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My knowledge is sketchy of the time period, but I know of Columbus's journey it was thought to be dangerous. I know that Portuguese explorers such as Dias and de Gama were making it to India via Africa and that some fishermen said that there was some land out to the west without mapping it. But were there any explorers who attempted to cross the Atlantic pre-Columbus but failed?
My knowledge is sketchy of the time period, but I know of Columbus's journey it was thought to be dangerous. I know that Portuguese explorers such as Dias and de Gama were making it to India via Africa and that some fishermen said that there was some land out to the west without mapping it. But were there any explorers who attempted to cross the Atlantic pre-Columbus but failed?
Failed ones not that I would know of but others who made it.
There are the vikings Leif Ericson in Greenland and North america but they didnt fail.
And there is that karthagan group that travelled to south america they also did not fail.
There is supposedly some DNA evidence to that.
Also some Japanese seem to have made it to southamericas pacific coast.
Ditto by DNA evidence.
There are also Giovanni Caboto, Didrik Pining and João Vaz Corte-Real if you want to dive deeper into the subject.
I cant remember where I saw this but it was some TV documentary.
It was not unfounded but obviously something you could not just easily "prove".
They mentioned some southamerican tribes that should never had access to foreign (AKA euopean probably neanderthal or denisova genes) DNA in their history but they still contain some.
I cant remember where I saw this but it was some TV documentary.
It was not unfounded but obviously something you could not just easily "prove".
They mentioned some southamerican tribes that should never had access to foreign (AKA euopean probably neanderthal or denisova genes) DNA in their history but they still contain some.
You really shouldn't take the word of documentaries on fringe claims. At least the second claim about Japanese had a published paper from good journal backing it, even if the implications had since been refuted (in the paper I linked above).
Neanderthal/Denisovan link does not sound like it makes much sense here. Neanderthal ancestry is present in all non-African (North Africans have back migrated from West Asia) populations, while Denisovan ancestry is associated with Eastern Eurasia.
Alonso Sánchez de Huelva, a legendary "pre-Columbus" discover. Nobody is sure if he did actually exist, if he was a 15th century urban legend, or an attempt to attack Columbus "heh, he was not so special".
There are many portuguese explorers that went to the west, and most of them survived.
Diogo Teive for example in the returning trip discovered the Corvo and Flores islands of Azores.
Actually Columbus' voyage was pretty safe and easy, it's almost a straight line, the portuguese explorers after say the 1460s were pretty confortably with open sea voyages and those were the easiest.
Some claim that in the Fra Mauro map of the 1440s, the sea to the west that is called Mar de Baga ("Sea of Berry") is actually the Sargassum sea with the "berries" being the knobs in the sargassum seaweed.
D. Brites, the wife of Prince Ferdinand, Duke of Viseu, was kinda the regent of her son Diogo Master of the Order of Christ after Ferdinand died, and she had the atlantic islands as her "domain", and she did send or allow several voyages to the west.
We know very little and specially after the 1470s the secrecy of the portuguese explorations went over the top as Prince John (future John II) took over the Discoveries "folder".
Even Bartolomeu Dias' voyage is known a little more than a footnote because of this, and this one was a really long and dangerous voyage not only because of the distance but also because he was forced to be close to the coast to check ou the african coastline.
With the generally accepted (and quite correct) distance from Spain westwards to Asia, Columbus voyage was suicidal. He only believed it possible due to some serious mistakes in his research. The Americas existing was a lucky stroke that saved him from disaster.
With scholars quite aware of the distance involved and the idea of there only being three continents viewed almost as religious dogma, it isn’t surprising that few tried to cross the Atlantic.
With the generally accepted (and quite correct) distance from Spain westwards to Asia, Columbus voyage was suicidal. He only believed it possible due to some serious mistakes in his research. The Americas existing was a lucky stroke that saved him from disaster.
With scholars quite aware of the distance involved and the idea of there only being three continents viewed almost as religious dogma, it isn’t surprising that few tried to cross the Atlantic.
