do you believe Christopher Columbus really discovered America?

You're absolutely right. A great many people discovered America before Columbus set sail. The reason Columbus gets the credit is that he's the first person who's success became public knowledge.

Sometimes it's not the "first" that counts, but rather who has the better publicist. Strange, but true.

Christopher Columbus was obviously not the first person to discover the Americas. Case and point, there were other people already there. Christopher Columbus was just acted as the catalyst, for lack of a better word, for the "European invasion" of the Americas.

Christopher Columbus was a " johnny come lately " as most people admit by now. in my opinion the only thing he did was open Turtle Island up for the Europeans and other Foreign Powers to pillage, plunder, and disrupt the lives of those who were already here.

Columbus never reached the N. American mainland and died unaware that it existed. He reached the Bahamas, but thought he was in Asia. On his second voyage, he couldn't find the Bahamas again. But he did stumble across what is now Puerto Rico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Still thought he was in Asia.

On his third and fourth journeys, he did discover the S. American mainland, but has no idea of it's size. He also visited Central America, but never found the Pacific. All in all, he was pretty hopeless.

I've always been amused that the United States celebrates as it's discoverer someone who never actually managed to land there.

Anyway, it is a bit arrogant to say anyone 'discovered' it. It wasn't lost. The locals knew where they were.

He got the credit , and disincluding the fact that people already there. But it said that the Vikings discovered the mainland way before Columbus. And when Columbus talk to the Natives of the West Indies there had lot of gold Columbus ask them where they got it and they said they trade it with the Dark skin people that Sail in from the East.

He id not. I am Norwegian and a Norwegian viking by the name of Leif Eirikson got there first, but he only stayed for a while and then he left. However he got there 500 years before Columbus.

Given that there were people living in the Americas before he landed there, would suggest that he didn't discover America, it was discovered long before he was born. It's been established that the Vikings were the first to discover the mainland, apart from the people who migrated to the Americas and established their own civilization there.

It's a convenient simplification.

He began the movement that led to the world outside America knowing about it. The Viking discovieries had been forgotten, and as to the people already there, they never sailed out to tell anyone, did they?

Christopher Columbus discovered the West Indies. Amerigo Vespucci discovered the American mainland.

He did not discver the Americas but it is widely recognised that he was probably the first European to reach the Americas. I think 'Discover' is misleading but it is the common term used in education.