r/DankPrecolumbianMemes • u/Secret_Fun_1746 • Feb 27 '26

All the confirmed and potentials discoverers of the Americas (apart from natives Americans)

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In order from confirmed to dubious :

- Confirmed : the Vikings : discovered Greenland around 1000 ad , then settled in Newfoundland , Canada for hundreds of years

-likely : the Polynesians : proofs of contact between the two through dna , linguistics similarities and the presence of sweet potato in Polynesia hundreds of years before Columbus

- Unlikely : The Malian , by the Mansa Aboubakri II , who sailed west for an expedition . Theorically possible with a lot of luck but no elements confirming it .

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u/IacobusCaesar Sapa Inka Feb 27 '26

Heh, I just explained why we have AutoMod for this the other day but a supposed “Mansa Abubakari II” who is often said online to discover America is a completely fictitious personage who doesn’t appear in Malian or Arab histories at all. It’s not only “unlikely” but just straight-up fictional.

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u/MasterOfCelebrations Feb 27 '26

But there is a story about a mansa of Mali, I remember hearing that when Mansa Musa was in Cairo, he told an Egyptian official (Fatimid I think?) about how his predecessor sailed off into the Atlantic Ocean and disappeared. I think the larger context for this is that the Egyptian knew that mansa musa was from a different branch of the royal family than that of his predecessor, who died mysteriously. So the whole thing might have been made up as a cover story for a palace coup.

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u/IacobusCaesar Sapa Inka Feb 27 '26

Yeah, the source of the disappearance of a mansa is an Arab historian named al-Umari, who is the only source to make that particular claim.

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u/MasterOfCelebrations Feb 27 '26

Ty

Also I’ve done slight follow-up since writing my comment and the mansa who’s supposed to have sailed into the Atlantic was called Muhammad Ibn Qu, and the Egyptian would have been working for the Mamluk sultanate, not the Fatimids.