Meanwhile, on the eastern shores of the Americas, the most certain, best-documented evidence for European contact with America before Columbus is the Vikings. Icelandic sagas record that Lief Eriksson took a ship west from Greenland in the year 1001 and set up a settlement in an area they called Vinland.

Long before Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage, several groups reached the Americas. The first were Asian nomadic Paleo-Indians, who crossed the Bering Land Bridge (Beringia) approximately 15,000 to 30,000 years ago, eventually populating both North and South America. In more recent "Pre-Columbian" history, Norse explorer Leif Erikson established a settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in present-day Newfoundland, Canada, around the year 1000 AD. There are also high-fidelity theories and some archaeological evidence suggesting that Polynesians reached South America around 1200 AD, as evidenced by the introduction of sweet potatoes to the Pacific. While Columbus's arrival initiated permanent European contact, he was far from the first "High-Fidelity" visitor. By the time he arrived, the continents were already home to millions of indigenous people with complex civilizations, meaning America was never "found" in 1492, but rather re-introduced to the Western world's consciousness after millennia of isolation.