Who Was First And Was It Flat or Round?

This table provides a chronological list of expeditions that may have reached the Americas before Columbus, with comments on the quality of the evidence for each as of 1994.

YEAR FROM TO QUALITY OF EVIDENCE
70,000? B.C. -- 12,000? B.C. Siberia Alaska High; the survivors peopled the Americas
6000? B.C. -- 1500? B.C. Indonesia South America (or the other direction) Moderate; similarities in blowguns, papermaking, etc.
5000? B.C. Japan Ecuador Moderate; similar pottery, fishing techniques
10,000 B.C. -- 600? B.C. Siberia Canada, New Mexico High; Navajos and Crees resemble each other culturally, differ from other Native Americans
9000 B.C. -- to present Siberia Alaska High; continuing contact by Inuits across the Bering Sea
1000 B.C. China Central America Low; Chines legend; cultural similarities
1000 B.C. -- 300 A.D. Afro-Phoenicia Central America Moderate; Negroid and Caucasoid likenesses in sculpture and ceramics, Arab history, etc.
500 B.C. Phoenicia, Celtic Britian New England, perhaps elsewhere Low; megaliths, possible similarities in script and language
600 A.D. Ireland, via Iceland Newfoundland? West Indies? Low; legends of St. Brendan, written c. 850 A.D., confirmed by Norse sagas
1000 -- 1350? Greenland, Iceland Labroador, Baffin Land, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, possibly Cape Cod and farther south High; oral sagas, confirmed by archaeology on Newfoundland
1311? -- 1460? West Africa Haiti, Panama, possibly Brazil Moderate; Portugese sources in West Africa, Columbus on Haiti, Balboa in Panama
c. 1460 Portugal Newfoundland? Brazil? Low; inference from Portuguese sources and actions
1375? -- 1491 Basque Spain Newfoundland coast Low; cryptic historical sources
1481 -- 1491 Bristol, England Newfoundland coast Low; cryptic historical sources
October 1492 Spain Caribbean, including Haiti High; historical sources

Flat or Round?

To make a better myth, American culture has perpetuated the idea that Columbus was boldly forging ahead while everyone else, even his own crew, imagined the world was flat. "The superstitious sailors . . . grew increasingly mutinous," according to The American Pageant, because they were "fearful of sailing over the edge of the world." In truth, few people on both sides of the Atlantic believed in 1492 that the world was flat. Most Europeans and Native Americans knew the world to be round. It looks round. It casts a circular shadow on the moon. sailors see its roundness when ships disappear over the horizon, hull first, then sails.

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