Let me provide an argument for each side here and let you decide which argument makes more sense to you.
On the one hand, we can clearly say that the Native Americans should get the credit for discovering the Americas. There is no doubt that they were the first human beings to set foot on these two continents. The Native Americans (or, more precisely, their ancestors) came from another continent (most likely Asia) and entered...
Let me provide an argument for each side here and let you decide which argument makes more sense to you.
On the one hand, we can clearly say that the Native Americans should get the credit for discovering the Americas. There is no doubt that they were the first human beings to set foot on these two continents. The Native Americans (or, more precisely, their ancestors) came from another continent (most likely Asia) and entered the New World. At that point, there were no human beings in the Americas and never had been, so far as we know. Since they were the first human beings to come to these continents, they must surely be the ones who discovered the New World.
On the other hand, we can say that discovery only happens if you know that you are discovering something new. The ancestors of the Native Americans would not have had any idea that they had entered a New World. When they came to the Americas, that land mass was not even separated from Eurasia. They did not voyage to a new land. Instead, they just migrated to a different part of the land mass on which they already lived.
For this reason, we should credit Vespucci. He was the first one to actually realize that the Americas were a separate land mass. He was the one who discovered that they were not simply part of Asia. Therefore, he was presumably the first person to realize that a “new world” had been discovered, making him its real discoverer.
Which of these arguments makes more sense to you?
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