When is the latest the old world could have found the new?

Maoistic

Banned
The currents partly make it incredibly unlikely.

About the only thing I agree.

Their boats also could make small scale voyages, such as island hopping, but they weren't able to build boats of scale. Canada to Greenland is very different from the Atlantic coast to Europe.

Sure, sea faring the entire Atlantic coast and the harshly cold and hard to navigate seas of North America, as well as trading as far as Easter Island and Hawaii, are nothing but "small scale voyages". Sure.
 
Sure, sea faring the entire Atlantic coast and the harshly cold and hard to navigate seas of North America, as well as trading as far as Easter Island and Hawaii, are nothing but "small scale voyages". Sure.
There is absolutely no evidence of American contact with Hawaii prior to the eighteenth century, and any contact between South America and Easter was almost certainly mediated by the Easter Islanders themselves, not Americans.
 
Taking nothing away from ancient Polynesian voyagers who performed incredible feats, but navigation of the North Atlantic during the Little Ice Age Is a lot different than island hopping in tropical waters as far as the kind of ships required. There is some anecdotal evidence that Inuit hunters were spotted off Scotland at the height of the LIA. Presumably, if true, they were seal hunters following the edge of the pack ice who wandered south.
 

Maoistic

Banned
There is absolutely no evidence of American contact with Hawaii prior to the eighteenth century, and any contact between South America and Easter was almost certainly mediated by the Easter Islanders themselves, not Americans.
Except the fact that Hawaiians grew potato which they couldn't have gotten any other way except trading with Americans, and it doesn't matter who "mediated" what trade, the point is we have Native Americans performing voyages to the Pacific that are contradictory to the idea of almost purely landed, non-seafaring Native Americans with inferior ship technology.
 

Maoistic

Banned
Taking nothing away from ancient Polynesian voyagers who performed incredible feats, but navigation of the North Atlantic during the Little Ice Age Is a lot different than island hopping in tropical waters as far as the kind of ships required. There is some anecdotal evidence that Inuit hunters were spotted off Scotland at the height of the LIA. Presumably, if true, they were seal hunters following the edge of the pack ice who wandered south.
Or sailors intentionally exploring new lands like the Portuguese in the 15th century.
 
Except the fact that Hawaiians grew potato which they couldn't have gotten any other way except trading with Americans, and it doesn't matter who "mediated" what trade, the point is we have Native Americans performing voyages to the Pacific that are contradictory to the idea of almost purely landed, non-seafaring Native Americans with inferior ship technology.
They had sweet potato ('uala), not potato ('uala kahiki). Also, almost all Polynesians had them, so Hawaii couldn't have had direct contact with the Americas.

Anyways, I don't see how Polynesians contacting the Pacific coast has any pertinence with America's incapability to cross the Atlantic.
 

Deleted member 97083

I would not be surprised if Basque or Bristol fishing vessels were watering on Newfoundland in the late 15th Century. The absolute latest I could see the "secret" getting out is 1550 or so.
Spain had a minister called something like "Minister of Fisheries Terra Nova". It was a tax position collecting taxes on the huge fishing haul being brought into NW ports of Spain. People knew land (islands) were to the west. Whether they new their was such a large land mass is the question.
Source?
 
Sure, sea faring the entire Atlantic coast and the harshly cold and hard to navigate seas of North America, as well as trading as far as Easter Island and Hawaii, are nothing but "small scale voyages". Sure.

I have no problem with the idea that some Americans made it to Europe of their own accord, but this is vastly different from the sorts of expeditions the Europeans mounted from 1480. The importance of Columbus and Cabot isn't that they made it to America, its that they returned to Europe and made subsequent voyages in a planned, deliberate and sustainable manner.
 
Except it did. How the heck do you think the Caribbean and Greenland were populated?

Well travelling from South or North America to the Carribean is a fairly short trip to to top and bottom of the Carribean by ocean-going canoe. The natives of Greenland are not usually considered to be "Native Americans" in the same way that say, the Cherokee are. They also traveled on and along the ice of the polar regions, a different (though undoubtedly challenging and brutal) sort of journey than that made by Columbus.

I'd hate for you to read some sort of racial prejudice into this, for that's not my intent. In fact the sort of trade conducted by canoe between Mayan cities is nothing short of impressive, but the sort of seafaring culture like that exhibited by the Norse or the Portuguese really doesn't seem like it existed in the Americas. Though an interesting exception does seem to be that of the Haida, who raided the Pacific Northwest, but that's the entire wrong side of the continent.
 
Last edited:
To be clear, by small scale I mean in terms of the size of the ships involveD. Either way though, I'm not certain there was the same concept of "exploration" in American cultures. It's hard to imagine that without maps there could be the same methodical discovery that was seen during the European exploration. Even if they made it home, somewhat unlikely, they'd be hard pressed to share what they learned. Even for the Polynesians, discovery wasn't incredibly different from settlement and they didn't really return to a homeland.
 
To be clear, by small scale I mean in terms of the size of the ships involveD.

Big ships allow big expeditions: they can be well armed, have big crews for a variety of specialized tasks, have a lot of provisions and can provide habitation for long periods the way a balsa raft or canoe cannot.
 
Now I suppose it's possible to push back the expeditions a decade or two, and perhaps you could have Basque or English fishermen come across a group of more widely ranging fishing-oriented Native Americans that then spurs an expedition to find out where these people come from. But with the PODs necessary to meet the challenge of similar tech levels to OTL, it's highly unlikely Native Americans are going to reach Europe first. Certainly if they do, it'll be because they're blown wildly off course and they probably would not return home in that scenario.
 
Brazil would be the most likely place of discovery. Portuguese sailors are all around West Africa and the coast of Brazil just isn't all that far.
 
They had sweet potato ('uala), not potato ('uala kahiki). Also, almost all Polynesians had them, so Hawaii couldn't have had direct contact with the Americas.

Anyways, I don't see how Polynesians contacting the Pacific coast has any pertinence with America's incapability to cross the Atlantic.

To clarify, I believe that the current scholarly consensus is that the sweet potato found it ways to the Cook Islands around 700 AD from the Americas. None of this implies, however, and I have not seen any evidence to suggest otherwise, that the Americans were themselves capable of making such long distance voyages. It is possible but nothing in the historical record either really supports it or requires it because the Polynesians were just as capable of crossing the Pacific.

Delaying the discovery of the Americas by Europeans is difficult and this also illustrates why an American-led contact is so implausible. With the closing of the route to the east, the European powers were desperately looking for a way to China and India that circumvented the increasingly Turkish dominated Middle East. In short there was a strong motive for the Europeans to go adventuring and sooner or later, at least as soon as it is realized how far Africa extends south, somebody is going to think about trying the route west. At any rate, somebody sooner or later is going to start wondering why all those Basque/Irish/insert other group from western or northern Europe fishermen keep telling stories about land to the west. Or a Portuguese ship gets lost on its way down the African coast and finds Brazil. Furthermore, by this point, the Europeans have the capability to cross the Atlantic with comparative ease once they know the way.

In contrast, it is really difficult to see why American sailors would stray so far east or west. By the time Columbus arrived, there were two societies with state level organization in the Americas - the Incas and the Mesoamericans - and both were rudimentary compared to Europe. Furthermore, neither (so far as I am aware) had a land of fabled reaches which could only be accessed through a number of intermediaries (thus driving up costs) but which can seemingly be accessed by sea if you sail in one direction. Plus there is no Mediterranean in the Americas - the Gulf of Mexico is closest but that has significant shortcomings - to get a long-distance maritime tradition going and learn how to build ocean going ships. I don't think it is out of the question that Native American ships could have sailed all the way to Europe and they may well have done. The problem is that on a macro-historical level it doesn't matter because they didn't so in such large numbers to make the Europeans truly aware of the Americas nor does it seem that they did it in an organized fashion for trade.

teg
 
Top