Who really discovered America PDF

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Who really discovered america?...

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Jared Romero Rincón

Essay: Who really discovered America?

First of all, what do we mean by America? There´s North America and South America and together they are called the Americas. Technically, the Native Americans were the first people to discover America when they traveled across from Asia about 12,000 years ago. But who was the first European to discover the Americas? In 1492, he set sail from Spain and two months later he reached one of the islands we know now as the Bahamas.

I think he accidentally

stumbled upon the Americas. Though he did not really “discover” the New World—millions of people already lived there—his journeys marked the beginning of centuries of transatlantic conquest and colonization. The Americas got their name from another explorer, Amerigo Vespucci. Vespucci traveled to the Americas seven years after Columbus, and some people believe he was the first to set foot on the Mainland. In May 1498, Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic for the third time. He visited Trinidad and the South American mainland before returning to the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, where the colonists had staged a bloody revolt against the Columbus brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities had to send a new governor to take over. Christopher Columbus was arrested and returned to Spain in chains. In conclusion, Columbus has a controversial legacy—he is remembered as a daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually devastate the native populations he and his fellow explorers encountered....