Who Really Reached America First? (Not Columbus)

Columbus reached America in 1492. He was about twenty thousand years late. For five hundred years he has been called the man who discovered America. But when his ships arrived, tens of millions of people were already living there, other sailors had crossed an ocean before him, and the land doesn't even carry his name. So who was really first? It depends what you mean by "first". In this video: • The Ice Age land bridge between Siberia and Alaska • The human footprints at White Sands, New Mexico, dated to between 21,000 and 23,000 years old • Leif Erikson, Vinland, and the Norse site at L'Anse aux Meadows, dated to exactly the year 1021 • The sweet potato puzzle, and the DNA evidence that Polynesians and Native Americans met around the year 1200 • The claims with no proof: Saint Brendan, Prince Madoc, the emperor of Mali, and the Chinese fleet of 1421 • What Columbus actually got wrong, and why he gets the credit anyway • Why two continents are named after Amerigo Vespucci Three questions, three different answers. Which one would you give? Tell me in the comments. CHAPTERS 0:00 Columbus was late 0:41 The first humans 1:42 The footprints at White Sands 2:54 The Vikings and Vinland 4:47 The Polynesians 6:02 The claims with no proof 7:15 Columbus 8:21 Why he gets the credit 9:45 Why it is called America 10:25 Three answers CREDITS Maps made with Natural Earth (public domain). Sound effects: CC0 recordings from Freesound contributors (via the ESC-50 dataset), Kenney and the CC0 Public Domain Sounds collection, rse/soundfx, and "AltSFX by ALEX11BR" (CC BY 3.0). #history #columbus #vikings #america #christophercolumbus