ABSTRACT
The first European encounter with America's west coast in 1513 offers us a rare example of the priority of seeing over touching as the critical criterion for determining what constitutes a geographical discovery. All the pre-Columbian voyages to the New World may or may not have actually taken place. And even if they did, none of the evidence people now have is conclusive enough to warrant a total revision of the conventional notion that it was Columbus who discovered America. As soon as people start questioning, for example, what they actually mean by the words America or discover, it becomes quite clear that the basis for the conventional notion that America was discovered by Columbus in 1492 is in fact rather shaky. Perhaps the credit for the actual discovery of America should not even go to Columbus at all.
