I was just curious about who you thought discovered America or North America? I will answer after you post some of your answers.
Me. No, really. Or it could have been Zheng He, Muslim, eunuch and explorer extraordinaire. :m: Peace.
Crossing the Bering Strait 10,000-15,000 years ago, or 25,000-40,000 years ago, either towards the beginning or the end of the last Ice Age, depending on which group of scientists and archeologists you believe. There are ruins in Brazil that some archaeologists claim date 40,000 years ago, although it is not a widely supported claim. I would more likely suspect between 10,000-15,000 years ago.
I read the book 1421 in which it was shown (very effectively) that the Chinese have explored most of our world, and did make it to the coast of Brazil and the Western coast of America prior to Columbus. The Chinese didn’t stay long enough to make an impact because the Ming abandoned imperialism because they felt it wasn’t worth their time or effort (how wrong they were).
LONG BEFORE the white man set foot on American soil, the American Indians, or rather the Native Americans, had been living in America. When the Europeans came here, there were probably about 10 million Indians populating America north of present-day Mexico. And they had been living in America for quite some time. It is believed that the first Native Americans arrived during the last ice-age, approximately 20,000 - 30,000 years ago through a land-bridge across the Bering Sound, from northeastern Siberia into Alaska. The oldest documented Indian cultures in North America are Sandia (15000 BC), Clovis (12000 BC) and Folsom (8000 BC)... More about this at: http://clickit.go2net.com/search?po... tribes&rawto=http://www.nativeamericans.com/ So the real owners of this land we call America are the Native Americans but they hold little real estate from what they once had. Interesting that the white man has destroyed more since they arrived here than anyone else did for 30,000 years. A very sad legacy the white people are leaving, very sad.
It was us, the vikings who discovered it. Don't take that away from us Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Well we know that at L'anse aux Meadox in Labrador had the first European settlement in America by the Kikings circa. 1000, it lasted 8 years.
I don't think you can say the native Americans discovered America, since all they really did is migrate. Since this took thousands of years, I doubt they thought of it as a discovery of something new. It was Erik the Red who found Newfoundland. Or, in the south, if you believe Thor Heyerdahl, the polynesians. Very sad not to know the real history. The natives altered the landscape of America irreversably. There used to be many large animals that were hunted into extinction; the Wooly Mammoths, for example. Their hunting and farming practices did in fact alter the natural landscape, and they did destroy each other in wars, just like us. And while the natives did not build very much that lasted, the white man has created vast cities and infrastructure.
Very sad not to know the real history. Ditto, you seem to have a very North American centric view on the situation. There used to be many large animals that were hunted into extinction; the Wooly Mammoths, for example. Their hunting and farming practices did in fact alter the natural landscape, There is controversy as to what killed off those animals; many scientists are more inclined to believe it was the rapid temperature change that occurred in North America during the period. It is not feasible to believe that less then 5 million or so Natives would kill all these animals. There is no question that the “White man” has destroyed much more in terms of ecosystems, and animals then any other people on earth. And while the natives did not build very much that lasted, the white man has created vast cities and infrastructure. Ermm? http://www.uwsp.edu/forlang/dbreinin/fotos.htm Think again, we destroyed their capitals, and looted their cultures. They had megapolis’ long before any modern European culture. I suggest you learn about the natives more before such ignorance is uttered again.
The Indians had a fundamentally different culture, with totally different aims. As did the aborigines, the Maoris, all the indigenous peoples of the world perhaps. The western explorers saw savages, they missed that these people were far more free than many westerners, and had everything they needed with them.
I'm just saying, the idealistic view about Native Americans as being the peaceful "noble savage" and ecologically friendly earth worshippers is also nieve. Given guns, horses, and the industrial revolution, which they would have gotten eventually, they would have done the same things to America that we are doing.
That's really splitting hairs. I'd say that the first human to set foot on a piece of land is its discoverer and I believe that most people interpret the word that way. All the Europeans who followed in Columbus's wake were "migrating" too. Humans of the Old World with all the resources of pre-industrial civlization could not hunt elephants to extinction, and they really tried. Hunters in groups mounted on horses with primitive firearms barely made a dent in the elephant population. It's utterly implausible that a Mesolithic or early Neolithic people with no draft animals and armed with small flint weapons could have hunted the much larger (and presumably much meaner and much faster moving) woolly mammoth to extinction. That's a really gabacho-centric take on the history of the Western Hemisphere. The majority of this hemisphere's population (those who speak Spanish and know what a gabacho is) live south of the Rio Grande. They live in areas populated by the first wave of Asian immigrants, the Athabascans, who did indeed create great cities. They had reached the Bronze Age and were maybe 2,000 years behind us in technology. Not bad considering that we had a head start of tens of thousands of years at settling down in one spot and developing more modern cultures. We live north of the Rio Grande, in a region populated by the third wave of immigrants, the Eskimo-Aleuts, who have only been here for 4,000 years, the Na-Dene, the second wave who came over 2,000 years ahead of them, and the last stragglers of the original Athabascans who hadn't yet crowded themselves into needing civilization for survival. And yet they left evidence of having built villages large enough and sturdy enough to almost qualify as small cities -- the mound builders and the cliff dwellers. It was the civilized people of Central and South America whose farming practices changed the landscape. Trying to grow enough crops to feed the millions of people in the Aztec empire turned much of northern Mexico into a dust bowl. Their predecessors, the Maya, went so berserk about building temples and civic monuments that they cut down all the trees for hundreds of miles around, turning rain forest into land not quite suitable for subsistence farming. I'm not familiar with the excesses of the Incas. They did a few things right, like domesticating their large ungulates for food, fiber, and draft, (the camels of the New World: llamas, vicunas, guanacos, and alpacas; the native Americans and Canadians did not domesticate the reindeer of the New World: caribou, or the cattle of the New World: bison--the largest animal they got around to domesticating in this land of plenty was the turkey) so perhaps if the Spaniards hadn't come with their steel weapons and gunpowder the Incas would by now have entered the Iron Age. At any rate, it's wrong to say that the indigenous peoples of the New World did not create lasting structures. Central and South America are as much an archeologist's delight as the Middle East. We just happen to live in the one part of the New World that didn't participate in those civilizations.
How many times must this dead horse be brought out and beaten "The evil europeans or the evil white man" oh the shame we should feel. Yes it is very easy for us at this remove to look back judgementally at history and feel ourselves morally superior (though in some ways I am certain that can be questioned). I don't have a real problem with that but this incessant "evil white man" is just so tiring and such a small tip of the iceberg of human history it shows a somewhat naive understanding of human history. The history of mankind is one of flux, migration, removal, elimination or assimilation. There are NO peoples who have developed from apes into the places they are today. If you are just now learning this history then I apologize, it should be learned but so should a boatload of other things and yes it was regretable.
The chinese did in modern times apparently.Before the indiginous red indians, their was an influx from across the Bearing Strait. the red indians killed them all off .
I'm just saying, the idealistic view about Native Americans as being the peaceful "noble savage" and ecologically friendly earth worshippers is also nieve. Given guns, horses, and the industrial revolution, which they would have gotten eventually, they would have done the same things to America that we are doing. Of course it is naïve to believe that the Natives were living a utopic society, but they did live an ideologically better life then any European. Women had rights, property to religious, rights women in Euro could only dream of. They lived in a more democratic society then anyone in Europe at the time. It was the Europeans who started all the problems, they didn’t attack us first. If you look at the history of major contacts the natives were very respectful. The Aztecs knew that a white man, on a horse would destroy them, that was the myth. Oh how it became to be a vicious reality. They did have a admiration for nature that Europeans in their expansionist worldview simply did not. I think it is awfully naïve to believe that if they had guns, horses, and the industrial revolution, they would repeat the same idiocy that we did in our world. Their development would have been very different, and sadly we will never know how far their great civilizations would have gotten.
