Hacker News Reader

For those interested: https://www.amazon.co.uk/1421-Year-China-Discovered-World-eb...

But keep in mind:

"His book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, is a work of sheer fiction presented as revisionist history. Not a single document or artifact has been found to support his new claims on the supposed Ming naval expeditions beyond Africa."

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Menzies#Criticism

I had a look into his book. It is not written very scientifically. From a review: "A true academic work would have been far more careful to distinguish between what is hard evidence and what is inference, assumption, and hypothesis."

But it is a fact that America was known and had settlements before Columbus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Anse_aux_Meadows

Known by Europeans; it's been "known" / inhabited for at least 10.000 years. As far as I'm aware there's no records of other major players visiting / "discovering" it though besides the Norse.

Where do you think the Native Americans came from?

They are not exactly descendants of the Norse.

It was known by Polynesians for at least 1000 years before Columbus. See sweet potatoes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com