In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed in what is now the Bahamas, changing the world forever. But was he first non-indigenous person to reach the Americas? Vikings got there before him, and possibly Polynesians too…and those are just the sane theories.
Before we get started on this, I want to make one thing clear – this isn’t about who “discovered” the Americas. That, of course, happened somewhere between 13,000 and 40,000 years ago when human beings first traveled from northern Asia to the Americas, probably by boat
. It’s certain that indigenous people discovered America.
Here’s the question I want to consider: between the first wave of human settlement of the Americas all those thousands of years ago and the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492, how many other groups reached the Americas? And, for that matter, did any indigenous groups from the Americas ever travel to other continents? To those questions, science offers one easy answer, one shaky but decent possibility, a whole lot of racist claptrap, and even more crazy speculation based on the flimsiest of evidence. So let’s dive in, shall we?
