{"id":1794,"date":"2021-10-22T13:47:46","date_gmt":"2021-10-22T13:47:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/?p=1794"},"modified":"2021-10-22T13:47:46","modified_gmt":"2021-10-22T13:47:46","slug":"who-discovered-america-st-brendan-the-vikings-the-chinese-or-columbus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/2021\/10\/22\/who-discovered-america-st-brendan-the-vikings-the-chinese-or-columbus\/","title":{"rendered":"Who discovered America — St. Brendan, the Vikings, the Chinese, or Columbus?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve spent a little time listening to 1421: The Year China Discovered America<\/a> (which I’m not sure what to do with), and I think most of us have known for a long time that the Vikings were in Newfoundland a long time before Columbus. (See Vikings settled in North America in 1021AD, study says<\/a>.) <\/p>\n

Some even say that St. Brendan and a collection of Irish monks went to America in the 6th century. <\/p>\n

While those things are very interesting, I don’t think they diminish the significance of Christopher Columbus. <\/p>\n

Even if Brendan, the Chinese and the Vikings were all in America before Columbus, nothing of any significance happened afterwards, while lots and lots of significant stuff happened after Columbus. Crops were swapped between Africa, Europe and America. Various sorts of trade were established. There were permanent European settlements. <\/p>\n

The Vikings didn’t bring tobacco or coffee to Europe, or horses to America, or any number of other things that happened because of Columbus. <\/p>\n

Which all raises the question, what does it mean to “discover” a new land? What if some Pacific Islanders were swept down to Antarctica and died there. Did they “discover” it? <\/p>\n

Columbus was not the first non-native to set foot in the Americas, but it was his voyages that put America on the map. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve spent a little time listening to 1421: The Year China Discovered America (which I’m not sure what to do with), and I think most of us have known for a long time that the Vikings were in Newfoundland a long time before Columbus. (See Vikings settled in North America in 1021AD, study says.) Some … Continue reading “Who discovered America — St. Brendan, the Vikings, the Chinese, or Columbus?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1794"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1795,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1794\/revisions\/1795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}