Historia, filosofía-biografia-pensamiento

There is no end to the accounts of alleged discoveries of America before Columbus . Most of these are fables. It is, indeed, nearly certain that hardy Basque, Breton, and Norman fishermen, adventuring first far north, then west, had sighted Greenland and Labrador and become well acquainted with the rich fishing-grounds about Newfoundland and the Saint Lawrence Gulf. Many early charts of these regions, without dates and hitherto referred to Portuguese navigators of a time so late as 1500, are now thought to be the work of these earlier voyagers. They found the New World, but considered it a part of the Old. Important, too, is the story of supposed Norse sea-rovers hither, derived from certain Icelandic manuscripts of the fourteenth century. It is a pleasing narrative, that of Lief Ericson's sail in 1000-1001 to Helluland, Markland, and at last to Vineland, and of the subsequent tours by Thorwald Ericson in 1002, Thorfinn Karlsefne, 1007-1009, and of Helge and Finnborge in 1011, to...

The fleet sailed on August 3, 1492. By chance, Christopher Columbus found the best possible Atlantic route to the New World and the weather was good. Still, the voyage took weeks. Finally, on October 11, signs of land bécame apparent—branches with green leaves and flowers floating in the water. Very early on the morning of October 12, the lookout on the Pinta saw land. The grateful crew landed on a small island in the present-day Bahamas. Columbus named the island San Salvador (Holy Savior). Columbus stayed on the island for two days, meeting with its inhabitants, members of the peaceful Arawak-speaking Taino tribe. Not knowing where he was, and always assuming that he had reached the Indies, he called these people Indians. Columbus spent several days exploring the Bahamas, but the Taino told him about another much larger island named Colba (Cuba), and he set off for it, thinking it must be part of China or Japan. He landed on Cuba on October 28, 1492, and for the next month sailed...

During the 1470s and early 1480s, Christopher Columbus participated in several long voyages that took him as far as Iceland and Africa. Trade with Asia (then called the Indies) was very profitable at the time, and he began to formulate the idea that it would be faster and easier to travel to Asia by sailing westward from Europe, going across the Atlantic Ocean, than by traveling east, as was commonly done. Contrary to legend, all educated fifteenth-century Europeans knew that the earth was round, but no one had any idea about its size; most theories underestimated the size of the earth by about one-third. Most people also believed the earth was one huge landmass, consisting of Europe, Africa, and Asia, surrounded by water. It was not surprising that Columbus guessed incorrectly at the distances between continents. Naming his plan to reach Asia on a westward route “The Enterprise of the Indies,” Columbus tried unsuccessfully to persuade Portuguese king John II (1455–1495) to sup...

Man made his appearance on the western continent unnumbered ages ago, not unlikely before the close of the glacial period. It is possible that human life began in Asia and western North America sooner than on either shore of the Atlantic. Nothing wholly forbids the belief that America was even the cradle of the race, or one of several cradles, though most scientific writers prefer the view that our species came hither from Asia. De Nadaillac judges it probable that the ocean was thus crossed not at Behring Strait alone, but along a belt of equatorial islands as well. We may think of successive waves of such immigration--perhaps the easiest way to account for certain differences among American races. It is, at any rate, an error to speak of the primordial Americans as derived from any Asiatic stock at present existing or known to history. The old Americans had scarcely an Asiatic feature. Their habits and customs were emphatically peculiar to themselves. Those in which they agreed with ...