Was America Discovered Before Columbus?

From the western-civilization point of view, it is said 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.

People of the South Sea Islands still sing of the great man of their distant past who sailed to South America long before the white man reached either South America or the South Sea Islands. Perhaps it may be said that neither Columbus nor the Norsemen discovered America. It is believed that they came from Asia, though it is unknown when or how they made the trip. Probably they reached America over a period of centuries and by different ways. 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.

THe Ancient Chinese!! They sent fleets of up to ten thousand ships crewed with men women and children, livestock, plants. They colonised the whole of the Pacific Rim hundreds of years before Columbus was born. Have you ever considered why Eskimos, Native Americans, Central and South American Indians all have oriental characteristics? Certain words in modern day Peruvian Indian culture are the same as Chinese i.e. Rice, Chicken, Water, Man, Woman etc. Etc. There have been wrecks located all along the western coast of the Americas as far South as Antarctica which are believed to be Chinese. No documented evidence survived the purges of chairman Mao who destroyed almost all of Chinese historical archives during the 1930's.