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SkillfulGrasshopper3789

hello who discovered america before the indigenous?

Laurie C

Hi! Thank you very much for your question! Settlement in America is indeed a very complex issue!

As you may already know, the Earth has undergone significant temperature variations over the millennia. These variations had an impact on the territories and some submerged lands were able to rise to the surface when the water froze. What interests us today is the last ice age (around -18,000)!

• During this period, a land route, called Beringia, was created between Siberia and Alaska. This area was very fertile, which attracted large mammals such as mammoth and bison, and it also led several nomadic Asian tribes to take this route. In 8000 years, the tribes had dispersed on the continent of America and, over time, they adopted different lifestyles and cultures (that explains the diversity within the indigenous peoples !).
• Around the year 1000, the Vikings arrived on the territory. However, when we talk about the Vikings arriving on the continent, we do not speak of "colonization"  because they were not here for a long time and we do not have much information on their occupation.
• As your comrade mentioned, in 1492 Christopher Columbus arrived in the West Indies, thinking he was in India. Officially, he would have "discovered" Central and South America. His travel accounts then prompted other travelers, including Jean Cabot and Amerigo Vespucci, to come to America. This is the start of what we call the Great Explorations ! The first contact with the Indigenous people was made by the Basque, the Normans, the Bretons, the Portuguese and the English fishermen who came to the sea coasts in the region of Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, around 1500.

In short, the first "discovery" would have actually been made by the Asian tribes in Beringia several centuries BC! However, the Vikings would have been the first to come to the continent after the Indigenous. Christopher Columbus, for his part, was the first “great explorer” to set foot in America, making him a very important figure in European colonial history. :)

I hope I answered your question and encourage you to ask yourself many more of the same kind :)