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bafangoolNJ t1_ixi68a1 wrote

Reply to comment by ImThatAnnoyingGuy in Researchers in Galicia open 15th-century tomb to test Columbus link theory. Explorer is generally believed to have been born in Italy in 1451 but some argue he was in fact born in Spain by ArtOak

Did he really discover it if a) we were already here? And B) the first Europeans to arrive were Vikings.

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SeleucusNikator1 t1_ixiskf9 wrote

> Did he really discover it if a) we were already here? And B) the first Europeans to arrive were Vikings.

"Discover" can also mean discovering it for the Eurasian and African worlds, and I'd say he did discover it because the Vikings never shared their information with anyone and their voyages had no lasting impact outside of the very small area they were present in.

Norse Vinland is an interesting bit of history, but ultimately it did not matter much to the world since the colony quickly died out and the Norsemen did not establish any sustainable and long-lasting trade route or maintained contact with that land. Columbus is the famous one because he went back, told everyone what he found, and his voyage is what began the actual centuries only process of settlement, conquest, etc. which changed both continents forever.

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bafangoolNJ t1_ixit7kg wrote

Thanks for the perspective.

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ElHeim t1_ixvgzjd wrote

For additional perspective, there's also been the claim that a famous Chinese captain "discovered" the New World some 70 years earlier.

But it's all irrelevant for the same reason: the Chinese were about to get totally focused on themselves, they didn't share the discovery. Actually, if it happened, they actively suppressed all knowledge of it.

No further contact, no spreading of the knowledge = no impact.

It's like when you invent some new device. if you sit on it and someone else creates the same thing, then patents it, they get all the credit.

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RegumRegis t1_ixiey1b wrote

Yeah. He was the one to you know, actually bother to record what he was doing and spread the information.

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