To many, Columbus is still the man who discovered America. Yet, there had been others before him. The Viking Leif Eriksson, who around 1000 AD became the first European to set foot on American soil. A medieval Welsh Prince named Madoc supposed to have built fortified places along the Ohio River. And a King from West-African Mali, who is said to have used his immeasurable riches to finance a gigantic fleet, 200 years before Columbus.
As we follow their tracks through ancient texts and documents, sifting legend from myth with the help of up to date archaeological research, it becomes abundantly clear that Columbus did not venture into the unknown. The master mariner himself was an ardent collector of maps and nautical data, and he knew that there was land in West and that others had preceded him.This is their story.
Up Next in Viking Age
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History Hit Book Club with Cat Jarman...
Matt Lewis is joined by his Gone Medieval co-host Cat Jarman, author of River Kings: the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads.
Told as a riveting story of the Vikings and the methods we use to understand them, River Kings is a major reassessment of the fierce, often-mythologised voyagers ...
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Vikings: A History of the Northmen
The Vikings have never lost their appeal to scholars and enthusiasts. Now Wayne Bartlett has written a great new survey of the Viking World from Newfoundland to Central Asia. Dan got him on the podcast to ask him the central questions of the Viking Age. What does Viking even mean? Why did they ex...
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