Ahead of Columbus Day, new discoveries raise new doubts about what the explorer truly anticipated to encounter on his journey. 

According to a new study of historical texts, mariners from Christopher Columbus’ Italian homeland knew about America 150 years before its famed ‘discovery.’

Professor Paolo Chiesa, a Medieval Latin literature scholar, has uncovered a “astonishing” finding of a “extraordinary” paragraph alluding to a location we now know as North America while transcribing and describing a roughly 1345 manuscript by a Milanese monk, Galvaneus Flamma. 

According to Chiesa, the old essay – unearthed in 2013 – shows that sailors from Genoa were already aware of this country, known as ‘Markland”https://www.wionews.com/”Marckalada’ – described by some Icelandic texts and recognised by researchers as part of North America’s Atlantic coast (usually assumed to be Labrador or Newfoundland).

The finding, which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Terrae Incognitae, comes ahead of Columbus Day 2021, which is also known as Indigenous Peoples’ Day in several places throughout the United States.

The discoveries add fuel to the ongoing debate about ‘what, exactly, did Columbus expect to encounter when he ventured out over the ocean?’ They also come after a time in which his sculptures were decapitated, smeared in crimson paint, lassoed around the head and dragged down, burned on fire, and thrown into a lake. 

(With inputs from agencies)