“In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” That was the little mnemonic we used to remember the exploits of Christopher Columbus when I was in grade school. What an amazing voyage that must have been. I take nothing away from those brave sailors. That is, except their claim to being here first. If not Columbus and the Europeans, then who? You’ll have to do some reading to find that out and The Seattle Public Library has some very interesting books on the subject.
Who was the first to the “new world”? The Vikings? The Chinese? There is even one book which suggests that the Phoenicians, Romans or the Irish were early visitors to this part of the world. But my favorite theory is the theory of the Bering Land Bridge – Beringia. Some scientists postulate that hunters came here in search of food from Siberia and Asia over a strip of land that is now the Bering Strait. During the last ice age glaciers covered nearly all of Canada and a good chunk of the northern border region of the United States. In some places the ice was two miles thick. That was approximately 15,000 years ago. For a good account of this theory, read The Last Giant of Beringia: The Mystery of the Bering Land Bridge by Dan O’Neill.
Here’s a list of books to get you started:
Who Came First: New Clues to Prehistoric Americans by Patricia Lauber
Who Was First? – Discovering the Americas by Russell Freedman
Columbus in the Americas by William Least Heat-Moon
The Log of Christopher Columbus: First Voyage to America in the Year 1492
Toward the Setting Sun: Columbus, Cabot, Vespucci, and the Race for America by David Boyle
~Tom, Queen Anne Branch
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