Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The story of Bjarni Herjolfsson comes from the Graenlendinga Saga. As the story goes, he was sailing to Greenland to visit his parents when his ship was blown off course and he wound up having to head east to get to Greenland. During the course of this, he sighted land to the west. That was said to have given rise to Leif (his cousin, I believe) sailing that direction to find what Bjarni had seen. I think Leif gets more credit because he explored the land whereas Bjarni headed east to Greenland as soon as he found that he was off course.
The only discoverer of America, proven and attested, was Colombus.
The rest, Phoenicians, Romans, etc, pure speculation.
The presence of Vikings on the ground at L'anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, circa 1000, is undisputed. Numerous man-made artifacts were found there, including worked iron and structures of carpentry.
Furthermore, any statement about the "discovery of America" must arbitrarily assign Greenland to the Old World, when in fact Greenland is so close to Canada's northern islands, one can actually see across.
The process of the discovery of America actually began with the Faeroe Islands, where St. Brendan introduced sheep and oats in the 6th century, for none of the additional steps required a sailing voyage any further than that. Sailors could have easily taken those additinal steps, and almost certainly did.
You can write a Enciclopedia with hoaxes related with this subject.
For example, the Phoenician settlement in Recife, Brazil, etc, etc.
The myth of Quetzalcoatl....
For me, the myth of Quetzalcoatl is far more interesting.
That can be carried to the absurd. Would one dispute the presence of Mecca, because no Christian has seen it in recent centuries, and Muslims (as everyone knows) cannot be trusted for historical accuracy?
If the Norsemen had carved a single letter of the Roman Alphabet into a log, would that constitute "serious historical evidence"? What is the "serious historical evidence" that early men were ever on Eastar Island? Is that in dispute?
Muslims can be trusted for historical accuracy.
Most of Western Classical Culture comes from their translations into Arabic, retranslated by monks in Spain, France and Italy.
In fact, their descriptions and narrations from the VIII and IX and X Century are extremely precise and scientific.
I understand the definitiion of "historical" as a written record, which distinguishes it from pre-historic. However, if men from a literate culture leave unmistakable signs of their presence, it is splitting hairs to say that there is no "historical" record merely because those who left signs were illiterate individuals.
If we can know nothing "historical" about the Norsemen in Newfoundland, then we can know nothing nistorical about the Norsemen in Norway, either.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
