Talk:European colonization of the Americas

Discoverers

Well I think that if you mention Columbus, Cabot and all the others in the first paragraph I think Pedro Alvares Cabral (Brazil) and Corte-Real (Newfoundland) as well as João Lavrador (Labrador) are worth mentioning

sorry, nevermind

Is there any way we could use this material that was deleted from Immigration to the United States?

Everything under the heading of "Colonization of North America" was deleted from Immigration to the United States... see the old version [1]. Can we use any of that in this article? It cites a source, "The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy by Kory L. Meyerink and Loretto Dennis Szucs", which is better than the complete lack of sources for our current page here.

help??

i need to know what happened atfer the european colonization; how did both culture groups of Latin America change.?

-thanks.

Jade.

Questionable map

The main map used in this article, File:Colonization of the Americas 1750.PNG, seems questionable to me in several ways. First, it's description page cites no sources whatsoever. Second, regarding its caption, "Territories in the Americas colonized or claimed by a European great power in 1750": there are a number of problems with the phrase "colonized or claimed". Take the "Spanish Territory" as colored on the map, for example--Spain claimed but did not colonized Patagonia, which is depicted as "Spanish Territory"; and Spain also claimed but did not colonized the western parts of North America, including Alaska, and made significant efforts to make these claims good, yet on the map "Spanish Territory" is depicted as vaguely conforming to colonization instead of claims. So which is it? Since the caption says "colonized or claimed" I don't see why western North America and Alaska should not be colored as Spanish claims. And these are only some of the map's problems with "Spanish Territory". Similar problems can be pointed out for the other European "great powers". Russian "territory" is shown extending down the coast to what's now the US-Canada border, but not Vancouver Island. Yet Russian did not colonize the coast south of Sitka, *except* for Fort Ross, California. So I can't see why Russian Territory is being shown like this. It's neither claims nor colonization. Furthermore, both claims and colonization by Russia were much much more limited in 1750. After all, 1750 is barely a decade after the voyages of Vitus Bering. Russian activity in 1750 was limited to the westernmost Aleutian Islands and no colonization had occurred. No Europeans of any nationality had even explored the coast between the Aleutian Islands and Mexico. California was still unexplored at the time! There are similar problems with the rest of the map. I realize that maps like this are nearly impossible to make without taking some liberties. But this one seems particularly confusing. Its total lack of source citations and obvious mistakes are especially troubling. Pfly (talk) 09:57, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Which seems a good reason to remove it. Could you put your comments on the talk page of the map please? Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 10:55, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

late 1630's

What European countries did the colonists immigrate from in Maryland? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.86.8.48 (talk) 20:40, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

See British colonization of the Americas, and next time remember, this is an encylopedia, not a reference desk to do your research for you. Heiro 00:21, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

The Solutrean theory

The theory, called by one Wiki user, a "fringe theory" (maybe it is so- I'm not trying to say the other user is wrong- though I would care to disagree), states that a group of people from the continent of Europe long ago made their way into the vast lands of the continent of North America, and for at least a long enough time to have an unmistakable influence on the Clovis people, stayed in the area. As they are Europeans, and settled in the area, they were European colonizers, just as in the sense of any others. This theory, should not be considered to be a "fringe theory" in this case, as it does not in any way go against the mainstream view of European colonization of the Americas, it only adds an evidenced theory, that suggests that Europeans did in fact have some amount of colonization long before what is known by most people (which admittedly, does not seem to be even half of the things in this Wiki page, anyways). What shall be the consensus on the adding of a link, and possibly a small section about the theory, onto this page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.172.32.254 (talk) 07:49, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

what do the scholarly journals say about the theory, and the textbooks? Rjensen (talk) 00:51, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

"We are profoundly skeptical of this claim; we believe that the many differences between Solutrean and Clovis are far more significant than the few similarities, the latter being readily explained by the well-known phenomenon of technological convergence or parallelism. The origin and arrival time of the first Americans remain uncertain, but not so uncertain that we need to look elsewhere other than north-east Asia." taken from here.

"It is well accepted that the Americas were the last continents reached by modern humans, most likely through Beringia. However, the precise time and mode of the colonization of the New World remain hotly disputed issues. Native American populations exhibit almost exclusively five mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroups (A–D and X). Haplogroups A–D are also frequent in Asia, suggesting a northeastern Asian origin of these lineages. However, the differential pattern of distribution and frequency of haplogroup X led some to suggest that it may represent an independent migration to the Americas. Here we show, by using 86 complete mitochondrial genomes, that all Native American haplogroups, including haplogroup X, were part of a single founding population, thereby refuting multiple-migration models. A detailed demographic history of the mtDNA sequences estimated with a Bayesian coalescent method indicates a complex model for the peopling of the Americas, in which the initial differentiation from Asian populations ended with a moderate bottleneck in Beringia during the last glacial maximum (LGM), around 23,000 to 19,000 years ago. Toward the end of the LGM, a strong population expansion started 18,000 and finished 15,000 years ago. These results support a pre-Clovis occupation of the New World, suggesting a rapid settlement of the continent along a Pacific coastal route." from here

I'm sure if I looked hard, I could find even more. Its a fringe theory. Heiro 00:58, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

"This particular story I wouldn't ordinarily have commented on, but I'm covering New World origins in my genetics course this week. Which is, of course, the most inconvenient problem with the Solutrean scenario. That is, not "Gee, why did they lose the creative urge?", but "Gee, how did they suddenly get all those Asian genes?"

The sad part, is that by ignoring this aspect the news story really doesn't give the Solutrean side a chance to show off an ingenious interpretation of the genetics. Which has a lot in common with the recent LDS interpretations: early Solutrean genes got swamped by later Asian immigrants.

Or maybe Polynesians. Or Australians." John Hawkes

"Straus has long opposed the idea that Clovis technology at 11,000 BC is "related" to Solutrean technology in Spain and France, from which it is separated by not only 5-6000 years, but also by 5000 km of the North Atlantic. Straus claims there is no evidence that Solutrean people had deep-sea navigation knowledge or equipment and that the superficial similarities in point shape are the result of technological convergence. In 2000, Straus wrote a detailed article for the American Antiquity journal debunking the theory of a Transatlantic Solutrean migration."Lawrence Straus

Not to many ever though is was a good theory. The predominate theory for haplogroup X (subclade X2a) appearance in North America is migration along with A,B,C, and D mtDNA groups; from a matrilineal ancestral source, originating in the Altai Region of central Asia Moxy (talk) 01:55, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

• First peoples in a new world: colonizing ice age America (2009)
• Atlas of the North American Indian (2009)
• Prehistoric Projectile Points Found Along the Atlantic Coastal Plain (2007)
• The American discovery of Europe (2007)
• The first Americans: race, evolution, and the origin of Native Americans (2005)

I assume then, that none of the people interested enough in the subject to say yes, or no to my proposal, are going to be in favor of it. Thank you fellow Wiki users for taking the time to do your counter-argument. If it's not understood, that means I surrender.

Oh, we understood. Look at the responses and the links that were provided showing how the mainstream doesn't give the idea any credence and the actual science at this point argues strongly against it. Heiro 02:31, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Pre-Columbian Trade, colonization, maps, etc.

The scholarly concensus on the subject of pre-Columbian visits to the Americas is kind of frightening. I don't know if it is stubbornness or something else, but this sort of thing is precisely why conspiracy theories are made. Wikipedia relies on reliably sourced information appropriate for an encyclopedia, and that obviously makes sense. But there are certain subjects, such as this, where the scholars and historians should be considered unreliable sources because they can be proven to be following a dead end of incestuous material, Western propaganda likely created by the church needing a hero and a holiday. Columbus' own journals prove that not only were they using pre-drawn maps of the Americas to navigate, but that West Africans had been visiting for centuries in large ships and even colonized Haiti. It was not the descendants of post-Columbia slaves living in the Caribbean. This information is well sourced and scholars avoid it like the plague. Jesuits wrote the people in Chile spoke a dialect of Basque. The Spanish wrote of encountering white natives who claimed to have shipwrecked ancestors who were sea traders. Artifacts written in Phoenician have been found and have not been debunked as hoaxes. There is some less reliable info about Jewish and Muslim traders and their religious and cultural influence on native populations. In light of everything else which is well-sourced, this is at least worth researching yet because it is inconvenient to established history it gets filed under fringe. The Asian and Arab knowledge of the Americas is too well sourced to be ignored forever (it's kinda where the Viking thing was at a few decades back).

So why does truth need to be established by a scholarly opinion? Opinions are not facts, and their opinions are ignoring facts in the source material itself not unlike what a conspiracy theorist does. It's great that public schools place less emphasis on Columbus these days. It's great that they even teach those taboo truths about his rather genocidal side to the natives. So maybe progress is really being made. But we have a long way to go before people accept that Christopher Columbus is more of a fictional modern creation than his historical self. And speaking of fringe, you might be interested in reading what people say about his statue pointing East. Yeah he thought he found the Indies. But when the statue was erected they knew he didn't. Seems like an odd direction to point.

Fringe is cryptozoology, holographic 9/11 planes, UFOs, ghosts, etc. Fringe is not verifyiable facts at the source that debunk a scholar's opinion. 15th and 16th century cartography alone (what survived) proves that there were people in Europe aware of details they should not have known giving what we are told in school. And if you spend enough time examining facts (facts, not theories, and nothing fringe) you would know that the Americas were known of and explored. Y Europeans before Columbus was even born. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.147.96.37 (talk) 00:32, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

This would require a change in basic Wikipedia policies, and that's not going to happen. Dougweller (talk) 07:24, 20 February 2012 (UTC)