Columbus famously sailed to the Caribbean islands in 1492 but he wouldn't reach the mainland of the New World till 1498.
Now, ancient historic documents reveal that with a royal patent from Henry VII of England, Italian merchant John Cabot sailed from Bristol to North America in 1497, Discovery News reported.
The document, found through some serious sleuthing of the works of a secretive historian, suggest that Cabot made three voyages between the summers of 1496 and 1498, and on the second one, carried out in 1497, he landed in Newfoundland.
Found in a private Florentine archive, the documents say that a payment of 50 nobles sterling was made to "Giovanni Chabotte" (John Cabot) of Venice so that he could undertake expeditions "to go and find the new land."
They also suggest that Europeans may have discovered the New World decades before both Cabot and Columbus set sail.
"This brief entry opens a whole new chapter in Cabot scholarship. It shows that the Bristol voyages were part of a wider network of Italian-supported exploratory enterprises," historian Francesco Guidi-Bruscoli, of the University of Florence, told Discovery News.
Guidi Bruscoli, who detailed his finding in the scholarly journal Historical Research, noted that the short entry referred to "the new land" and not to "a new land".
"The use of the definite article ('il' - 'the') rather than the indefinite 'a' ('un' in Italian) is indeed puzzling," Guidi Bruscoli said.
The phrasing might imply that the money was paid to Cabot so that he could find a land which was already known. The Bardi, far from being disinterested patrons, would have had a sound economic reason to finance what would have been an almost certain discovery. (More)
