The History of America
During his voyage on the Santa Maria, Christopher Columbus is credited with discovering America in 1492. People lived here before he set foot on what he called the New World. In the 9th to 11th centuries, the Vikings were Scandinavian seafaring fighters who evaded places in Europe where they colonized. North America was one of the areas they raided and established homes in. The Vikings inhabited America before Christopher Columbus discovered it, as documented and supported evidence suggests. Following their exploration of America, the Vikings, also known as Norsemen, established Norse settlements.
According to archeologists, an old Viking town in Newfoundland dates back almost 1,000 years, according to an excavation conducted in the 1960s. In 980 AD, Lief Erikson, a Viking and Norse explorer, discovered the first European village in North America, called Greenland. It is the earliest evidence that Vikings were in North America that they named the village L'Anse aux Meadows. Currently, Greenland is an independent Danish territory in North America. Since the Vikings wanted to take advantage of the natural resources in Greenland such as timber and animal hides, their civilization was considered temporary and short-lived.
Considering this evidence, it appears the Vikings were a medieval Greenlandic civilization that imported timber from North America, so they came to this land to hunt for resources. Furthermore, archeologists performed a microscopic and radiocarbon analysis of the lumbar utilized by the Vikings from Greenland that came to North America more than 700 years ago. This study proved that Vikings made contact with the area long before Christopher Columbus discovered the New World in 1492.
Since the Vikings had already been here, the New World was not a novel discovery. Despite evidence showing that the exploration of this territory predates Christopher Columbus, the real history of America's discovery goes beyond his time. Nevertheless, he is one of the most well-known explorers given a holiday name which is celebrated each year in the United States. This evidence should cause people to reevaluate who discovered America. Do the Vikings or Columbus deserve credit for discovering the New World?
According to the final proof, Native Americans had roamed the land for tens of thousands of years before the Vikings arrived. As ancestors of Siberian hunter-gatherers who crossed the Bering Strait to reach North America, Native Americans were the first to live in this region. The Native Americans discovered and inhabited America first, not Christopher Columbus or the Vikings. As the Vikings migrated into America, they encountered indigenous people and fought over natural resources. It has been shown through radiocarbon dating that these Native American tribes were on the land over 6,000 years ago, while the Vikings occupied the region more than 470 years before Christopher Columbus arrived.
