I know the infamous idea that the Chinese discovered America about 50 years before the Portuguese has been discredited. This isn’t about that. I’m mearly wondering if it is not possible that someone else could have landed there accidentally, or been even just been aware of a “mysterious land”. Russia and Alaska are only separated by 55 miles of water, which until the last 70 or so years was almost always covered in ice. Is it not possible some local tribes might have crossed over for trade or hunting?
Another example is the Japanese, who themselves were not that far from Alaska. Could they not have sailed there on accident? My final example may seem odd, but it always intrigued me. Could the Mongolians have discovered Alaska when they were at the height of this power? They expanded rapidly in that area or Siberia and China, and it always remained a question to me if they had been able to expand all the way to Chukotka. They had the means to do so, just a question of if they could have. This also leaves the door open for lesser possibilities, like the Polonesians who had managed to island hop all the way to Hawaii, or maybe a European traveler who had Columbus’ idea to sail west instead of east. Or maybe just someone who got lost and ended up there. I know the idea of someone getting lost at sea for months and ended up there aren’t high, but it always made me wonder.
There's always more to say, but certainly it's now generally accepted that disabled Japanese ships, swept across the Pacific by the currents, reached North America in some numbers well before 1492. I won't say the Japanese "discovered" the continent, both because it was, of course, already occupied, and because these encounters were surely not planned; nor is it plausible that any of the "discoverers" survived to return home with news of their encounters. But I answered a question on this topic here a few weeks ago, and you might like to review that response while you're waiting for additional comebacks:
Similarly, there seems to be no doubt that Polynesian seafarers did reach the coast of South America in the pre-Columbian period; the presence of the sweet potato, which is indigenous to South America, in the Pacific Islands is accepted as proof of this. A good discussion of this issue, led by our Pacific worlds flair u/b1uepenguin, can be read here:
What do we know about the sweet potato and Pre-Colombian contact with the Americas and Polynesia?
Funnily enough I came here this evening to ask the very same question and found these answers by u/Commustar and u/Kochevnik81 which cover the bases for a lot of what I was wondering. You can find them here. If the OP’s from this post for read this then thanks very much as I found it really interesting.