The question of whether Europeans migrated to and inhabited the Americas prior to the modern discovery by Columbus has been of longstanding interest and controversy. In fact, for over 200 years scholars have asked whether late Pleistocene (18,000-13,000 years ago) or early to middle Holocene (12,000-5,000 years ago) Europeans also might have migrated to the Americas prior to Columbus’ 1492 discovery. The question had been posed so often that by 1891 a volume entitled “America Not Discovered by Columbus," by Rasmus B. Anderson, contained a bibliography with over 350 entries on the topic. It listed claims of America’s discovery not only by Europeans, but also by Chinese, Arabs, Welsh, Venetians, Portuguese, and Poles. However, the majority of the references supported the notion of Vikings as the first Old World cultural group to reach the Americas.
This hypothesis was confirmed in 1960 when Norse ruins at L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland were found by Helge Ingstad. Evidence from L’Anse aux Meadows and a few other sites found on the north Atlantic coast indicates that Norse-related peoples settled a few outposts of a couple dozen individuals in North America around 1,000 years ago. These outposts did not, however, lead to a viable, unique population in the Americas. Instead, they most likely only lasted a season or two, based on radiocarbon dates obtained from the sites. Thus, if there was any contact with American Indians or First Nation peoples by Old World cultural groups, it would have been scant and short-term.
More recently, several sites and lines of evidence have been cited as supporting an even earlier possible migration of Europeans into the Americas. Originally proposed by Nels C. Nelson in 1936 and later supported by Frank Hibben, the Solutrean hypothesis has gained popularity in years as the Clovis-first model of the peopling of the Americas has been slowly debunked. The Solutrean hypothesis is based on leaf-shaped bifaces and the remains of extinct fauna recovered in the deepest culture-bearing stratum of several sites across the United States. Hibben noted that the flaking technology of the artifacts recovered from one of these sites – Sandia Cave in New Mexico – more closely resembled the Solutrean technology of Paleolithic era France than Clovis era fluted points from North America. The Solutrean hypothesis, as a result of this cursory evidence and the fact that the Clovis-first model is no longer feasible, postulates that Upper Palaeolithic peoples from Europe utilizing Solutrean lithic technology migrated into the Americas during the late Pleistocene (18,000-13,000 years ago), most likely along the partially frozen North Atlantic. Evidence supporting such an argument, however, has remained elusive and highly controversial. One of the most noteworthy limitations of the Solutrean hypothesis is the fact that primarily because the Solutrean ended in Europe at least 5,000 years before the first recognized lithic technology has been conclusively dated for the Americas.
Likewise, archaeological, craniomorphological, and genetic evidence argues against any pre-Columbus European contact or settlement of the Americas. In fact, there is a growing body of evidence and a number of sites that demonstrate long-term indigenous growth and cultural development in the Americas. Sites such as Gault and Cueva Quebrada in Texas, Monte Verde in Chile, Meadowcroft in Pennsylvania, and Cactus Hill in Virginia all point to a pre-Clovis initial settling of the Western Hemisphere. So did Europeans discover the Americas before Columbus? The evidence says yes. Did they migrate to, or settle, the Americas prior to Columbus’ modern-day colonial discovery? The evidence says no. The only people who migrated to, and settled, the Americas before the modern European colonial period, based on the latest empirical evidence, were the ancestors of today’s American Indian, Alaskan Native, and First Nation peoples.
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