The Italians knew America 150 years before the voyage of Christopher Columbus

The people of Genoa knew the Americas more than 150 years before their most famous son arrived in the New World, according to a study by the University of Milan.

A Genoese brother recorded an account of sailors from an impressive continent beyond Greenland, inhabited by “enormous giants”, in 1340, long before Christopher Columbus sailed the blue of the ocean in 1492, reports the Times of London.

“In this country there are buildings with stone slabs so huge that no one could build with them except huge giants. There are also green trees, animals and a great number of birds, ”wrote Brother Galvaneus Flamma in a singular volume called the Cronica Universalis.

“This astonishing find is the first known report to circulate in the Mediterranean of the American continent, and if Columbus was aware of what these sailors knew, it could have helped him to convince him to make his trip,” said Paolo Chiesa. , who led research at the University of Milan. His team’s findings appear in Terrae Incognitae, the Society’s Journal for the History of Discoveries.

The stories were passed down by Viking sailors, who historians say first visited North America around the year 1000.

“Nordic legends describe the journeys, but so far there has been no evidence that the word of this land has spread to the Mediterranean,” Chiesa said.

There is only one copy of the Cronica Univesalis and it was sold by Christie’s to a private American collector in 1996 for $ 14,950.

It remains unpublished, although a public edition is planned, reports the Times.