The Seven Times People Discovered America and How They Got There

Nicholas R. Longrich, University of Bath

When Columbus landed in 1492, the Americas had been inhabited for tens of thousands of years. He was not the first person to discover the continent. On the contrary, his discovery was the last of many discoveries.

In all, people have encountered the Americas at least seven different times. For at least six of them, it wasn’t so new after all. The discoverers came by sea and by land, bringing new genes, new languages, new technologies. Some stayed, explored and built empires. Others went home, leaving little indication that they had ever been there.

From last to first, here is the story of how we discovered the Americas.

7. Christopher Columbus: 1492 CE

In 1492, Europeans could reach Asia by silk road or sailing the Cape Route around the southern tip of Africa. Sailing to western Europe was considered impossible.

The ancient Greeks accurately calculated that the circumference of the Earth was 40,000 km , which placed Asia far to the west. But Columbus failed in his calculations. An error in unit conversion gave it a circumference of only 30,000 km.

This error, along with other assumptions born of illusions, gave a distance of only 4,500km from Europe to Japan. The actual distance is nearly 20,000 kilometers.

Thus, Columbus’ ships sailed without sufficient supplies to reach Asia. Fortunately for him, he made it to the Americas. Columbus, thinking he had found the East Indies, called his people “Indians,” or Indians. He eventually died without realizing his mistake. It was the navigator Amerigo Vespucci who realized that Columbus found an unknown land and in 1507 the name America was applied in honor of Vespucci.

6. Polynesians: 1200 CE

Around 2500 BC, a maritime people departed from taiwan to find new lands. They sailed south through the Philippines, east through Melanesia and then into the vast South Pacific. This city, the Polynesians They were master navigators, reading the wind, waves and stars to traverse thousands of miles of open sea.

Using huge double canoes, the Polynesians settled in Samoa, Fiji, Tonga and the Cook Islands. some were south to new zealand becoming the maori . Others headed east to Tahiti, Hawaii, Easter Island and the Marquesas. From here, they eventually reached South America. So, having explored most of the Pacific, they abandoned exploration and forgot about South America altogether.

But the evidence of this remarkable journey remained. The South Americans acquired Polynesian chickens while the Polynesians may have collected south american sweet potato . And they shared more than food. Eastern Polynesians have native american DNA . Polynesians not only met Native Americans, they also intermarried with them.

5. Nordics: 1021 CE

According to the Viking sagas, around the year 980 CE, Eric the Red a fierce Viking and a shrewd salesman, named a vast frozen wasteland “Greenland” to attract people to move there . Then, in the year 986 d. C., a ship from Greenland sighted the coast of Canada .

Around from the year 1021 AD Erik’s son Leif established a settlement in Newfoundland. The Vikings struggled with the harsh weather, before war with Native Americans finally forced them to return to Greenland. These stories were long dismissed as myth, until the 1960s, when archaeologists unearthed the remains of Viking settlements in Newfoundland .

4. Inuit: 900 CE

Just before the Vikings, the Inuit traveled from Siberia to Alaska on leather boats. Hunting whales and seals, living in earthen huts and igloos, they were well-adapted to the cold Arctic Ocean and bordered its shores as far as Greenland.

Interestingly, your DNA is the Closest to Alaska Natives implying that their ancestors colonized Asia from Alaska, then returned to discover the Americas again.

3. Aleutian Eskimo: 2000-2500 BC

The Inuit descend from an earlier migration: that of the speakers of the Eskimo-Aleutian languages . These are distinct from other Native American languages, and may even be distant from Uralic languages ​​such as Finnish and Hungarian .

This, with DNA evidence, suggests that the Aleutian Eskimos were a distinct migration. they crossed the sea Bering from present-day Russia to Alaska, perhaps 4000-4500 years, partly by displacing and mixing with previous immigrants: the Na-Dene people.

2. Na-Dene: 3000-8000 BC

Another group, the Na-Dene, crossed the Bering Sea to Alaska a few years ago. 5,000 years although other studies suggest that they settled in the Americas a long time ago 10,000 years .

The DNA of your bones does not link them to the modern peoples of the Eskimo-Aleut group, but to Native Americans who speak the Na-Dene language family, such as the navajo , dene , Tlingit and apache. The Na-Dene languages ​​are the closest to the languages ​​that are they speak in siberia again suggesting that they represent a distinct migration.

1. First Americans: 16,000-35,000 years ago

Almost all Native American tribes (Sioux, Comanche, Iroquois, Cherokee, Aztec, Maya, Quechua, Yanomani and dozens more) speak similar languages . This suggests that their languages ​​evolved from a common ancestral language, spoken by a single tribe that entered the Americas long ago. The low genetic diversity of their descendants suggests that this founding tribe was small, perhaps less than 80 people .

How did they get there? Before the end of the last ice age, 11,700 years ago, there was so much water locked in glaciers that the sea level has dropped. The bottom of the Bering Sea dried up, creating the Bering Land Bridge . The first inhabitants of the United States have just walked from Russia to Alaska. But the timing of their migration is controversial.

Archaeologists once thought that the Clovis city that lived 13,000 years ago they were America’s first settlers . But the evidence now I suggest that humans arrived in the Americas much earlier.

discoveries in Washington , Oregon , Texas The east coast of us . USA. s Florida they suggest that people arrived in the Americas long before the Clovis people.

Footprints in New Mexico They date back 23,000 years. stone tools in a Mexican cave can date back 32,000 years. ONE slaughtered mammoth of Colorado dates to 31,000-38,000 years ago. And traces of fire they lay humans in alaska 32,000 years ago.

Some of these dates may be wrong, but with each new discovery it seems increasingly unlikely that they are all wrong.

An early migration would perfectly solve a big mystery. 13,000 years ago, a vast glacier, the laurent ice cap buried Canada in ice up to three kilometers thick. If people arrived in North America, then how did they cross the ice? Southeast Alaska’s rugged coastline, full of glaciers and fjords, was likely impassable, and early Americans likely lacked ships. But 30,000 years ago, the ice sheet was not fully formed.

Before the ice spread, people may have hunted mammoths and horses east of Alaska to the Northwest Territories, then south through Alberta and Saskatchewan to Montana. Surprisingly, humans may have colonized the Americas before western europe . However, this might make sense. Alaska’s Arctic is tough, but Europe Potentially hostile Neanderthals .

the end of discovery

1492 was the last discovery of the Americas. After the voyages of Columbus, Magellan and Cook, the scattered descendants of humanity’s diaspora were finally reunited. In addition to some uncontacted tribes , everyone knew everywhere. Discovery was impossible.

But the history of the colonization of the Americas is still being written and our understanding is evolving. The Aleutian Eskimos may have been two different migrations , nobody. the genes suggest the possibility from other founding populations. And given what little evidence the Polynesians and Norsemen have left of their visits, it is conceivable that there were other migrations, for which we have little evidence.

There is so much we don’t know. No one else can discover the Americas, but much remains to be discovered about their discovery.

Nicholas R. LongrichSenior Professor in Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Bath

This article was originally published on The conversation under a Creative Commons license. read the Original article.