ABSTRACT
The European discovery of the New World by Columbus in 1492 was preceded by at least one Asian discovery of the New World some 14,000 years ago. Those intrepid early people, all hunter-gatherers, explored and colonized the western hemisphere in a relatively short period of time (see Chapter 1). Europeans had themselves discovered the New World by about 1,000 years ago, and had visited and established colonies in North America hundreds of years before Columbus. It is also possible that the Chinese discovered the New World in 1421 (Menzies 2002), although this claim remains controversial. However, for various reasons, these contacts were never substantial and the records of such visits were never widely known. Thus, most people in the Old World had no knowledge of the New World prior to 1492. After Columbus, though, Europeans quickly claimed, conquered, and colonized North America (see F. Jennings 1993; J. Allen 1997; Wilson 1998).
