has japan discoverd america before columbus? ...since they're geographically the closest neighbors.?
138326
Vespucci didn't get to America until 1497.  He was not the first.  It is possible, I suppose, That the Japanese made it, but there is no evidence to support that.  Some say that St. Brenden the Navigator may have been the first to land on America.
624121
Consider the date.  Columbus is attributed as the discoverer of America.  It was not determined to be America until after his death well after 1500.  I doubt there are too many maps in the time period you are requesting.  The second link below is a picture of a mid 1500's map from Spain.\n\nAn exception, however, is the Vinland map thought to have been made about 1440...thought to be the first of North America rendered by explorer Eiriksson.
1006879
I believe that is Okinotori Island also known as Parece Vela. It's a tiny Island claimed by the Japanese as their territory but disputed by the Chinese.
1104410
Ok sweetie, first of all ignore the ignorants, they are partially right but they still don't know how to answer the question. Ok here we go.\n\nAmerigo Vespucci or Américo Vespucio in spanish (see the relationship?) was an italian explorer that in 1501 arrived in what now is Guyana (North of "South" América) he sailed through the Amazona River and ended up in Patagonia (The very south of the American Continent).\n\nAmérico was the first European that realized that this was a new CONTINENT instead of Asia (What they thought at the begining, that's why we call our natives Indians because that was the destination of Columbus). The news spreaded rapidly over Europe and in 1507 a publication of a map made by the German Martin Waldseemüller using the description given by amerigo (Américo) showed the new land name as AMERICUS (In Latin) or América (Spanish because Americo was with the Spanish explorers) in honor of Americo.\n\nThe actual concept of América is the name of what people call North Central and South America which at the end and technically AND CORRECTLY speaking is the name of the whole land that starts in Canada and ends in Argentina. Back then, and, some countries now call americans refering to all people of the new continent (Not only the USA).\n\nNow in the USA, This country was called in honor to that name and also was the first country that became independent from a European authority.\n\nBeing called United States of America means States unified in a land called America which means in some kind of selfish and honorable way that the name of USA is America.\n\nThe only thing I ask you to do is please know and spread the word because there's people that really don't know how they became what they are, and yes, you can and should refer to American or americans to all people in the new continent and the nationality of the USA citizens, but you have to explain when you mean which one. To finish my answer is that everybody that know the difference and knows how to explain it is right and everybody in this WHOLE CONTINENT is an AMERICAN, the north, central and south definitions came after.\n\nThanks for letting me finally explain this to everybody. It took me a long time to figure the why's and the how's (I was born in the USA but raised in Venezuela so it helped expand my mind and knowledge).\n\nTootles
609748
One of Answers is:\nabout 9580.585km between Tokyo and Cairo.\n\nFollowing by each Latitude & Longitude (each one has position in this global, like your address, location data on the map).\n\nBut this answer is meaningless among another answers and flooded information. More inportant thing is process. For you under this question, it's way to find and lead the answer, how you think and do, that is taken much time.\n\nThis was and is used by navigation on vayage looking up the stars in ancient time, also by Columbus, too. They knew what was correct and immovable to find the location.\nYou can get it in your life!
619834
Most textbooks (with their Euro-centric biases) will say that Columbus discovered the Americas.  The real answer is nothing; Columbus discovered nothing.  You can not discover a continent that is already inhabited.
280968
By whom?  And do you actually mean the United States or do you mean North America?  \n\nMany anthropologists now believe that Asians crossed the Bering Strait thousands of years ago to become the first human settlers of North America.  The Vikings visited the coasts of Labrador, Newfoundland, and possibly the eastern seaboard hundreds of years before Columbus.  Portuguese and Spanish fishermen were fishing off the coast of Newfoundland long before 1492.  By anyone's definition, Columbus was a late-comer.  And in any event when he got to the coast of North America there were already people here, so he didn't actually "discover" it.
1091361
No American Indians are not myth.  They are of the human species just like you.  They are not extinct.\n\nThis is what the Smithsonian Institue says:\nThe American Indians are physically Mongoloids and thus must have originated in eastern Asia. The differences in appearance of the various New World tribes in recent times are due to (1) the initial variability of their Asian ancestors; (2) adaptations over several millennia to varied New World environments; and (3) different degrees of mixing in post-Columbian times with people of European, African, and Asian origins. Differences from their relatives in northeastern Asia are also due to changes in the latter populations after the separation. \n\nBering Strait, where the Eastern and Western Hemispheres face one another across a narrow strip of water, is the most likely place for migrating groups to have crossed into the New World. There is not sufficient evidence for immigration via other routes before the Norse arrivals in Greenland and Newfoundland about A.D. 1,000, and if indeed any other early voyages occurred, they were insignificant for the origins and composition of New World populations. \n\nJust when the Paleo-Indians--the first inhabitants of the Americas--entered the Americas is still under investigation. The prevailing theory calls for bands of interior hunters passing over the Bering Land Bridge, when sea levels were as much as 300 feet below at the end of the last Ice Age, and preceding through an "ice-free corridor" between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets to reach unglaciated lands to the south. Another theory calls for a coastal movement along the southern edge of the Land Bridge by early sea-adapted peoples. Certainly Paleo-Indians were well established south of the ice sheet by 12,000 years ago. Yet those probably were not the first arrivals. Sites and artifacts claimed to be older than this are gaining acceptance, but anything dated older than about 14,000 years ago, the date when rising sea levels submerged with Bering Land Bridge, separating Asia from the Americas, is still regarded with skepticism. However, some scholars do feel that humans were in North America at least by 20,000-25,000 years ago.\n\nAt no time, however, was the peopling of the New World a mass movement of people. More likely it was a trickle of small groups or bands entering from Asia over thousands of years. Among the last to arrive were the ancestors of the Eskimos who, settling along the Arctic coasts, effectively ended the migrations.
169807
I think so, but maybe I just think so because I love foreign culture and I want to know where everything is located.\n\nI've heard people from Europe complaining that American's don't know geography at all and they look down on that. I think people should know atleast some basics.\n\n(A side note - I was talking to someone yesterday who thought Korea was somewhere between the UK and Norway... I think they were refering to Denmark... -_-)
769653
ahh. that is weird..have you clicked on japan! thats like so weird!\nthat was amusing! great question!
380985
hey its japan where the sun rises earlier from other places
673594
When Columbus discovered America, or, according to some, when Leif Erickson discovered America.\n\nOr, to go further back, when the Native Americans immigrated across the land bridge that used to exist where the Bering Strait is now.\n\nBefore that, everyone in the world immigrated from the African continent.\n\nMurphysmom, the Mayflower landed in 1620.  Columbus landed in 1492.
3698
This question is never going to be answered to everyone's complete satisfaction. Vikings certainly visited America, but the time is disputed, and now there's a Chinese map ostensibly copied from one that predates Colombus by a few years.\n\nhttp://www.infohub.com/ARTICLES/20000327.html\nhttp://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5381851\n\nIn any case, when the Chinese/Vikings/Spanish "discovered" America, it was news to the inhabitants.  They knew where it was for 12000 years!
1077366
Well if it wasnt in Japan and located somewhere else.....hmmm maybe Tokian....lol
92249
Columbus was challenged by the Spanish government, specifically the Queen, to disprove the commonly accepted  notion that the world was flat.  Conceptually, the formulation of his proof that the world was indeed "round" (spherical, or possible cylindrical - it's not specified in history texts what "round" meant to Columbus) was that if he could set some starting point and then sail around the world in a constant direction, should he return to his starting point then his theory would be proved.\n\nHe ended up in the Indies, which has ever since been named the "West Indies", but thought he was elsewhere.  As far as Columbus was concerned, he was sure that he had found some one of the outermost islands of Cipango or Japan. So he dropped his anchors, ordered out his rowboat, and prepared to take possession of the land in the name of the queen of Spain, who had helped him in his enterprise.\n\nOf course, he wasn't in Japan or Cipango...if you want a full text detail of the story, follow the link in references...this was the short version.\n\nI hope this helps you!!
585724
A number of theories exist regarding the naming of North and South America. The most widely recognized is that they are named after Amerigo Vespucci, who was the first European to suggest that the Americas were not the East Indies, but a New World, previously undiscovered by Europeans. The second and less generally accepted is that the continents are named after an English merchant named Richard Amerike from Bristol, who is believed to have financed John Cabot's voyage of discovery from England to Newfoundland in 1497. A third theory that has been advanced is that America was named for a Spanish sailor bearing the ancient Visigothic name of 'Amairick'.\n\nThe America's are the European name for the area know as the new world, once humans formd a country the people who are citizens are called AMERICAN's, a shortened name of USA. All US citizens are called Ameicans but not all people who live in the US are called that, some are called Illegal Immigrants, Undocumanted workers or plainly immigants
825509
Up until relatively recently, one of the island chains belonging to the state of Alaska was technically on the other side of the International Date Line from the rest of the country. This meant that the islands were the furthest "east" someone could go (without crossing the date line), yet the state itself, generally speaking, was the furthest west land area of the political entity known as the United States of America. \n\nThe same thing happened with another small island group inthe south-central Pacific ... basically, one half of the country was on one side of the date line and the other half was on the other.\n\nThe date line was subsequently "jiggled", to keep those countries whose territories are in the vicinity of the date line to remain "on the same side".\n\nTherefore, (from the US perspective) Alaska is - at present - the WESTERNMOST state, and Maine is the EASTERNMOST (neglecting the off-shore protectorates of Puerto Rico and Guam).\n\nHowever, we ALSO need to look at how longitude is measured. "Eastward" occurs from the line of 0 longitude (approximately Greenwich England) and moves toward Europe and Asia. "Westward" occurs from the same starting point and moves west over the Atlantic and across North America. The line of longitude that is directly opposite from 0 would be 180 ... which happens to pass through Alaska. Thus Alaska could be both "eastern- and western-most"