Yeah the Portuguese keeping Brasil secret is seductive conspiracy theory. I think that America being there at all is super hindsight-y. A priori there were no

Yeah the Portuguese keeping Brasil secret is seductive conspiracy theory. I think that America being there at all is super hindsight-y. A priori there were no states in America that had made contact with the people’s across Eurasia and Africa. There were the Vikings, and some northern nomads. The Pacific is huge. So big that you can’t fit it all in one hemisphere. We have had long periods with single supercontinents and no other major landmasses. Sailing west into the Atlantic as a European was a massive gamble. Matched only by the navigators of the South Pacific, and even then they were far more competent navigators of open ocean and had techniques that Columbus didn’t have. He just had heaps of money, some great boats, and huge will.