Title pretty much sums things up
In: 6
The Americas are *far* from where most people lived in both Europe and Asia. Maps do not do it justice. And trips of that length are extremely expensive to fund, and need a payoff. Only reason Columbus found Cuba etc is because of political reasons, trading with the far east was too expensive the way they had to do it.
In reality, Asians discovered the America’s during the ice age. They migrated over from modern day Russia when the oceans were lower and a land bridge was formed. More “modern day” Asian and European cultures took so long because sailing across an ocean is hard. The vikings barely made it when they landed in Canada in 1021.
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As to the latter, was first contact between Asian nations and the Americas initiated by the West? Curious if so, highlights the motivations of different peoples.
But the Pacific is vast.
The Chinese were the richest nation on Earth during the Age of Exploration. European nations were desperate to trade with China; China was not desperate to trade with anyone. Furthermore, the Pacific is much wider than the Atlantic and the trade winds don’t favor sailing from China to America.
>The ancestors of the American Indians were nomadic hunters of northeast Asia who migrated over the Bering Strait land bridge into North America probably during the last glacial period (11,500–30,000 years ago). By c. 10,000 bc they had occupied much of North, Central, and South America.
https://www.britannica.com/summary/American-Indian
Oceans are massive, and traveling them by boat would take stupid amounts of time, especially in the Pacific, which is a far larger and more dangerous ocean to travel.
Both the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans are quite large and sailing technology wasn’t focused on such long voyages into vastly unexplored regions for the most part. Even normal sea voyages closer to the coast on known routes could be dangerous.
The areas that were closest are in the far north and the climate there isn’t very hospitable to large scale habitation or oceanic exploration.
So with little reason to venture out, the long time it took to do so, and better options, few if any tried to travel across for a long time. It was too far for accidental discovery too. When Columbus finally did try it was in part to do vastly underestimating how far the journey would be. Had the Americas not been there or been further west he might have been a curious footnote in history, a foolish voyager who took off on one way voyage.
The Americas are pretty remote, all things considered. Almost all sailing voyages at the time stayed near the coast in case things went wrong. The Vikings followed a series of islands from Britain to Iceland, Iceland to Greenland, and eventually reached Canada.
Whatever else you say about Columbus, his journey to the Caribbean was revolutionary, because it was straight across with no stops and no safety margin should anything go wrong.
The Chinese had the best navy in the world around 1500. However, they focused their budget on land armies because of the ever-present threat from the Mongols, so they let their navy dwindle. They had no reason to be exploring because of the Mongol threat, and the distance from China to California is about twice as long as from Europe to USA. Still, if China had the political need, they could have done it with their navy. But, for China, they decided to put their resources elsewhere. Japan was isolated for most of its history, and had no imperial desires until the 20th century.
Meanwhile in Europe, there were trade winds that could take ships east and west, depending on one’s latitude. Also, Europe was mostly in really bad shape politically and economically around 1500 so there was a need to find resources elsewhere.
TLDR; Europe is much closer to the new world than Asia, about half the distance. There were also trade winds that made the trip possibly.
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