Who was first? : discovering the Americas

by Russell Freedman

Paper Book, 2007

Status

Available

Call number

E101 .F885 2007

Publication

New York : Clarion Books, c2007.

Description

"For a long time, most people believed that Christopher Columbus was the first explorer to 'discover' America--the first to make a successful round-trip voyage across the Atlantic. But in recent years, as new evidence has come to light, our understanding of history has changed. We know now that Columbus was among the last explorers to reach the Americas, not the first"--Book jacket.

User reviews

LibraryThing member abbylibrarian
In fourteen hundred and ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

Well, yes. But many other people sailed the ocean blue as well. Chinese explorers possibly made it to America, vikings certainly did, not to mention the millions of people who were, y'know, already here. Freedman gives an overview
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of all these different groups of people, presenting theories about who might have arrived in America when and how.
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LibraryThing member jrozean0128
This intriguing informational book looks at the traditional viewpoints on the discovery of the Americas and challenges each of. There is a beginning chapter that tells the famous story of Columbus and his ventures in the Bahamas. Then a quick chapter proposes that ideas that explorers from China
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actually beat Columbus to the Americas by about a hundred years. Then proof is offered that documents a Viking settlement led by Leif Erikkson told by the Saga of Vineland. An entire chapter is dedicated to the native people of the Americas. And finally, an anthropological look at evidence that native Americans might have existed for up to 30,000 years ago

I was incredibly intrigued by the up to date version of American history. I had seen such things like this on the History Channel and I was refreshed to see it showing up in children’s literature.

One thing I would have children do in my social studies class is have them view some of the pictures from this book without reading the text to them. I would then start a discussion on what we all think these pictures have to do with the exploration of the Americas. For example, I would show them a picture the Chinese explorer Zheng He and asked them what they think he might have to do with American exploration. We’ve never heard of him right? Or I might show them the photographs of the Viking houses in Newfoundland and ask them who they think built houses like that in Newfoundland. Another thing I would have them to is to build a homemade quadrant – which is a tool used to measure angles of elevation. Early sailors used them to measure the angle of elevation to the north star. They were used this information for navigation. It would be an interesting point that the Vikings used their instinct rather than instrumentation to navigate.
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LibraryThing member jkh322
4starP
"By analyzing slight changes in DNA that take place over time, geneticists can trace human ancestry far back into the past. Their research suggests that there were probably several different waves of migration to the Americas, and that the earliest immigrants arrived from Siberia and
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northeast Asia between 20,000 and 30,000 years ago." (p.76)
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LibraryThing member shelf-employed
Who Was First? Discovering the Americas is a detailed look at the many possible interpretations of the "discovery" of the Americas. Working backwards , Russell Freedman begins with Columbus' well-known voyage, and travels back in time to the voyages of China's Zheng He and Scandinavia's Leif
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Eriksson, to the journeys of America's true "first" discoverers, Stone Age immigrants who arrived 20, 30 or even 50 thousand years ago.

Who Was First? makes use of first person accounts and log books when available, and offers fascinating and little-known facts. When Columbus "discovered" America, "the central Mexican plateau, heartland of the Aztec empire, may have contained as many as 25 million people, compared to fewer than 10 million living in Spain and Portugal. That would have made Mexico the most densely populated place on Earth at the time, with more people per square mile than China or India." (!) A lesson, not only in history, but in scientific method, Freedman carefully distinguishes between myth, theory, probability, and fact.

Read with enthusiasm and zeal for the topic, L.J. Ganser's rendering of Freedman's book should keep listeners engaged, but sadly, listeners of the audio version will miss out on the many maps and photos in the print version.

Although, the audiobook version makes no comment about sources, a look at the print copy shows that Freedman has done his customarily excellent job of research. Chapter notes, Bibliography, Acknowledgements, Picture Credits and Index are included in the print version. (1 hour, 45 minutes on 2 CDs or mp3 download)
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LibraryThing member hcurrey
This book does a good job of addressing the fact that Columbus didn't discover anything, and was most likely NOT the first European to visit North America. This would be a useful addition to a middle-grades or middle school study of explorers.
LibraryThing member kmmoore
Russell Freedman seeks to show his readers that, despite what we know or what is being taught about the discovery of the Americas, Christopher Columbus was not the first person to set foot on the land. Freedman begins his book with the widely known story of Christopher Columbus and his voyages to
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the "New World". In the following chapters, he looks to examine different people that came before Columbus. He goes backwards in time, starting with Columbus in 1492, then China in early 1400's, Lief the Lucky four hundreds years before that, Native Americans hundreds years before that, and he ends with the question "Who really discovered America?" and looks at prehistoric evidence to show that people have been here all along.
I think this book would be a good tool to show students that the history of the Americas starts long before Columbus set foot on these lands. The history of these lands is just as vast and important as the history of the rest of the world.
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LibraryThing member themulhern
Well-selected quotations, well-captioned illustrations. It looks like the text was worked over by an illiterate editor, though. Favorite line: Archaeologists found that the spearhead could penetrate the tough hide of circus elephants that had died of natural causes. One assumes that the elephants
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that had been put down because they had killed their trainers must have had skin far too tough to be penetrated by that spearhead. There is also a sad conflation of primacy with discovery. But one assumes that Freedman himself may not be to blame. He helpfully provides a selected bibliography, which may be better.
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Language

Physical description

vii, 88 p.; 25 cm

ISBN

0618663916 / 9780618663910

Barcode

34662000922200
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