Men of Pre-America
Many men in history contributed to the founding
of America. At around 1000 A.D., as Leif, son of Eric the Red, sailed into unknown waters, seeking new
lands, the curtains of the American story opened briefly, but it took another 500 years until the main drama began.
In these years, men’s appetites of a better future caused history changing events to occur. Men
with the same Viking blood that sailed the North Atlantic, became part of the columns of fighting laymen of the Crusades.
Marco Polo and others traveled widely in Asia. The travels of such men succeeded in producing an
awakening, perhaps as climactic, as that which Columbus and the Age of Discovery would bring.
The Printing Press
The invention of the Gutenberg movable type printing press
changed history forever, making available for circulation, Bibles, legal documents, The Book of Marco Polo, and maps, the
very map Columbus used to chart his course of discoveries, the map of Ptolemy, which by the way, contained many mistakes,
which led to the discovery of America.
Early Old World Development
Also in the 14th Century, people were developing ox drawn wagons and
rutted, primitive roads, where food could and other supplies could be transported, instead of having to be self-relying.
Gold was discovered in the Black Forest, providing freer circulation to money. Great changes
touched the minds of men and altered their habits, such as, craftsmen of iron and leather work. Middlemen
appeared, founding what is known today as the factory system. Across Europe grew the Protestant Reformation.
Christopher Columbus
Among
these great men of the story of America, was a dreamer-navigator, Christopher Columbus, who found the Map of Ptolemy and The
Book of Marco Polo to be fascinating, was moved by an ancient prophesy that spoke of a new world of lands, “There will
come a time in the long years of the world when the Ocean Sea will loosen its shackles that bind things together and a great
part of the earth will be opened up, and a new sailor such as Jason’s guide, whose name was Thyphis, shall discover
a new world, and then shall Thule no longer be the last of lands”. Thus the Age of Discovery began
some 500 years after the Vikings sailed the cold Atlantic waters.
