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Maps Suggest Marco Polo May Have "Discovered" America
An anonymous reader writes in with news about maps attributed to Marco Polo that seem to show the coast of Alaska. "For a guy who claimed to spend 17 years in China as a confidant of Kublai Khan, Marco Polo left a surprisingly skimpy paper trail. No Asian sources mention the footloose Italian. The only record of his 13th-century odyssey through the Far East is the hot air of his own Travels, which was actually an "as told to" penned by a writer of romances. But a set of 14 parchments, now collected and exhaustively studied for the first time, give us a raft of new stories about Polo's journeys and something notably missing from his own account: maps. If genuine, the maps would show that Polo recorded the shape of the Alaskan coast—and the strait separating it from Asia—four centuries before Vitus Bering, the Danish explorer long considered the first European to do so. Perhaps more important, they suggest Polo was aware of the New World two centuries before Columbus."
...he built the first American Swimming pool. You can guess where this is going.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
There has been much research suggesting Marco Polo was a liar. a quick Google search showed this site: http://website.lineone.net/~mc... Many scholars believe that he may have just traveled to India and talked to travelers from China. They point out that Marco Polo never pointed out major inventions like paper, that were unseen in Europe but common in China.
I am not sure how any European can claim to be the first to discover America when the continent was populated by humans for thousands of years.
A guy who is reported as traveling in China in fact was getting into America 200 years before a guy who bumped into America when trying to reach India using a shortcut which in fact was much longer.
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So the Italians win the latest round, the North American Discovery trophy moves back to Italy.
Nope that trophy still belong to the Norsemen. (If we are going to continue to insist on not counting the native Americans, that is). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
While the Vikings were in North America first and had a few tangles with the Skrælings, Columbus was the first to enslave the indigenous inhabitants, forcibly convert them and use them to extract precious metals. Because Columbus was serving the centralized Spanish state with its missionary zeal and interest in mining, not a small group of Norse freeholders who just wanted to be left alone and farm, his visit marks the start of catastrophic social upheaval in the Americas, and so it's understandable that he remains so prominent a figure.
If the journey were reversed, Columbus would have discovered the Azores. The first exploration by Europeans [who recorded their discovery] of continental North America in 1497 was led by John Cabot. He was always thought of as the discoverer of America until the early C19th (why would a bunch of British immigrants credit a Spaniard?).
Then came the War of 1814, burning of the White House, etc. and a wave of anti-British sentiment. Suddenly, the US's founding father became good ol' Christopher.
Columbus' travel was about the circumfence of the Earth. While most scholars in the 15th century estimated the circumfence to be about 26,000 miles, quite close to reality, Columbus was convinced it was only 15,000, making a travel westward to India to seem actually feasible and shorter than the Portuguese way around the Cape of Good Hope.
It's "Discovery by a civilized man", so Norsemen mustn't count.
Essentially, to discover a continent you apparently need:
1 - To be white.
2 - A cup of tea. (ideally, with biscuits)
3 - A towel.
I'd say being able to spread the knowledge of your discovery is an important part of that discovery. After the Vikings reached America, one tribe knew about the discovery and it was subsequently forgotten. After Columbus discovered America, this knowledge spread throughout Europe.
Oblig. Eddie Izzard clip... no flag, no country!
The first English monarch postdates Jesus by about 9 centuries. There was no "English King of that era".
The Knights Templar started about 11 centuries after Jesus, and they were French.
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Poloshopped
Table-ized A.I.
> Columbus was the first to enslave the indigenous inhabitants
I believe that many of the native inhabitants practiced that well before he got here.
Yep, life in the Americas was a Bunny Life. The next tribe over the hill enslaved your women and killed your warriors in a spirit of love an harmony. The Aztecs were a hippie culture which cherished medicinal "herbs" and sang Kum-by-Ya by the firelight in the evenings before going off to make free love.
If you checked back, it, slavery, was even practiced though out the world. From the earliest writings, slaves were counted. It's not an European, white man thing. But mentioned in the creation of earth by the Assyrians. Later the eqyptians had slaves in their writings. Same with the Greeks and the Chinese. Don't forget the writings of the slave ships on how the people were obtained. They were bought from slave traders, from their native lands. Not excusing it, or condoning it, but its part of earths history.
Actually, there is strong evidence that the Native Americans discovered America.