The Discovery of America

Christopher Columbus and the discovery of America

Americans
day
get
aoff
workon
October
10
celebrate
to Columbus
Day
It's
an
annual
. holiday
that
commemorates
the
day
on
October
12,
1492,
when
the
Italian
explorer Christopher Columbus officially set foot in the Americas, and claimed the land for
Spain. It has been a national holiday in the United States since 1937.

It is commonly said that "Columbus discovered America." It would be more accurate,

perhaps, to say that he introduced the Americas to Western Europe during his four voyages
to the region between 1492 and 1502. It's also safe to say that he paved the way for the
massive influx of western Europeans that would ultimately form several new nations
including the United States, Canada and Mexico.

But to say he "discovered" America is a bit of a misnomer because there were plenty
of people already there when he arrived. Furthermore, Columbus did not even know that he
Reached a new land.

The first map of the world to show these newly discovered lands across the Atlantic
Ocean appeared in 1507, a year after Christopher Columbus's death. The mapmaker, Martin
Waldseemüller, named the New World "America," after the Italian Amerigo Vespucci, who
had explored the coastline of South America and was the first to realize that it was a
separate continent, not part of Asia.

And before Columbus?

In fact, the first “explorers” came from Asia. They walked across the Bering land
bridge that back in the day connected what is now the U.S. state of Alaska and Siberia
(Russia). Fifteen-thousand years ago, ocean levels were much lower and the land between
the continents was hundreds of kilometers wide.

According to the U.S. National Park Service, "the land bridge played a vital role in the
spread of plant and animal life between the continents. Many species of animals - the woolly
mammoth, scimitar cat, Arctic camel, brown bear, moose, and horse — to name a few —

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moved from one continent to the other across the Bering land bridge. Birds, fish, and marine
mammals established migration patterns that continue to this day."

And archaeologists say that humans followed, in a never-ending hunt for food, water
and shelter. Once there, humans dispersed all across North and eventually Central and South
America.

Up until the 1970s, these first Americans had a name: the Clovis peoples. They get
their name from an ancient settlement discovered near Clovis, New Mexico, dated to over
11,000 years ago. And DNA suggests they are the direct ancestors of nearly 80 percent of all
indigenous people in the Americas.

The Vikings in America

More than 500 years before the birth of Christopher Columbus, a band of European
sailors left their homeland behind and sailed westward. The leader of the expedition, Leaf
Eriksson, is said to have heard about a strange land to the west and decided to explore it.
The Vikings spent an entire winter there and benefited from the milder weather compared to their
homeland. They explored the surrounding region abounding with lush meadows, rivers teeming with
salmon, and wild grapes so suitable for wine that Eriksson called the region Vinland (Winland).

Archaeologists have unearthed evidence that supports this theory. In 1960, Norwegian
explorer Helge Ingstad scoured the eastern coasts of Canada for signs of a possible Viking settlement,
and he found it on the northernmost tip of Newfoundland at L’Anse aux Meadows. An international
team of archaeologists that included Ingstad’s wife, discovered artifacts of Viking origin dating from
around A.D. 1000, and the remains of the Norse village are now part of a UNESCO World Heritage
site.

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