On what day did Christopher Columbus discover America? Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. The True Aims of Christopher Columbus

The continents known today as North and South America were discovered in prehistory. Before European explorers arrived in the Americas, tens of millions of indigenous people lived here. The lands of the Americas have been repeatedly "discovered" by peoples coming from different parts of the world over many generations, dating back to the Stone Age when a group of hunters first visited a land that was truly the unexplored New World.

It becomes curious why it is then believed that America was discovered by Christopher Columbus. In addition, other theories are widespread regarding who first discovered America: Irish monks (6th century), Vikings (10th century), sailors from China (15th century), etc.

The first settlers in America


Tribal Migration Route from Asia to North America

The first people to settle in America came there from Asia, probably about 15 thousand years ago. During the Pleistocene era, the melting ice sheets of the Laurentian and Cordilleran glaciers formed a narrow corridor and land bridge between Russia and Alaska. Land bridge between west coast Alaska and Siberia, known as the Bering Isthmus, opened due to falling ocean levels and connected the continents of Asia and North America.

Interesting fact: In place of the Bering Isthmus, the current Bering Strait was formed, separating Asia and North America. The strait was named after the Russian naval officer Vitus Bering, who crossed it in 1728.

The settlement of America by indigenous peoples

The ancient settlers of America - the Paleo-Indians - passed through the Bering Isthmus from Asia to America following the movement of large animals. These migrations occurred before the Laurentian and Cordilleran glaciers closed and closed the corridor. The settlement of America continued further by sea or by ice. After the ice plates melted and the Ice Age ended, the settlers who came to the Americas became isolated from other continents. Thus, the American continents were first discovered by nomadic Asian tribes about 15 thousand years ago, who initially settled North America, then spread to Central and South America and subsequently became the Native American peoples.

For the first time the idea of ​​crossing Atlantic Ocean, in order to find a direct and quick route to India, supposedly visited Columbus as early as 1474 as a result of correspondence with the Italian geographer Toscanelli. The navigator made the necessary calculations and decided that the easiest way would be to sail through Canary Islands. He believed that Japan was only about five thousand kilometers from them, and from the Land of the Rising Sun it would not be difficult to find a way to India.

But Columbus was able to fulfill his dream only a few years later; he repeatedly tried to interest the Spanish monarchs in this event, but his demands were recognized as excessive and expensive. And only in 1492, Queen Isabella gave for the trip and promised to make Columbus admiral and viceroy of all discovered lands, although she did not donate money for it. The navigator himself was poor, but his comrade-in-arms, the shipowner Pinson, gave his ships to Christopher.

Discovery of America

The first expedition, which began in August 1492, involved three ships - the famous Niña, Santa Maria and Pinta. In October, Columbus reached land and ashore on an island he named San Salvador. Confident that this was a poor part of China or some other undeveloped land, Columbus, however, was surprised by many things unknown to him - he saw tobacco, cotton clothing, and hammocks for the first time.

Local Indians told about the existence of the island of Cuba in the south, and Columbus went in search of it. During the expedition, Haiti and Tortuga were discovered. These lands were declared the property of the Spanish monarchs, and Fort La Navidad was created in Haiti. The navigator went back with plants and animals, gold and a group of natives, whom the Europeans called Indians, since no one had yet suspected the discovery of the New World. All lands found were considered part of Asia.

During the second expedition, Haiti, the Jardines de la Reina archipelago, Pinos Island, and Cuba were explored. For the third time, Columbus discovered the island of Trinidad, found the mouth of the Orinoco River and Margarita Island. The fourth voyage made it possible to explore the shores of Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, and Nicaragua. The route to India was never found, but South America was discovered. Columbus finally realized that a whole continent lay south of Cuba - a barrier to rich Asia. The Spanish navigator laid the foundation for exploration of the New World.

The most important event in the history of the great geographical discoveries, and world history in general, there was the discovery of America - an event as a result of which the inhabitants of Europe discovered two continents called the New World, or America.

The confusion begins with the names of the continents. There is strong evidence for the version that the lands of the New World were named after the Italian philanthropist Richard America from Bristol, who financed the transatlantic expedition of John Cabot in 1497. And the Florentine traveler Amerigo Vespucci, who visited the New World only in 1500 and after whom America is believed to have been named, took his nickname in honor of the already named continent.
In May 1497, Cabot reached the shores of Labrador, becoming the first recorded European to set foot on American soil, two years before Amerigo Vespucci. Cabot compiled a map of the coast of North America - from New England to Newfoundland. In the Bristol calendar for that year we read: “...on St. John the Baptist (June 24), the land of America was found by merchants from Bristol who arrived on a ship named “Matthew.”
Christopher Columbus is considered the official discoverer of the New World continents. Cristobal Colon (Christopher Columbus) knew how to draw maps, drive ships, and knew four languages. He was originally from Italy and came to Spain from Portugal. Having found a familiar monk in a monastery near the city of Palos, Columbus told him that he had decided to sail to Asia by a new sea route - along the Atlantic Ocean. He was allowed an audience with Queen Isabella, who, after his report, appointed a “scientific council” to discuss the project. The members of the council were mainly clergy. Columbus ardently defended his project. He referred to the evidence of ancient scientists about the sphericity of the Earth, to a copy of the map of the famous Italian astronomer Toscanelli, which depicted many islands in the Atlantic Ocean, and behind them the eastern shores of Asia. He convinced the learned monks that the legends spoke of a land beyond the ocean, from the shores of which sea currents sometimes bring tree trunks with traces of their processing by people.
The rulers of Spain nevertheless decided to conclude an agreement with Columbus, according to which, if successful, he would receive the title of admiral and viceroy of the lands he discovered, as well as a significant part of the profits from trade with the countries where he was able to visit.
On August 3, 1492, three ships set sail from the port of Paloe - Santa Maria, Pinta, Niña - with 90 participants. The ships' crews consisted mainly of convicted criminals. 33 days had already passed since the expedition left the Canary Islands, and still no land was visible. The team began to grumble. To calm her down, Columbus wrote down the distances traveled in the ship's log, deliberately understating them.
On October 12, 1492, sailors saw a dark strip of land on the horizon. It was small island with lush tropical vegetation. Tall people with dark skin lived here. The natives called their island Guanahani. Columbus named it San Salvador and declared it a possession of Spain. This name stuck with one of the Bahamas. Columbus was confident that he had reached Asia. Having visited other islands, he asked local residents everywhere whether this was Asia. But I didn’t hear anything consonant with this word. Columbus left some people on the island of Hispaniola, led by his brother, and sailed to Spain. To prove that he had discovered the route to Asia, Columbus took with him several Indians, feathers of unprecedented birds, some plants, including maize, potatoes and tobacco, as well as gold taken from the inhabitants of the islands. On March 15, 1493, he was greeted as a hero in Palos.
This was the first time Europeans visited the islands. Central America. As a result, the beginning was laid for the further discovery of unknown lands, their conquest and colonization.
In the 20th century, scientists drew attention to information that suggested that contacts between the Old World and the New occurred long before famous journey Columba.
In addition to the frankly fantastic hypotheses about the settlement of America by the “ten tribes of Israel”, as well as the Atlanteans, there is a number of serious scientific data that America was visited long before Columbus. Some researchers even argue that Indian culture was brought from outside, from the Old World - this direction of scientific thought is called diffusionism. The theory that American civilizations developed almost completely independently before 1492 is called isolationism and has more adherents in academic science.
Hypotheses about the Egyptians visiting America remain unconfirmed (an active supporter of the version of Egyptian voyages to America was famous traveler Thor Heyerdahl), as well as the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, representatives of Central African states, Chinese, Japanese and Celts.
But there is quite reliable data about the visit of America by the Polynesians, preserved in their legends; It is also known that the Chukchi established an exchange of fur and whalebone with the ancient population of the northwestern American coast, but it is impossible to establish the exact date of the beginning of these contacts.
Europeans visited the American continent during the Viking Age. Scandinavian contacts with the New World began around 1000 AD and presumably continued until the 14th century.
The name of the Scandinavian navigator and ruler of Greenland, Leif Eriksson the Happy, is associated with the discovery of the New World. This European visited North America five centuries before Columbus. His campaigns are known from the Icelandic sagas, preserved in such manuscripts as “The Saga of Eric the Red” and “The Saga of the Greenlanders.” Their authenticity was confirmed by archaeological discoveries of the 20th century.
Leif Eriksson was born in Iceland into the family of Erik the Red, who was expelled from Norway along with his entire family. Eric's family was forced to leave Iceland in 982, fearing blood feud, and settle in new colonies in Greenland. Leif Eriksson had two brothers, Thorvald and Thorstein, and one sister, Freydis. Leif was married to a woman named Thorgunna. They had one son, Torkell Leifsson.
Before his trip to America, Leif made a trading expedition to Norway. Here he was baptized by King Olaf Tryggvason of Norway, an ally of Prince Vladimir of Kyiv. Leif brought a Christian bishop to Greenland and baptized its inhabitants. His mother and many Greenlanders converted to Christianity, but his father, Erik the Red, remained a pagan. On the way back, Leif saved the shipwrecked Icelander Thorir, for which he received the nickname Leif the Happy.
Upon his return, he met a Norwegian named Bjarni Herjulfsson in Greenland, who said that he saw the outline of land in the west, far out to sea. Leif became interested in this story and decided to explore new lands.
Around the year 1000, Leif Eriksson and a crew of 35 sailed west on a ship purchased from Bjarni. They discovered three regions of the American coast: Helluland (presumably the Labrador Peninsula), Markland (probably Baffin Island) and Vinland, which received its name for the large number of grapevines growing there.
Presumably this was the coast of Newfoundland. Several settlements were founded there, where the Vikings stayed for the winter.
Upon returning to Greenland, Leif gave the ship to his brother Thorvald, who instead went to explore Vinland further. Torvald's expedition was unsuccessful: the Scandinavians clashed with the Skralings - North American Indians, and in this skirmish Torvald died. If you believe the Icelandic legends, according to which Erik and Leif did not make their trips at random, but based on the stories of eyewitnesses like Bjarni, who saw on the horizon unknown lands, then in a sense America was discovered even before the year 1000. However, it was Leif who was the first to make a full-fledged expedition along the shores of Vinland, gave it a name, landed on the shore and even tried to colonize it. Based on the stories of Leif and his people, which served as the basis for the Scandinavian “Saga of Eric the Red” and “Saga of the Greenlanders,” the first maps of Vinland were compiled.
This information, preserved by the Icelandic sagas, was confirmed in 1960, when archaeological evidence of an early Viking settlement was discovered in the town of L'Anse aux Meadows on the island of Newfoundland. Currently, the exploration of the territory of North America by the Vikings long before the voyages of Columbus is considered a definitively proven fact. Scientists have reached a consensus that the Vikings were indeed the first Europeans to discover North America, but the exact location of their settlement is still a matter of scientific dispute. At first, the Vikings did not distinguish between exploring lands and
population in Greenland and Vinland, on the one hand, and Iceland, on the other. The feeling of another world appeared to them only after meeting with local tribes, which were significantly different from the Irish monks in Iceland. For more than 11,000 years before this, the continent was already inhabited by numerous indigenous peoples, the American Indians.
The Saga of Eric the Red and the Saga of the Greenlanders were written approximately 250 years after the colonization of Greenland and suggest that there were several attempts to establish a settlement in Vinland, but none lasted more than two years. There may be several reasons why the Vikings abandoned settlements, including disagreements among the male colonists regarding the few women accompanying the voyage and armed skirmishes with local residents, which the Vikings called skralings - both of these factors are indicated in written sources.
Until the 19th century, historians viewed the idea of ​​Viking settlements in North America solely in the context of the national folklore of the Scandinavian peoples. The first scientific theory appeared in 1837 thanks to the Danish historian and antiquarian Karl Christian Rafn. In his book American Antiquities, Rafn conducted a comprehensive examination of the sagas and explored possible sites on the American coast, as a result of which he concluded that the country of Vinland, discovered by the Vikings, really existed.
There is disagreement among historians regarding the geographical location of Vinland. Rafn and Erik Wahlgren believed that Vinland was located somewhere in New
England. And in the 1960s, a Viking settlement was discovered through excavations in Newfoundland, and some scientists think that this was the site chosen by Leif. Others still believe that Vinland must be further south, and the discovered settlement refers to a hitherto unknown, later attempt by the Vikings to settle in America.
History continues to lift the veil of its secrets. Scientists have yet to verify the likelihood and timing of earlier contacts with the American continent by immigrants from the Old World.

In what century Columbus discovered America, you will learn from this article.

In what century was America discovered?

The year marked by the discovery of America is rightfully considered a turning point in the life of all of Europe. The appearance of a new continent on the world map inspired people to undertake sea expeditions in order to explore and develop new territories. The most significant was the navigation of Columbus, who, while looking for ways to India, stumbled upon previously unknown lands. But in what century America was discovered to the whole world, we will tell you right now.

America was discovered in the 15th century.

Who discovered North America?

The discovery of North America belongs to a Norwegian with Icelandic roots - Leif Erikson. Presumably he was born in Iceland. But Erikson really wanted to go into the service of the Christian king of Norway Olav Tryggvason and moved to new country. Engaged in sea expeditions, he reached Greenland. Here he met Bjarni Herjolfson, a navigator who discovered unknown lands to the west of Greenland, but he did not land on them. Leif Erikson bought a ship from a navigator and decided to go to new lands in order to explore them. According to the prevailing saga of the Greenlanders, Leif and 15 of his sailors reached the rock-covered land. This is an island now called Baffin Island. It is located between Greenland and Canada. The next stop was land with forests and sandy beaches. It is believed that it was a Labrador. Not stopping there, the Norwegians continued their voyage and stopped in modern Newfoundland, building a village here for the winter.
The exact date it was opened North America, No. Researchers agree that it was discovered at the beginning of the 11th century, based on the date and chronology of Erikson’s life - 970-1020.

Who discovered South America?

Until the end of the 15th century, Europeans knew about the existence of only three continents - Europe, Africa and Asia. They had no idea about America at all, despite the fact that the continent was inhabited by peoples and tribes.
The first who tried to discover India by the southern route (and we all know that he discovered America) was the navigator Christopher Columbus. The discoverer was born into a weaver's family in Italy. Knew how to compose geographic Maps, studied the works of scientists and notes of sailors. He was sure that our planet was spherical and wanted to make a voyage to prove this.

Having moved to Spain, Christopher Columbus spent 8 years seeking the king’s consent to an expedition across the Atlantic Ocean in order to find sea routes to India. The Spanish king agreed and appointed the persistent navigator as ruler of the lands he discovered.
In 1492, 3 caravels on board with a crew of 90 people set off. The long voyage led to the fact that the sailors began to demand the commander to turn the ships home. But Columbus's faith was strong. After 70 days, land was finally visible in the distance. They were the big ones Antilles. Next was the island of Trinidad, near the coast South America. Continuing his journey south to the mainland, Columbus discovered the islands of Haiti and Cuba. Thus, in 1492, South America was opened to the world.

The question of who discovered America does not usually raise many questions. But bad luck - when? Previously, for example, I simply assumed that it was somewhere in the middle of the last millennium. It's a shame... Of course, you need to know such things. This is what I will discuss in this story. :)

When America was discovered

The discovery of America by Europeans can be considered literally the most significant event in history. After all, after that, people rushed to the new continent great amount Europeans, resulting in trade success for many years. After all, there were many useful things on this continent natural resources.

And now some numbers - 1492. This year is the official year of the discovery of America. And this great event happened completely by accident, because Christopher Columbus was going to get to India this way. He studied geography almost all his life and was going to find a western route to India; he believed that it could be much shorter than the eastern one.

Few people know, but this was not the end of Columbus’s travels and discoveries. Since 1493, he led several more expeditions, during which many nearby islands were discovered, for example.

However, at that time it was not yet clear where the sailors ended up. There were versions that this is it east coast India. Some claimed it was . And only Amerigo Vespucci, having explored the coast of Brazil, came to a clear conclusion - this is a new continent. It was in his honor that this continent was named, although it was not he who discovered it.


I have prepared a small selection interesting facts about the discovery of America:

  • Few people know that Columbus barely managed to get permission to travel across the ocean. He decided to organize an expedition back in 1485.
  • On the ships of Columbus's expedition there were not sailors, but all sorts of rabble. Ordinary sailors and residents of Spain did not want to go on a journey across the ocean; no one knew how it would turn out. Columbus had to recruit a team from criminals in prison.

  • Columbus had three small ships, which will go on a trip across the ocean was a real suicide. But Columbus apparently drank champagne, as they say. :)

 

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