Was there any movement or grouping of people who denied its existence aftee its redicovery in the 15th and 16th centuries? I know a lot of people have denied scientific discoveries, or more recently things like the Holocaust and the moon landing. Anyone believe the new world was a load of crap.
Well, for starters... Christopher Columbus "believe[d] the new world was a load of crap". While we might remember him as the (re)discoverer of (already inhabited) America, keep in mind that he didn't think he had discovered a New World at all!
Upon reaching the Bahamas on his first voyage, he believed himself to have reached Asia, and that he had landed on outlying islands. The description of a large island "Colba" he interpreted to be "Cipangu", or Japan (it was actually Cuba). The people he encountered he infamously dubbed "Indians" (despite some revisionist claims it was 'In Dios' for a "people in God's Image"). Upon his return to Spain, he insisted that he had reached Asia by going West. The reason for this was that, well... he was very, very wrong about his calculations of the size of the Earth. While there is an enduring belief that people thought the world was flat in the period, most educated people knew otherwise. In fact, most people had a better sense of geography than Columbus. He wasn't lambasted because he thought the Earth to be round, rather, because he believed the Earth to be considerably smaller than it really was! Since no one knew of the New World, they were telling him he was crazy because, well, imagine sailing the distance from Europe to Asia if there was no Americas in the middle. The calculations that Columbus had made pointed to a distance of only 20 percent what it would have been in reality.
Even when making his later journeys, when he was faced with ample evidence to the contrary, and other explorers quickly piled on additional proof, it seems he continued to deny that he had reached a New World, and instead prove his case. A far as I can find, went to his deathbed insisting he had found a new route to Asia.
Singham, Mano (04/01/2007). Columbus and the flat Earth myth: perhaps it is not the people of the Middle Ages who should be accused of clinging to erroneous beliefs, Mr. Singham suggests. Phi Delta Kappan. , 88 (8), p. 590
Desai, C.M. Child Lit Educ (2014) 45: 179.
Gerbi, Antonello. 2010. Nature in the New World : From Christopher Columbus to Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo. US: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Brotton, Jerry. 2006. The Renaissance. Oxford University PRess