Was recently mocking Columbus and US obsession of him with a friend, when they suggested Africans had visited America long before Columbus. This sounded off to me just based on my basic US public system education, but I’m no historian and also am keenly aware that that education is nothing to write home about, especially as it pertains to US History hahaha.
So I find myself a little curious now, what is the academic consensus on this issue? I found a Wikipedia article that dismisses such theories as fringe but I’m wary to just accept this since it squares with my existing belief. And like, all things being equal, it’s not that far out to imagine other societies also developed sufficient navies to cross oceans. There are example of other discoveries that were indeed independently discovered, after all.
Edit: added wiki link. Edit: changed wording a little but nothing crazy.
One final edit: I’d like to clarify this post doesn’t pertain to Columbus himself “discovering” America first, but rather the potential of other societies to cross the ocean to arrive at America and possibly come back, predating the euro-Columbian era.
So far, the only widely-accepted instance of Pre-Columbian contact in North America is the Norse presence in what is now Newfoundland in the early 11th century. It was considered a legend until the discovery of the L’Anse aux Meadows site in 1960. So far, no comparable evidence has been found for anyone else reaching North America.
It’s important to bear in mind that the Norse arrived in what is now Newfoundland by sailing from Greenland, a considerably shorter distance than Columbus and his successors traveled. It’s not impossible that others reached North America before Columbus, but it’s not terribly likely: there are no written records, archaeological finds, or evidence of long distance open ocean seafaring in ancient or medieval Western Europe/West Africa.
In South America, however, the sweet potato may be evidence of trans-Pacific contact between South America and Polynesian. You can read more about that in an earlier post on this subreddit here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2jtwlz/what_do_we_know_about_the_sweet_potato_and/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Based on past answers here, it appears that Wikipedia is actually correct at least when it comes to African contact. See for instance this answer by u/400-rabbits and this one by u/RioAbajo, u/CommodoreCoCo and others. However these are all rather old so I hope one of our experts will see this thread and respond!