ABSTRACT
The most remarkable thing about what Christopher Columbus had actually encountered beyond the "Ocean Sea," however, was the fact that, despite his own lame attempts to identify it as such, it was definitely not Asia. In fact, the establishment of its total separateness from Asia was the main theme underlying the long history of the mental discovery of America. During the first couple of decades following Columbus's first encounter with the New World, the various lands discovered by Europeans beyond the Atlantic were very often perceived in Europe as somewhat independent, separate discoveries. Sometime after 1492, America clearly came to be seen as a single geographical entity. Yet the lumping together of everything we now consider to be part of America into a single geographical entity certainly did not occur overnight. The image of America as a single geographical entity, of course, is the result of active mental construction.
