columbus Didn’t discover America-Here’s Who Did
New discoveries and revised past understanding confirm that numerous groups reached the Americas long before Christopher Columbus‘s famed 1492 voyage. While Columbus’s arrival marked a pivotal moment in transatlantic exchange, the narrative of him “discovering” America overlooks centuries of prior habitation and exploration by Indigenous peoples and other groups.
For generations, Columbus has been credited with the discovery of the Americas. However, archaeological evidence and historical records demonstrate that people arrived in North and South America thousands of years before his ships made landfall in the Caribbean. These early arrivals include the ancestors of today’s Indigenous populations, and also potential visitors from Europe and Asia.
Columbus himself consistently believed he had reached Asia, despite landing on a new continent. “He’d staked his reputation on the expectation that he would reach Asia,” Ida Altman, a professor emerita of history at the University of Florida, explained. “This was why people invested in his voyages and that made it difficult [for him] to back down.” His position was financially motivated, as Spain had promised him grand titles and a share of the wealth from Asian trade, contingent on finding a new route to Asia.
Later in life, Columbus’s views appeared to evolve.”His position was not entirely consistent, and in some of his later writings, he referred to the Americas as a kind of ‘paradise’ that he had found, implying that it was a new region for Europeans,” noted Anna Suranyi, a history professor at Endicott College in Massachusetts.
Regardless of Columbus’s personal beliefs, his voyages initiated a period of immense global change. The arrival of Europeans led to the devastating decimation of Indigenous populations through disease and ultimately, the colonization of North and South America, reshaping the continents and leading to the formation of new nations.
