Christopher Columbus
America as a distinct land

Historians have traditionally argued that Columbus remained convinced until his death that his journeys had been along the east coast of Asia as he originally intended (excluding arguments such as Anderson's). On his third voyage he briefly referred to South America as a "hitherto unknown" continent, while also rationalizing that it was the Earthly Paradise (Eden) located "at the end of the Orient ". Columbus continued to claim in his later writings that he had reached Asia; in a 1502 letter to Pope Alexander VI, he asserts that Cuba is the east coast of Asia. On the other hand, in a document in the Book of Privileges (1502), Columbus refers to the New World as the Indias Occidentales ('West Indies'), which he says "were unknown to all the world".
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