Steve,
You seem to be forgetting about 600 years of dark ages. You remember those times when most of Western Europe slid back into the stone age.
While Europe was moving backward in time, civilization was flourishing with the growth of great cities and institutions of higher learning in much of the rest of the world.
Because it would be heresy to acknowledge the obvious fact that European culture and institutions have been far more successful than any other in the world because they are, well, superior to those of most other societies.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, European Christian civilization fell into a pretty sorry state of affairs. We could just as easily take a picture of the world circa 850 AD and claim the Muslim peoples were obviously superior to the Europeans. Or we could compare the Europeans to the Chinese of the time or perhaps the Mayans in the Americas.
A people's prominence in the affairs of the world tend to be cyclical in nature. That does not mean any one people or culture is superior to another. It just depends on which window in time one wishes to peer through.
Oh, right, Africans discovered America. I see where you're coming from now.
No, I think historians pretty solidly agree that honor belongs to the Scandinavians. Especially since Scandinavian carvings have been found as far east as Minnesota and dated to 1030AD.
But that certainly does not mean other peoples of the world were not also exploring and discovering at the same time and subsequently.
Is it not curious that the enlightened courts of Europe including Spain, Portugal, and England had no knowledge of Lief Erickson's travels? Why was it necessary for Columbus to repeat the discovery of the Americas? Perhaps ancient peoples were not very good at sharing information across the world.
