Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Kevin Hultgren asks, “Why is Christopher Columbus credited with discovering the Americas when the Vikings had a settlement in Newfoundland centuries earlier? Or did they?”

First, let’s get the obvious out of the way: neither Columbus nor the Vikings ‘discovered’ the Americas. The discovery was probably made by some unknown person walking across the Bering Land Bridge around 20,000 years ago.

That being said, in a previous episode, I covered the Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. There is ample evidence that there was a Viking settlement in North America centuries before Columbus arrived in the New World.

Putting aside the issue of discovery, why was Columbus given so much more attention than the Vikings when the Vikings were there first?

For starters, no one knew the Vikings had arrived until a team of archeologists discovered their settlement in the 1960s.

Second, and most importantly, nothing became of it. There are a great many things for whom credit is given, not the person who does it first, but the person who does it first, the best.

It was the voyage of Columbus, for better or worse, that led to the exchange between the new and old worlds and the creation of the world as we know it today.

The Viking settlements were the equivalent of an evolutionary dead end. The settlement ended, and no follow-up was ever made.

This isn’t the only case like this where someone technically might have come first but isn’t given credit. The electric incandescent lightbulb is often credited to Thomas Edison. Getting an electrical current to incandese isn’t particularly hard. Just run enough current through a wire, and it will start to glow.

Many people created bulbs that could create light from electricity, but their systems weren’t practical.

However, Edison created a practical system that could be used anywhere.

The same is true with the printing press. The first printing press was developed in China. However, this technology was highly controlled, and the system they used was difficult. Gutenberg’s printing press unleashed a revolution, which is why he’s usually given credit. It was his system, which came later, which was the foundation of modern printing, not the Chinese system.

In fact, in almost every episode I’ve done on inventions, there is usually some early inventor who created some impractical version of something who doesn’t usually get the credit.

The same is true with the Vikings and Columbus.