Who was the first to arrive in America, Christopher Columbus or Amerigo Vespucci?

Question

How will you differentiate the two according to their achievements and contributions to the world's history?

Answer 1

It's likely that Columbus arrived before Vespucci especially when you consider the fact that it wasn't until several years after Columbus' expedition that Vespucci made the claim that he was here first.

Answer 2

Doesn't matter, there were already people here. They didn't discover a thing. I strongly suggest you read A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn.

Answer 3

Leif Ericson was the first Non-Native to discover America as it is now known. He was born in 970 and died in 1020 he was a Norse explorer who was probably the first European to land in North America (excluding Greenland). According to the Sagas of Icelanders, he established a Norse settlement at Vinland, which has been tentatively identified with the L'Anse aux Meadows Norse site on the northern tip of the island of Newfoundland in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.

Amerigo Vespucci was the first person to demonstrate that the New World discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 was not the eastern appendage of Asia, but rather a previously-unknown "fourth" continent. The continents of North and South America (and, by extension, the United States of America) derive their name from the feminized Latin version of his first name.

Amerigo played a senior role in two voyages which explored the east coast of South America between 1499 and 1502. On the first of these voyages he discovered that South America extended much further south than believed by other European explorers crossing the Atlantic, who thought they were reaching Asia (the Indies). Vespucci's voyages became widely known in Europe after two accounts attributed to him were published between 1502 and 1504. In 1507, Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the new continent America after Vespucci's first name, Amerigo.

Christopher Columbus was a navigator, colonizer and explorer whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the Western Hemisphere and of the American continents. Though not the first to reach the Americas from Afro-Eurasia — preceded some five hundred years by Leif Ericson, and perhaps by (undocumented) others — Columbus initiated widespread contact between Europeans and indigenous Americans. With his several hapless attempts at establishing a settlement on the island of Hispaniola, he personally initiated the process of Spanish colonization which foreshadowed general European colonization of the "New World."

So....The correct answer to your question is Christopher Columbus.

Answer 4

The first of the two you listed was Columbus.  He landed on an island in Carribean and thought he was near Asia.  Vespucci was a mapmaker that knew he was in a different landmass than Asia.  

In response to all the other posts.  There are no "native" americans, all people in North and South America immigrated from somewhere else.

Answer 5

Niether of them will take the blame.

Answer 6

The Native American Indian's, were already "here" First.

Answer 7

The Native Americans arrived long before anyone else. The Vikings arrived centuries before Columbus. Columbus is credited with "discovering" the New World even though he discovered nothing and thought he'd reached Asia. Amerigo Vaspucci was a map maker who came after Columbus. His name gave itself to North and South America.

Answer 8

who was first.?..hmmm....Native Americans..Africans.. & .Asians..then came Amerigo & Chris (don't forget only Europeans thought the world was flat)...Africans and Asians (before slavery and indenture servitude) freely traded with the native populations.

As for contributions, Amerigo and Chris left a legacy of colonization,  disease as well as wanton murder and rape...But hey at least America (as we know it) came from all of that....

Answer 9

Vikings got here before either one of them. I believe columbus was the first of those two though. However, he thought he was somewhere in Asia.

Natives found it before anyone.