It is one of the anomalies of human history that despite our passion for knowledge, we are still in doubt as to who actually "discovered" the North American continent. According to author/historian Fredrick J. Pohl, the glory should go to none other than Prince Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, who set off on a voyage of discovery for "a very great country" and dropped anchor in Guysborough Harbour, Nova Scotia, on June 2, 1398 almost a century before Columbus's and Cabot's Historic voyages.
Pohl takes the letters of the Italian navigator Zeno investigates his connection to Henry Sinclair. The theory is that Zeno helped Sinclair navigate to Newfoundland. Pohl's initial findings are in Zeno's letters themselves. In 1398, according to the Zeno narrative, Zeno sailed across the Atlantic with a "Prince of the Islands" (Sinclair). Pohl does some astonishing calligraphy detective work on Zeno's maps and examines the Micmac Indian legend of Glooscap. According the Micmac legends, Glooscap sailed on an island with tall trees and was white. Pohl's detective work makes for a good argument that in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, but got beat to the punch by a Scotsman. The only evidence I am truly surprised Pohl did not introduce was the carvings of Indian Corn at the Sinclair's Rosslyn Chapel in Edinburgh. The construction on the Chapel began in 1446, 50 years before anyone in Europe should have know of the existence of corn.
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