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Interesting question......Anyone know?
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Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
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Junius Venator.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
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Da_bang80
A few sectors short of an Empire
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Lief Ericksson about 200 years before Christopher Columbus. I think it was Lief Ericksson. It was some Viking at any rate.
-------------------- Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I cannot accept. And the wisdom to hide the bodies of all the people I had to kill today because they pissed me off.
But "who was the first" has never seemed as important as "who's discovery mattered?" which is clearly Columbus, even if one is in the mood for arguing over the definition of "discovered."
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WizArtist II
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It was an Inuit that crossed the Berring and became the progenitor of all the Aztec, Toltec, Mayan etc. cultures.
-------------------- There are 10 types of people in the world...those that understand Binary and those that don't.
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Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
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Wasn't it Kim Stanley Robinson's Years Of Rice And Salt where the Chinese & the Islamic Empires met up & clashed in the middle of North America? It's been eons since I read it.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
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It was the aliens that planted the seeds of life on our rock that really first discovered this continent, although that long ago it was in another location, but still.
-------------------- "You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus "Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers A leek too, pretty much a negi.....
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....Columbus discovered something more valuable that meant a lasting presence, slaves. Remember he owed a lot of money. Sufice it to say his reputation has not survived the test of time.
Nor for that matter has the sweet tale of Pocohontas, when a middleaged sailor married a 12 year old.....
But as far as dicovery goes it would have to be the Variag. It is believed that a mediteranian ship from the tiome of the greeks MAY have made it, but never made it back (evidence is sketchy)
Also Note I said Europeans as there is slight evidence that the Chinese may have visited before then, but they then burned all the maps and forgot about it.
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Just for the record, Pocahontas was more like nineteen when she married. And her husband was only about ten years older. That's certainly not unusual for that time.
However, if you're really looking for such a story, consider the tale of my own great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents, Robert Drouin and Anne Cloustier who were married in 1637 in Qu�bec, when he was almost 30, and she was 11. It's not as bad as it sounds, though. They weren't allowed to, erm... consummate the union... until she was older. And, for "older", read "fourteen". She birthed three children between the ages of fifteen and twenty, and died a couple years later.
Ah, the seventeenth century. Simpler times, eh?
Registered: Mar 1999
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I highly recommend, for those interested in such stories, William T. Vollmann's Seven Dreams novels(series? cycle?). They are, in general, about European/American encounters. I've only read two of the four available, but I'm a Vollmann fan in general so I feel safe in suggesting the others:
[*]The Ice Shirt
[*]Fathers and Crows
[*]The Rifles
[*]Argall
As a bonus, Argall is totally about John Smith. Well, John Smith, and Argall.
They are wordy, though. Argall in particular.
quote:I fear to compound my first offense, in penning such slender and tuneless lines as these, by presuming to direct them to yourself, particularly when their subject is a mere Wilderness of insignificant Salvages. For what could bulk more worthy of our puzzlings (save THE ALMIGHTIE Himself), than the hives of Godliness we call Cities? And what less so, than Fens & frog-pools? (O darling fat frogs! If witches denied to take you in marraige to be their familiars, we wouldn't need to burn witches!) I incline toward the best, Right Honourable; I'd fain kiss your hand -- yet this Book of mine doth drag me down toward the worst. Truth to tell, my own self mires me now. My mind descends and condescends to foulness; the tale I must tell's putrescent with sin -- dangerous not to you, Right Honourable, for by virtue of your celestial blood you're proof against infamy's infections, but I own no such liquid armor, being chinked 'twixt my platelets with Adam's taint. Therefore, did you give me leave I'd take my leave of Captaine Argall, John Smith & Princesse Pokahuntas before e'er their simulacra broach'd your stage!
("Should it please you, Reader, we'll embark at wise-named Gravesend, to put period to our English doom. Life at home being death, why not steal resurrection from Salvages?")
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Makotokat: Also Note I said Europeans as there is slight evidence that the Chinese may have visited before then, but they then burned all the maps and forgot about it.
The Chinese believe that several Eunuch Captains during the Han? Dynasty - around the early 1400s (might be the wrong dynasty) set out on a grand voyage of discovery - resulting in the discovery of Australia and New Zealand and reaching Africa and the Americas. There is no real evidence of this happening - hang on - haven't we discussed this just recently? Anyway the fact that it's being brought up again and again recently is another attempt to drum up Chinese nationalism and their own superiority, now and in the past.
I've found a book stating that there are maps dating from the 800's showing Australia had been visited by Arabic peoples from the Middle East.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
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