Editing Christopher Columbus (section)

=== Originality of discovery of America ===
{{Main|Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories|Norse colonization of North America}}
[[File:Faroe stamps 225-226 Discovery of America.jpg|thumb|''Discovery of America'', a postage stamp from the [[Faroe Islands]] commemorates the voyages of discovery of [[Leif Erikson]] ({{Circa|1000|lk=no}}) and Christopher Columbus (1492).]]

Though Christopher Columbus came to be considered the European discoverer of America in Western popular culture, his historical legacy is more nuanced.<ref name="Phillips2000">{{cite book |last1=Phillips |first1=William D. |title=Testimonies from the Columbian Lawsuits |year=2000 |publisher=Brepols |isbn=978-2-503-51028-6 |page=25 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cz0LAAAAYAAJ&q=%22nuance%20of%20semantics%22 |quote=When we speak today of the "legacy" of Christopher Columbus, we usually refer to the broadly historic consequences of his famous voyages, meaning the subsequent European conquest and colonization of the Americas.}}</ref> After settling Iceland, the [[Norsemen|Norse]] settled the uninhabited southern part of [[Greenland]] beginning in the 10th century.<ref name="Nedkvitne2018">{{cite book |last1=Nedkvitne |first1=Arnved |title=Norse Greenland: Viking Peasants in the Arctic |year=2018 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-351-25958-3 |page=13 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Xs5wDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT13}}</ref> Norsemen are believed to have then set sail from Greenland and Iceland to become the first known Europeans to reach the North American mainland, nearly 500 years before Columbus reached the Caribbean.<ref name=":6">{{cite magazine |last=Little |first=Becky |date=11 October 2015 |title=Why Do We Celebrate Columbus Day and Not Leif Erikson Day? |url=https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/10/151011-columbus-day-leif-erikson-italian-americans-holiday-history/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190807004208/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/10/151011-columbus-day-leif-erikson-italian-americans-holiday-history/ |archive-date=7 August 2019 |magazine=[[National Geographic]] |access-date=12 October 2015 |url-access=limited}}</ref> The 1960s discovery of a Norse settlement dating c.&nbsp;1000 at [[L'Anse aux Meadows]], [[Newfoundland]], partially corroborates accounts within the [[Icelandic sagas]] of [[Erik the Red]]'s colonization of Greenland and his son [[Leif Erikson]]'s subsequent exploration of a place he called [[Vinland]].<ref name=":1">{{cite web |title=History – Leif Erikson (11th century) |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/erikson_leif.shtml |access-date=12 October 2015 |publisher=BBC}}</ref>

In the 19th century, amid [[Viking revival|a revival of interest in Norse culture]], [[Carl Christian Rafn]] and [[Benjamin Franklin DeCosta]] wrote works establishing that the Norse had preceded Columbus in colonizing the Americas.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Rafn, Carl Christian, 1795–1864 |url=http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/dictionary/index.asp?action=view&term_id=477&term_type_id=1&term_type_text=people&letter=R |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140226221116/http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/dictionary/index.asp?action=view&term_id=477&term_type_id=1&term_type_text=people&letter=R |archive-date=26 February 2014 |access-date=22 March 2022 |website=[[Wisconsin Historical Society]]}}</ref><ref name="EB1911">Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "[[s:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/De Costa, Benjamin Franklin|De Costa, Benjamin Franklin]]". ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition|Encyclopædia Britannica]]''. Vol.&nbsp;7 (11th&nbsp;ed.). Cambridge University Press. p.&nbsp;915.</ref> Following this, in 1874 [[Rasmus B. Anderson|Rasmus Bjørn Anderson]] argued that Columbus must have known of the North American continent before he started his voyage of discovery.<ref name="Kolodny2012">{{cite book |last1=Kolodny |first1=Annette |title=In Search of First Contact: The Vikings of Vinland, the Peoples of the Dawnland, and the Anglo-American Anxiety of Discovery |date=2012 |publisher=Duke University Press |isbn=978-0-8223-5286-0 |pages=226–227 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B2qpdOb8o4cC&pg=PA226}}</ref><ref name=":6" /> Most modern scholars doubt Columbus had knowledge of the Norse settlements in America, with his arrival to the continent being most likely an [[independent discovery]].<ref name="Enterline2003" /><ref name="PaolucciPaolucci1992" /><ref name="Kolodny2012" /><ref name=":7" /><ref name="Restall2021">{{cite book |last1=Restall |first1=Matthew |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dXQjEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA4 |title=Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest: Updated Edition |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2021 |isbn=978-0-19-753729-9 |page=4}}</ref>

Europeans devised explanations for the [[Settlement of the Americas|origins of the Native Americans]] and their geographical distribution with narratives that often served to reinforce their own [[wikt:preconception|preconceptions]] built on ancient intellectual foundations.<ref name="Berkhofer1979">{{cite book |last1=Berkhofer |first1=Robert F. |title=The White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian, from Columbus to the Present |date=1979 |publisher=Vintage Books |isbn=978-0-394-72794-3 |page=34 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HcGGDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA34}}</ref> In modern Latin America, the non-Native populations of some countries often demonstrate an ambiguous attitude toward the perspectives of indigenous peoples regarding the so-called "discovery" by Columbus and the era of [[colonialism]] that followed.<ref name="Coronil1989">{{cite journal |last1=Coronil |first1=Fernando |title=Discovering America Again: The Politics of Selfhood in the Age of Post-Colonial Empires |journal=Dispositio |date=1989 |volume=14 |issue=36/38 |pages=315–331 |publisher=Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor |jstor=41491365 |issn=0734-0591 |quote=When referring to the conquest, Venezuelans tend to side with the original "Indians" inhabiting the territory, even though "we" are generally careful to distinguish ourselves from them, and above all from their contemporary descendants. This tactical identification suggests that the force of this rejoinder comes not just from the hold of the familiar—Columbus already discovered America, so what's new—but from the appeal of a more exclusive familiarity evoked by a shift of location — he only "discovered" it for Europe, not for "us". It is as if we viewed Columbus's arrival from two perspectives, his own, and that of the natives. When we want to privilege "our" special viewpoint, we claim as ours the standpoint of the original Americans, the view not from the foreign ship but from our "native" land.}}</ref>
In his 1960 [[monograph]], Mexican philosopher and historian [[Edmundo O'Gorman]] explicitly rejects the Columbus discovery myth, arguing that the idea that Columbus discovered America was a misleading legend fixed in the public mind through the works of American author [[Washington Irving]] during the 19th century. O'Gorman argues that to assert Columbus "discovered America" is to shape the facts concerning the events of 1492 to make them conform to an interpretation that arose many years later.<ref name="Nuccetelli2020">{{cite book |last1=Nuccetelli |first1=Susana |chapter=Setting the Scene: The Iberian Conquest |title=An Introduction to Latin American Philosophy |date=31 October 2020 |pages=16–17 |doi=10.1017/9781107705562.002 |isbn=978-1-107-70556-2 |s2cid=234937836}}</ref> For him, the [[Eurocentric]] view of the discovery of America sustains systems of domination in ways that favor Europeans.<ref name="Lazo2013">{{cite journal |last1=Lazo |first1=Rodrigo |title=The Invention of America Again: On the Impossibility of an Archive |journal=American Literary History |date=1 December 2013 |volume=25 |issue=4 |page=755 |doi=10.1093/alh/ajt049}}</ref> In a 1992 article for ''[[The UNESCO Courier]]'', Félix Fernández-Shaw argues that the word "discovery" prioritizes European explorers as the "heroes" of the contact between the Old and New World. He suggests that the word "encounter" is more appropriate, being a more universal term which includes Native Americans in the narrative.<ref name="Fernández-Shaw1992">{{cite journal |last1=Fernández-Shaw |first1=Félix |title=Five hundred years from now {{!}} From Discovery to Encounter |journal=The UNESCO Courier |date=May 1992 |volume=45 |issue=5, Rediscovering 1492 |page=45 |url=https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000091221 |access-date=8 February 2022 |publisher=UNESCO Digital Library |quote=The encounter between two worlds is a fact that cannot be denied... The word ''discovery'' gives prominence to the heroes of the enterprise; the word ''encounter'' gives more emphasis to the peoples who actually "encountered" each other and gave substance to a New World. Whereas ''discovery'' marks a happening, an event, ''encounter'' conveys better the idea of the political journey that has brought us to the reality of today, spanning the five hundred years since 1492... These historical and political milestones are valuable because they relate the present to both the past and the future. It was inevitable that history written from a Eurocentric standpoint should speak in terms of discovery and it is equally inevitable that, as history has now come to be seen in universal terms, we should have adopted so evocative a term as encounter.}}</ref>