From the history of discovery and research in North America


Long before the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, Normans visited the inhabitants of the Scandinavian Peninsula. In the X century. they led Eirik Raudi from the island of Iceland set off across the expanses of the ocean to the west and reached an unknown land – the island of Greenland. A thousand years ago, the glaciation of Greenland was less than now. Green meadows appeared to the Normans. The affected navigators gave the new lands the name Greenland. Later Erica Raudi’s son Leiv Eyrikson continued his voyage to the southwest, reached the shores of an unknown land and returned to Greenland with a load of wood. Due to the harsh living conditions in Greenland, the settlers became extinct. About the new lands forgotten. Normans, like later Columbus, did not realize that they had discovered a new continent.

At the time when Columbus was going on his third trip, an Italian navigator who was in the service of the English king. John Cabot re-opened the island

of Newfoundland.

After the voyages of Columbus, the southern part of the continent was explored and captured by the Spaniards. In 1519 the military expedition of the conquistador Hernando de Cortes conquered the ancient Aztec state existing on the territory of modern Mexico. Capturing the capital of the Aztecs Tenochtitlan. Hernando Cortes produced huge treasures that enriched Spain, and turned the Indians into slaves. In the years 1539-1541. Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto, who went west from the peninsula of Florida, opened the coast of Mississippi and reached the prairies of North America. Here the Spaniards saw huge herds of buffalo and many settlements of Indians.

North-western coasts of North America became known to Europeans only in the XVIII century. They were investigated by a Russian expedition led by Vitus Bering and our compatriot Alexei Chirikov. They discovered the Bering Strait, the Aleutian Islands and Alaska.

Gradually colonized and settled by immigrants from Europe the whole territory of the continent, where in the course of time such large independent states as Canada, the USA and Mexico were formed.


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From the history of discovery and research in North America