Original subtitles

the Colombian discovery of the Americas

was one of the most important and

revolutionary events in the history of

humanity on a single day October 12 1492

the size of the world doubled and

Christopher Columbus the leader of this

expedition went down in history both

famous and infamous as the man who

discovered America this historic event

should be recognized as the catalyst

which saw our world changed forever for

better or for worse that being said it

may not have been the true first time

humans from the old world sailed across

the ocean and it's actually well known

that Columbus wasn't the first European

to reach the Americas at all the Vikings

had already colonized Iceland and

Greenland roughly a millennium ago by

the Year 950 seee by 999 ze Leif Ericson

is known to have left Norway on his way

to convert Greenland to Christianity and

was blown off-course and as a result

found a new landmass which he eventually

came back to explore making it as far

down as New Brunswick in Canada the

settlements he built here were only

temporary and after trade with the

natives turned up unsuccessful Ericson

returned it to Greenland unaware of the

scope of his discovery evidence for this

voyage include the ruins of Viking

settlements at the lonzell meadows as

well as historical accounts of the

journey this by most definitions is the

only definitively proven contact between

the old and the new world prior to the

voyage of Columbus but that doesn't mean

there isn't some evidence that points

towards earlier discovery events

sticking with European exploration there

are some that believe the Romans could

have made it to the Americas thousands

of years ago as it stands currently we

have evidence that the Romans made it as

far as the Canary Islands off the coast

of Africa which are still over 4000

kilometers away from the nearest portion

of mainland America most potential

evidence that Romans made this nearly

4,000 kilometer voyage comes from

objects found throughout the new world

which resemble the craftsmanship of the

Romans more than any other Native

American style perhaps the most popular

example is the taxi colleagues they walk

ahead or however you say it I can't

pretend I actually know the artifact in

question was discovered in a burial

offering dated from between 1476 before

Columbus and 1510 after Columbus the

Terracotta head shows what many consider

to be particularly European features and

doesn't match any known and nay

of art styles after analysis by several

art historians and archaeological

experts it was concluded that the figure

was at least compatible with Roman

sculpture styles from around the second

century that being said many have called

him to question the artefacts

authenticity or have even suggested it

found its way here after Columbus

arrived another popularly cited example

of out of place artifacts was found in

Granada Bay in modern-day Brazil beneath

the waters here remains of a shipwreck

were uncovered in the late 1970s and

continued to be found into the 2000s

found among the shipwreck were the

littering of many ceramic jars after

being analyzed by experts these jars

were identified as likely being m4a a

container type used commonly by Greeks

and Romans these amphora were so regular

in fact that it was common practice for

a trading ship to just dump them in the

water near where they anchored because

it was easier and faster to sail without

them weighing down a vessel once they

had been emptied fragments from an

estimated 200 m fora were found under

the waters of this Bay in Brazil and

some have used this to suggest that

Romans were trading with the natives of

this region other explanations have been

given however including a merchant ship

being blown off-course on its way to the

Canary Islands or even the wreckage of a

ship being deposited here by ocean

currents while there are plenty of other

theories involving the ancient Europeans

and especially the Romans the next ones

I want to talk about comes from me Irish

to understand this one first we need to

learn about an old Irish writing system

called Holcomb this language began to

develop around 500 CE II and made use of

many lines carved into a pillar to

represent different letters this is

still considered one of the most unique

writing systems ever devised by humans

and is unlike any other writing system

ever studied so when rock carvings like

these dated between 500 and 700 Cee were

found in locations throughout Virginia

and West Virginia in North America it

made many people question if there could

have been some kind of Irish influence

almost 5000 kilometers away from Ireland

but for the most part these claims are

largely unsupported in the scientific

community although no other ideas

popularly supported either the

interesting part of this however well

actually this is all interesting but the

really interesting part I guess is that

the Irish have a completely separate

story that's been passed down through

the generations which some believe is

connected to this story the tale and

st. Brenton an Irish monk said to have

sailed across the Atlantic to discover

paradise roughly around the same time

these markings were estimated to have

been made the story is pretty long but

insured st. Brendan leaves Ireland with

14 other monks to discover new lands

call to the Isle of the Blessed while on

this journey Brendon and the 14 monks

and a couple of late comers encounters

some strange animals some familiar ones

- they run into a few people some

described as having darker skin

complexion and they generally get into

shenanigans until Brendon and the rest

of his Posse decide to head back home on

the way it's said that they passed an

island of blacksmiths who tossed a

molten slag out at their ship and then

they passed by crystal pillars the

island of blacksmiths is thought to be

an interpretation of the volcanic island

of Iceland spewing out molten rocks as

they sailed by while the crystal pillars

is thought to be an allusion to floating

icebergs found throughout the North

Atlantic to add a cherry on top of all

of this in 1977 the British explorer Tim

Severn completed a voyage from Ireland

to America using only a traditional

Irish kirk boat proving that at the very

least this trip and therefore this story

was possible of course lines marked on a

cave and an old irish Emran aren't

exactly hard evidence and if none of

these seemed very possible still then

we're going to need to leave Europe in

fact ideas about Africans reaching the

Americas before Columbus are equally

numerous and might even be more

convincing before it get to them though

I just want to look at the geography of

this a bit hope you don't mind because

when you take a real look at things

Africa and South America aren't actually

terribly far apart from one another

the closest tips of each continent are

less than 3,000 kilometres away

but off the coast of Africa are also the

Cape Verde Islands that make a suitable

restocking station

if launched from here the trip to South

America would be less than 26 hundred

kilometres not to mention if you look at

prevailing wind patterns over this part

of the world we can see that winds

around the equatorial Atlantic all blow

from Africa to South America these are

what's called to the northeast trade

winds trade winds because they're the

same winds that were later used by

Europeans during the times of the

Columbian Exchange and colonisation what

this means is that sailing across the

sizable gap could be fast and efficient

if explorers had a good understanding of

the way

in the area so it's no surprise the talk

of Africans reaching America before

Europeans had started as far back as

1862 when the first colossal head of the

ancient Mesoamerican Olmec civilization

was discovered in modern-day Mexico when

analyzing the facial features displayed

on these heads it was noted how similar

they looked not to the native people but

to Africans and it was suggested that

the heads were either created with

Africans in mind or by Africans

themselves who had traveled here now

these ideas have been heavily rejected

by much of the scholarly community but

it has left the question of African

activity in America open and since then

other theories have emerged it's

commonly believed that Native American

populations came across the now

underwater land bridge of Beringia which

once connected Alaska to Siberia and

this has been more or less confirmed by

genetic analysis showing Native

Americans closest relatives to be those

genetic groups from eastern Asia but

what's strange is that many of the

oldest human remains uncovered in the

Americas come not from the land around

Ferengi but rather further south towards

the middle of the landmass the most

well-known example of this are the

remains of a teenage girl nicknamed Maya

found in the Yucatan Peninsula in

modern-day Mexico nowhere near where

humans supposedly first stepped foot on

the continent the bones left by this

unfortunate girl and those of other

early inhabitants of America were found

to have completely different bone

structures from the Native Americans

later found by Columbus instead their

faces were smaller and shorter while

their entire skulls were longer and

narrower than the typical Native

American reconstructions of the girls

face revealed these differences much

clearer for me anyway and show just how

these features are much more in line

with those of a person of African

descent as well as possibly native

Australian or Pacific Islander this

isn't the only fossil like this

discovered in America either and the

finding of similar ones all older than

the ones found in Beringia has called

into question whether those Asian

explorers who crossed Beringia really

were the first people to walk on

American soil or if its first

inhabitants were of African or even

possibly Pacific descent the last thing

I want to talk about in relation to

Africans making their way to the

Americas actually has to do with

Columbus himself and more specifically

his third voyage to the Americas it was

recorded by the

Torian Bartolome de las casas that

Columbus's sole purpose on this voyage

was to test the claims that had made it

all the way to king john ii of portugal

these claims described how canoes had

been found which set out from the coast

of Guinea which is West Africa and

sailed to the west with merchandise or

basically people from West Africa were

sailing out west into the Atlantic with

valuable things for trade and King John

of Portugal was curious about where

these goods were going following these

directions Columbus sailed for the west

of Africa and discovered the continent

of South America hmm whether or not

these myths of African merchants were

true the land they were supposedly

traveling to was real which if you ask

me gives at least some credence to these

stories

despite this there's still been no

tangible evidence to back up these

claims other than word of mouth from

some long dead and lost original sources

moving away from Africa camp the

Atlantic Ocean as a whole we come to

East Asia and the Polynesian Pacific now

if we again look at the prevailing wind

patterns that may have helped Africans

reach the east coast of the Americas the

opposite is true in the Pacific where

winds blowing east to west would have

impeded explorers ability to travel east

to near the equator but the opposite is

true at higher latitudes where

prevailing winds could have helped push

explorers towards the Americas these are

collectively known as the westerlies

which blow from the west to the east

these wind patterns result in ocean

currents in the Pacific that looked

pretty similar forming an Ocean gyre

which moves water from around to Japan

all the way to the American west coast

before we get talking about ancient East

Asians traveling to the Americas I want

to give a brief summary of the story of

the three key keys you see while serving

his crew members on a rice transport

ship three Japanese men he wiki G the

ship's navigator cooky Chi an assistant

cook and old okichi another assistant

cook actually and 11 other men

encountered a storm in the western

Pacific off the coast of Japan during

the storm the mast and rudder broke off

from the ship leaving hid and its crew

stranded in the middle of the Pacific

but because it was a rice transport ship

the men actually had enough food to

survive and over 14 months the Pacific

Ocean current now called the Kuroshio

Current

boat and the surviving crew across the

ocean and deposited them in Washington

State by the time they arrived on land

only the three key cheese remained

everyone else having died from nutrient

deficiencies there's a lot more to the

story too but for our purposes this is

the first recorded example of the boat

being swept from Japan to North America

entirely without a source of propulsion

or steering events like this have been

recorded several times afterwards as

well and many scholars find it hard to

believe that these events only started

to occur after the Columbian discovery I

guess I should stress again that we

don't actually have any evidence of this

happening prior to colonization of the

continent and all the statements about

this are entirely circumstantial if we

take another look at the prevailing

winds and currents in the Pacific though

we can see the Kuroshio Current is

mirrored in the southern hemisphere by

the South Pacific current which opens up

the possibility of an American discovery

by the Polynesians as well now it's

already well known that the Polynesians

were master seafarers and navigators

which might explain why there's possibly

the most evidence in favour of contact

between the Polynesians and Native

Americans there are numerous examples of

this but my favorite includes the sweet

potato which is known to have originated

in Central and South America but when

exploring the pacific early Europeans

also found them growing throughout

Polynesia now most of the islands the

Polynesians inhabited were volcanic in

origin meaning they never shared any

sort of geological history with America

and therefore the sweet potato must have

been brought here by some other means

the some have used this to say that the

Polynesians themselves arrived in South

America and brought vine clippings back

with them to farm while others have

proposed that the vegetable managed to

disperse itself by writing ocean

currents over many thousands of years

this theory of a Polynesian introduction

however would help explain to why the

proto Polynesian word for sweet potato

Tamala is noted to be very similar to

those of South American Quechua and

Aymara words for the same crop tomar and

kumara I should remind you there are

also numerous other similar examples to

this one which include everything from

Peruvian mummies being found with sap

from a New Guinean tree all the way to

canoes in California resembling both

inform and named those built by the

Polynesians like I said at the beginning

though none of these hypotheses have

been proven with large

of undisputed evidence obviously someone

made it to America before Columbus as

evidenced by all the millions of people

and ancient civilizations found here

upon first contact clearly these people

were the true discoverers of America as

they were the first to establish

permanent settlements on the continent

thousands of years before Columbus or

Leif Erikson or anyone else discovered

is a relative term in this video as I

hope you realized instead of writing

redundant comments down below I'm not

saying any of these have been

legitimized to the point that we need to

change our history textbooks all I'm

trying to say is that there are things

in this world that should make us

question our understanding of American

discovery and exploration and world

history as a whole regardless of what

the answer is the question who

discovered America is still a question I

believe is worth asking and can only

help to improve our understanding of

history that has long since passed I

hope you agree with me on this one and

judging by the fact that you watch this

entire video I'd say you would besides

that let me know of any other

questionable examples of people making

it to the Americas before Columbus I

find this topic very interesting if you

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