First time in this subreddit, so I hope this question is not out of context here. Sorry if it is, and maybe you could help me to find the right /r/ to ask about this. The thing is that I've read somewhere or maybe watched in some documentary about the indigenous people being unable to see the Columbus ships arriving because of some visual / cultural effect, something like their brains not processing the info about that absolutely unknown reality for them. So I have basically two questions: do you happen to know the source of this? And is it somehow a trustworthy idea? Thanks you historians!
I thought I had made a post about this before, but can't find it now. Unfortunately, I know exactly what you're talking about. This claim was popularized in recent years by the psuedoscience "documentary" What the Bleep Do We Know!? and it's bullshit for a variety of reasons.
First, during Columbus' first voyage, he wrote about several communities taking their own boats out to meet him at sea. Here's Columbus' report from October 13th, about a day or so after the Spanish first made contact with the people of Lucayos / Guanahani in the Bahamas: "They came to the ship in canoes, made of a single trunk of a tree, wrought in a wonderful manner considering the country; some of them large enough to contain forty or forty-five men, others of different sizes down to those fitted to hold but a single person. They rowed with an oar like a baker's peel, and wonderfully swift. If they happen to upset, they all jump into the sea, and swim till they have righted their canoe and emptied it with the calabashes they carry with them. They came loaded with balls of cotton, parrots, javelins, and other things too numerous to mention; these they exchanged for whatever we chose to give them." The Santa Maria, Columbus' largest vessel, had a smaller crew than some of the canoes that came out to meet me. While the Spanish ship would have been bulkier than their own, but nothing completely out of the realm of thought.
Second, the story What the Bleep is peddling is allegedly based on Cook's exploration off the coast of Australia, but warped to fit the ideology of the Ramtha cult behind the documentary. Based on Cook's observations of the people on the shoreline from a distance, the Australians didn't show much concern about Cook's approach until Cook made landfall. This wasn't a fairly of perception as What the Bleep is claiming, but a pragmatic response to the situation. Ships passing along the coast aren't a threat, just a distant curiosity, but men landing on your shores is a more immediate concern that warrants a response.
Third, this isn't how human brains work. There's a strong selective pressure against it. Imagine how long a creature who couldn't perceive new things would survive when confronted with a new predator.