C., Siberians also went to Canada and the state we now call New Mexico. A little more recently the Vikings in 1000-1350 came from Greenland and Iceland. They traveled to Labrado, Baffin Land, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Cape Cod and further south. Around 1311 and 1460 explorers from West Africa came across to Haiti, Panama, and Brazil (Loewen 48). These were only a few of the many encounters of the Americas. A result of these explorations was the establishment of Indian villages and the life they began to lead.

If you ask Americans, who discovered America? they will tell you it was Christopher Columbus. However, the history books were wrong. Christopher Columbus was an explorer navigator. He is most famous for sailing across the Atlantic Ocean and claiming parts of America for the Spanish empire in 1492. Columbus initiated the colonization of the new world. However, Columbus was not the first to discover America. According to other historians there were many other explores that discover the continent. If Columbus did not discover the new world who did? America was named after an Italian explorer named Amerigo Vesovcci. Vesovcci demonstrated in 1502 that Brazil did not represent what Columbus believed to be Asia. Because of his discovery the continent

In 1491: New Revelations of The Americas Before Columbus, Charles C. Mann attempts to rewrite the traditional narrative of the America’s before the arrival of the Europeans. By focusing on the mistakes of other writings, and creating a new concept of the New World, as well as explaining the life of Puritans in New England, and human intervention in landscapes, Mann does an impressive job at creating a readable, factual account of what life before Columbus was really like.

Historical evidence has proven that the Vikings found the Americas almost 500 years before Christopher Columbus was given credit for the discovery of the New World. Archaeologist and amateur historians came across a thousand-year-old Viking way station about 52 years ago in present day Canada. They used this finding to further their research for Viking traces. Archaeologist Patricia Sutherland has been searching for evidence on this theory of Vikings being present in the Americas for quite some time now. Her research first arose back in 1999 when she became intrigued

Secondly, Christopher Columbus was not the first one to find America. Technically, the vikings were the first group of

The age old question of who discovered America first has been debated over for uncountable years now. Throughout history, innumerable people have been given the credit as being the first to arrive, or discover, America over the time span of hundreds of years. A few theories of who discovered America are Leaf Erikson, Native Americans, China, and surprises Muslims. All of these people, nation, or group of religion, have been justified or thought of to have arrived, lived, or landed in America before Christopher Columbus even thought about sailing.

Leif Erickson was the son of Eric the Red, Eric the Red was an explorer that became a leader of a colony in Greenland, the colony that Eric the Red owned was later handed over to his son Leif. Leif Erickson was born in Iceland in the year 980, after Leif was born he was moved to Greenland with his father Eric the Red and some of his brothers. Later in his life around 1000 A.D., about 500 years before Christopher's voyage, Leif set out to discover new lands. Trying to follow Bjarnes tracks Leif Erickson led his Vikings over the Atlantic Ocean to the new land. Leif Erickson had drifted by the wind way out of course and spotted a flat wooded coastline far westward, this was the new world. When Leif got to this new land he founded a place named Vinland, he called it that because of all the grape vines the Vikings found there. It was later named America, after an Italian named Amerigo Vespucci. After a few years the colony in Vinland was abandoned after hostile attack by the native people along with the fact that it got too cold. The settlers moved across the land until their population numbered 3,000. But in the 1400s the climate changed dramatically for the worse and the settlement had disappeared within a few decades. Leif Erickson had opened a new land rich with resources for the Vikings to explore, but for some reason, the Vikings only