I hope they are no longer teaching in schools the myth that Columbus discovered America. But, apparently, the Vikings didn't say long? https://www.nbcnews.com/science/sci...e-carbon-signs-vikings-north-america-rcna3383 Wood at a settlement in Canada's Newfoundland that was cut with metal tools helped researchers pinpoint when the Norse first reached the continent — well before Columbus. Scientists have known for many years that Vikings — a name given to the Norse by the English they raided — built a village at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland around the turn of the millennium. But a study published in Nature is the first to pinpoint the date of the Norse occupation. The explorers — up to 100 people, both women and men — felled trees to build the village and to repair their ships, and the new study fixes a date they were there by showing they cut down at least three trees in the year 1021 — at least 470 years before Christopher Columbus reached the Bahamas in 1492. “This is the first time the date has been scientifically established,” said archaeologist Margot Kuitems, a researcher at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and the study’s lead author. This is the study referenced above: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03972-8
No, these days in schools they are teaching that Columbus was a white racist, that we shouldn't celebrate him or his discovery, and that the "Natives" were there first.
You mean that we shouldn't teach them about Columbus, or we should teach that to children, but we should just wait a little longer before telling them that the guy they previously learned about in kindergarten was "not such a swell guy"?
The harsh reality of American history, the more gruesome parts, should be left to when children are older and more mature, whatever the truth may be. The Truth is important, but hard truths are not necessarily important for children.
It really is astonishing how far the Vikings got in what we see now as open, flimsy boats. With only one sail to move in front of the wind and oars to move against wind and tide, they must have been damned strong. Both Canada and the UK are against the prevailing winds which habitually blow from west to east. The trip from Northern Europe to the Eastern coast of Canada isn't that far really. They had places they could stop and fuel. Neither is the trip to Northern Britain (in fact a lot shorter) so I can only imagine they concentrated on the UK because it was easier to populate from their own homelands. Recent discoveries have revealed a very sophisticated settlement which covered half the principle UK island. They intermarried and DNA shows a high degree of Viking ancestry in current local populations...mostly north of course. Of course Columbus didn't "discover" America. It has been shown that the Beaker people from Siberia were the earliest known "residents" and crossed the Bering Strait by landbridge. They continued to follow the western coast and eventually settled in South America too, which is why the facial characteristics of Native American Indians, Central Americans and South Americans are so similar. Columbus though was the first to turn the "discovery" into a political and economic triumph. If you want to apply the current vernacular, he was a famous example of the triumph of Christianity over Islam . But a white racist? I don't recall him doing anything oppressive to the indigenous population. More like he offered them gifts and kept his head down.
Columbus discovered us and put our part of the world on the map which lead to establishing colonies, which lead to our founding as a nation, which is the REAL reason leftists demonize Columbus. Vikings had nothing to do with us, did nothing for us. They went back home and kept the their adventure a secret which DID NOT lead to our founding which is why leftists celebrate the Vikings and Demonize Columbus.
The Vikings were good sailors and skilled shipwrights but they wrote nothing down either about how to sail or to make ships. (at least not while they were doing so, though they did leave us records in later centuries, the exciting Sagas which enthrall us to this day). The Spanish and Portuguese built on and improved their designs to reinvent ships and the art of navigation in the 1300's. Columbus, an Italian, (Genoese) was the first to apply these innovations and to document the prevailing winds and currents which dominated the Atlantic Trade for the next three centuries. He was not the only one but was one of the greatest of what would become an Age of Exploration Before these innovations North and South America were like ghosts which only infrequently entered the consciousness of the Eurasian land mass and its peoples; sources of stories describing magical places and exotic peoples which still fill our literature. Since then humanity is one race which before that time had been becoming three for thousands of years. We have to go to Space to recapture the sense of wonder that age must have experienced every day.
The Columbus voyage was certainly the most consequential. As for who was first, that may not have been the Vikings. The Farfarers - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › The_Farfarers The Farfarers: Before the Norse is a non-fiction book by Farley Mowat, setting out a theory about pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact.
