Arthur E. answered • 04/12/19
National Geographic Education Coordinator
When we say "discovered," we usually have a very special meaning in mind. We mean that people from one civilization came to a region where no one from their place had been before. As you know, an explorer often finds a people and a civilization already living in the place he "discovers." Why not say these people discovered it before him?
From our Western-civilization point of view, we say that Columbus discovered America. This is because after his discovery, the New World he found began to be visited and finally populated from the Old World. But 500 years before Columbus was born, the Norsemen did a bit of "discovering," too. They sailed west to discover Iceland, then Greenland, and later the American mainland.
Did you know that the Chinese tell of an even earlier voyage by Chinese sailors to discover what has become California? And people of the South China Sea Islands still sing of the great men of their distant past who sailed to South America long before the white man reached either South America or the South Sea Islands.
For all we know, there may have been many ages of exploration thousands of years ago. There were certainly ages of exploration before the time of Columbus. Perhaps we might say that neither Columbus, nor the Norsemen before him, "discovered" America. Weren't the Indians already living here for many centuries before the white man arrived?
And who can say that they didn't set out on a voyage of discovery? It is believed that they came from Asia, tho we don't know when or how they made the trip. They probably reached America over a period of centuries and by different routes. They also probably sent their scouts ahead to seek out routes by land or sea. These scouts were their explorers, and perhaps it was really they who discovered America!
But what does it mean: “to discover”? The word comes from the two roots dis- and cover. Just as the words disconnect, discharge, and disagree, mean the opposite of their no-prefix counterparts, to discover means to take away that which has covered your eyes from view, and dis-cover what was hidden before.
For nine months our eyes were closed in our mother’s womb, but when we first opened our eyes, each and every one of us discovered America for ourselves. We have all looked at a map and seen the great countries of the world, so in the truest sense of the word, we ALL discovered America.
