Name: Chatel Whitely Date: October 24. 2008 Form: 6 Subject: History The Vikings were people who were from mainly Denmark, Sweden and Norway who all spoke one common language, which was called the Old Norse. There are many types of evidence including written, archaeological and ecological and oral evidence which suggest that the Vikings had been to the Americas before 1492. There is much more strong evidence to support the theory that the Africans were in the Americas before the Europeans. Evidence such as artifacts, linguistics and botanical evidences have been discovered. Written There are written accounts or sagas from the King of Denmark which mentions the visitation of a land by the Vikings which they called Vinland. Vinland shares many similarities with the Americas. This point shows that the Vikings had indeed visited the Americas. This fact has been debated and both historians and archeologists are convinced that there is some amount of validity in these written accounts. For the Africans, Peter Martyr recorded events of his first visit to the Americas with the explorer Balboa, where the Spaniards were meeting the Africans and it was the first time that they (the Africans) were been seen in the Americas. Columbia was an easily accessed point for shipwrecked African sailors so it is not hard to see how exactly the Africans may have ended up in the Americas. Columbus also noted on his visits how similarly the cloth which the Amerindians used was similar to those which the Africans in Guinea used. An archaeological excavation uncovered a Viking settlement in Newfoundland (located in Eastern region of Canada). At this settlement items were found that were not common to the area but were native to a region further down south which shows that not only did they visit the Americas but also explored. Another important piece of evidence to support the claim that the Vikings had been in the Americas before 1492 is that a Norse coin wasfound of the Coast of...