Compendium of World History - Volume 2 - Chapter VII - 1969

Herman L Hoeh

The origin of the American Indian has puzzled Europeans from the day Columbus' sailors set foot on the Caribbean isle. Yet, just four centuries earlier, the New World was common knowledge to the educated in North Europe and the Iberian Peninsula. Its natives were even embracing the faith of the Roman Church, which had appointed an Icelander of noble birth as bishop over Iceland, Greenland and the lands of the New World! How did these facts all become lost? One is so accustomed to read of "Ice Ages" as events of the remote past, that it hardly occurs to the mind that thirteenth century Europeans witnessed a veritable Little Ice Age that completely severed communications between Europe and the New World. - Information Supplied By: Herbert W Armstrong Library