Columbus Radically Altered the Western Hemisphere—but He Wasn’t the First

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue—and transformed the Western Hemisphere . . . right? Didn’t he permanently link the Old and New Worlds, unlike anyone else before him, including the Vikings? Eight years ago, my answers to these questions began to change. Dramatically.

In 2018, I was working on the DNA history of the globe. I knew that the arrival of Columbus had precipitated a massive population collapse in the Americas. So I hunted for the genetic smoking gun of this event.

I found it—and a whole new history of the pre-Columbian Americas.

By 2020, it was clear from the DNA data that the Americas had been invaded from the Far East about 1,000 years before Columbus.1 By 2022, I had discovered a second invasion—about five centuries before Columbus.2

The earlier event was catastrophic. It had wiped out the male lineages of the earlier indigenous Americans.3 Relatives of the Huns had wrought the destruction.4 The second migration wasn’t as disastrous. But it was consequential. The AD 900s migrants were the ancestors of the Native Americans at the first Thanksgiving.5

Just last year, I uncovered two more migrations. My earlier studies had focused on male-inherited DNA (the Y chromosome). These new studies analyzed female-inherited DNA (mitochondrial DNA).6 The latter preserved the record of events from the BC era. In the century or two before Christ, an East Asian group—possibly relatives of a group known as the Xiongnu or of the members of the Qin Dynasty of China—arrived in the Americas.7 Centuries earlier, around 1,000 BC, a different East Asian group—possible relatives of the Shang Dynasty of China—entered the Americas and birthed the ancient Maya.8

Both of these BC-era groups were hit hard by the later migrations. Again, the male lineages disappeared. But even the surviving female lineages showed signs in their DNA of massive population loss.9

DNA seems to suggest that these worlds were linked—extensively—before Columbus.

Did Columbus permanently link Old and New Worlds? DNA seems to suggest that these worlds were linked—extensively—before Columbus. East Asia and America were repeatedly in contact with one another. A Pacific connection long predated Columbus. But not an Atlantic one. In this direction, Columbus created a massive highway—not just for peoples but for crops, political ideas, technology, and religion. Columbus might not have been the first to connect the Old World and the New. But he laid the foundation for a transformed hemisphere, in which countries like the United States would emerge and spread the gospel up and down the hemisphere and around the globe.