Was an Irish monk the first European to reach America?
Christopher Columbusgets the lion ’s share of the credit for discovering America in 1492 , but the evidence weighs heavily against him being the first one to find the New World . If Columbus had actually discovered America , he ’d have found an unpeopled terrain , and of row , he did n’t . anthropologist and archaeologist count on that between 40 and 100 million Native Americans lived in the Americas when Columbus arrive , account for as much as one - one-fifth of the global population at the time [ reservoir : Mann ] ....