Imagine for a second that you are looking at
a map of the world, a big, beautiful wall map.
You scan the Western Hemisphere and you see two
massive landmasses. They stretch from the frozen
Arctic tundra in the north all the way down to
the icy sub -Antarctic waters of Tierra del Fuego
in the south. These continents dominate the globe,
and they are both branded with the name of a
single man. It's a name we say every single day,
the United States of America, South. America,
it's, I mean, it's completely omnipresent. Exactly.
And here is the massive, just colossal irony
at the heart of this subject. These continents
are named after a man who for centuries was dragged
through the mud by historians. He was called
a liar, a thief, a fraud, and my absolute favorite
historical insult. A pickle dealer. It really
is one of the strangest twists of fate in the
historical record. I mean, you have Christopher
Columbus who gets the holiday, the nursery rhymes
and, you know, all the credit in primary school
for the discovery. Right. He's the main character.
He's the main character. But Amerigo Viscucci,
he got the branding rights. He got the name on
the birth certificate of the new world. And that's
the mission for this deep dive. We are going
to try to disentangle the man from the myth because
for hundreds of years there has been this this
vicious academic brawl. Was Amerigo Vespucci
a master navigator who intellectually grasped
what Columbus couldn't, that this was a new world?
Or was he just a self -promoting opportunist
whose letters were maybe forged by publishers
just to sell books? It's the ultimate question
of man versus legend. And we have a stack of
sources here to help us figure it out. We've
got historical records from Florence and Seville,
some very, very controversial letters that may
or may not be fake, and the cartographic history
of how the name America actually ended up on
the map. It's a real detective story. It is.
So let's unpack this. To understand how a so
-called pickle dealer gets two continents named
after him, we have to start at the beginning.
And surprisingly, the story doesn't start on
a ship. No, it doesn't. And that's really the
first misconception we need to clear up right
away. When we think of the Age of Discovery,
we picture these rugged sea captains like Magellan
or da Gama. Right, men born on the waves, smelling
like salt and tar. Exactly. Men who could navigate
by instinct. The Scucci was not that guy. He
was what you'd call a late bloomer. A very late
bloomer. He was born in 1454 in Florence, Italy.
And looking at his background, he was essentially
a suit. He was a corporate guy. He was a creature
of the Renaissance. And you have to remember,
Florence in the mid -15th century wasn't just
a city. It was, you know, the intellectual and
financial capital of the Western world. It was
kind of the Silicon Valley of the 1400s. And
the Vespucci family, where did they fit in? They
were plugged right into the mainframe. They weren't
the ultra -rich tycoons, the billionaires, so
to speak. Not the top tier. No, not the absolute
top. Think of them as the high -level functionaries,
the operators who made the city run. His grandfather
was the chancellor of the Florentine government
for 36 years. His father was a notary for the
Money Changers Guild. But the real currency in
Florence wasn't just money. It was who you knew.
Connections. Connections. And the Viscucci's
were tight with the Medici family. And the Medici's,
the godfathers of the Renaissance. Precisely.
They were close allies of Lorenzo de' Medici,
the Magnificent. So Amerigo grows up in this
orbit of immense power, art, and money. But the
thing that really separates him from someone
like Columbus is his education. I noticed this
in the notes and it's fascinating. His brothers
went off to the University of Pisa, which seems
like the standard successful kid path. But Amerigo
stays home. Was that like a bad sign? Oh, not
at all. Yeah, you could argue he got something
even better, a more... bespoke education. He
is tutored privately by his uncle, Giorgio Antonio
Vespucci. And this uncle wasn't just some random
relative teaching him his sums. No, no. Giorgio
was a major figure, a Dominican friar, and a
celebrated humanist scholar. He ran a school
for the sons of Florentine nobles. So he gave
Amerigo this incredible one -on -one education
in literature, philosophy, and rhetoric. He was
being groomed to think. And crucially. And crucially.
His uncle taught him geography and astronomy.
He studied the ancient Greek cosmographers like
Ptolemy and Strabo. So while Columbus was out
there learning how to tie knots and read the
wind on a practical level, Fispucci was learning
the theoretical geometry of the universe. That
is a critical distinction. It is. He learned
the framework of the world long before he ever
set foot on a deck. This academic background
means that later, when he's at sea, He isn't
just looking at the waves, he's analyzing the
data against the classical theories he spent
his youth studying. He has a mental model to
test against reality. Before we move on, we have
to mention the cool factor of his family. I was
reading that his cousin, Marco, married a woman
named Simonetta Vespucci. Ah, yes, La Bella Simonetta.
the beautiful Simonetta. For those who don't
know art history, just explain who she was. She
was considered the most beautiful woman in Florence,
an absolute icon. She was the model for Botticelli's
The Birth of Venus and several other of his major
paintings. So Amerigo isn't just reading dusty
books in a study. He's probably hanging out at
family dinners with the literal face of the Renaissance.
It paints a picture, doesn't it? A man deeply
embedded in high culture. He's a socialite, an
intellectual, a man of the court. But, and here's
the twist, Despite all these advantages, all
this culture and connection, his early career
was kind of a flop. Yeah, he seems to really
struggle to find his footing. In 1478, when he's
in his mid -20s, he goes on a diplomatic mission
to Paris with another uncle, Guido Antonio. Right,
they're trying to get French support for Florence's
war with... Naples, and the Pope, a high -stakes
mission. And it was largely a failure. King Louis
XI was noncommittal, cagey. They came back with
basically nothing. But for Amerigo, it was a
lesson. It gave him a taste of the wider world
of international politics. So after that, what
does he do? He settles into a role working for
a junior branch of the Medici family, the one
run by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici. He's
basically a household manager, a business agent.
So he's a mid -level manager. He's pushing papers.
He's nearing 40 years old. Frankly, if he had
died at age 38, history would have forgotten
him completely. He would just be a name on a
dusty Florentine genealogy chart. Precisely.
But then comes the pivot, the midlife crisis
that changed the world. It's around 1492, the
same year Columbus is sailing on his first voyage.
The Medici send Amerigo to Seville, Spain. Why
Seville? That seems like a bit of a demotion
from the glitz and glamour of Florence. Well,
Seville was the new boomtown. It was the gateway
to the Atlantic. All the action was shifting
there. But the Medici's had a specific problem.
They had a business agent there named Tommaso
Caponi, who was acting, let's say, suspiciously.
Cooking the books. That was the fear. So Amerigo
was sent as the auditor, the fixer. He goes down
there, looks at the ledgers, realizes Caponi
is sketchy, and ends up taking over the job himself.
And this is where the story gets gritty. This
isn't art and philosophy anymore, is it? No.
This is the nuts and bolts of commerce. He winds
up working with another Florentine merchant in
Seville named Ginotto Berardi. And Berardi's
business was involved in two main things. The
African slave trade and ship chandlery. Chandlery.
That's the fancy word for a ship grocery store,
right? Effectively, yes. A much grittier one.
Yeah. There's supply of the expeditions, hardtack
biscuits, salted meat, rope, tackle, cannons,
wine. Everything you need to keep a crew alive
or not. For months at sea. And their biggest
client. Let me guess. Christopher Columbus. Christopher
Columbus. This connection just blows my mind.
Vespucci didn't just know of Columbus. He was
the guy organizing the biscuits. He was the quartermaster.
He was intimately involved. Berardi had invested
heavily in Columbus's second voyage. When Berardi
died in 1495, Vespucci was the executor of his
will. He was left holding the bag, scrubbing
the ledgers for these expeditions that... frankly,
weren't paying off. That's a really important
piece of context. We look back now and think
Columbus discovered America. He must have been
rich immediately. But in the late 1490s, the
whole Indies business was struggling, wasn't
it? It was a financial disaster. Columbus had
promised mountains of gold, a direct route to
the spices of the East, quick profits. Instead,
he was sending back some slaves and a little
bit of gold dust, but nowhere near enough to
cover the massive costs of outfitting these fleets.
So Vespucci is sitting in his office in Seville
looking at the red ink. He's seeing the diminishing
returns of the merchant life firsthand. He's
almost 50 years old. His business partner is
dead. The Medici's are starting to use other
agents. He's watching his career hit a dead end.
And he sees these ships leaving the harbor every
few months, going off to this mysterious new
land. So he decides to stop funding the ships
and start riding on them. He trades the ledger
for the astrolabe. He decides to see this new
world for himself, maybe to figure out if there's
actually a way to make it profitable. This brings
us to the section historians call the Vespucci
question. Because depending on who you ask or
which document you read, Vespucci either went
on two voyages, three voyages, or four voyages.
It's a total mess. It's the headache that has
plagued historians for 500 years. The entire
evidence for Vespucci's travels relies almost
entirely on a handful of letters. And they don't
match up. So we have two main sources, right?
The Sotirini letter and then the private letters.
What's the difference? Okay. So the letters published
during his lifetime, like the one addressed to
a Florentine official named Piero Sotirini, were
the blockbusters. They were sensational, exciting,
action -packed. And they claimed four voyages.
The ones for public consumption. Exactly. Then
there are the private, more sober letters he
wrote to his patrons, the Medici family. These
weren't published until centuries later. And
most experts today believe the private letters
are the real deal and that the published Sodorini
letter was likely spiced up or even partially
forged by publishers trying to sell books. It
was a commercial product. So let's look at the
controversial one first. Voyage number one, allegedly
in 1497. Right. The Sodorini letter claims Vespucci
left Spain in May 1497. Now, if this were true,
and if he hit the mainland of South America as
described, he would have beaten Columbus to the
mainland by a full year. Columbus didn't reach
the mainland until his third voyage in 1498.
That would be a massive historical upset. The
whole Columbus discovered America narrative goes
out the window. But you're saying the math doesn't
work. The geography described is completely absurd.
The route in that letter has them landing somewhere
near Honduras and then sailing northwest for
870 leagues. If you plot that on a map, they
would have sailed straight through the mountains
of Mexico across the desert and popped out in
the Pacific Ocean. Unless he invented an overland
hovercraft, that didn't happen. Exactly. It's
geographically impossible. Yeah. Later, the historian
Bartolome de las Casas who's a huge defender
of Columbus, accused Spucci of inventing this
1497 voyage specifically to steal primacy. This
is the source of the reputation of him being
a liar and thief. So let's discard the fake voyage
for now. Let's look at what we know he actually
did. Voyage number two, the real deal in 1499.
This one is well documented. He sails for Spain,
but he's not the captain. The expedition was
led by a tough, experienced captain named Alonzo
de Ojeda, who had sailed with Columbus. And Vespucci's
role was? He was likely aboard his pilot because
of his astronomical knowledge, or perhaps as
a commercial representative for the Florentine
investors who backed the trip. He was there to
protect the money. But on this trip, they make
a massive, game -changing discovery. They find
the mouth of the Amazon River. It must have been
an absolutely incredible sight. Vespucci describes
sailing into a region where this massive volume
of freshwater was pouring into the ocean so powerfully
that they could drink the seawater 25 miles away
from the coast. That is a crucial data point
for a geography nerd like Vespucci. It is. A
small island, even a big island like Cuba, doesn't
have a watershed large enough to turn the Atlantic
Ocean fresh for 25 miles. You need a massive
continent to support a river that big. The penny
must have started to drop. But did he realize
it was a new continent then, on that trip? Not
quite yet. On this 1499 voyage, he's still trapped
in the Columbus mindset. In his letters, he writes
about looking for the Cape of Catagara, which
was a landmark in Southeast Asia described by
the ancient geographer Ptolemy. He still thinks
he's maneuvering around the tail end of Asia
to get to India. So he knows it's big, but he
thinks it's Big Asia. Correct. He's trying to
make the new data fit the old map. And we shouldn't
gloss over the darker aspects of this voyage
because they're really important. What happened
on the way back? On the way back to Spain, after
failing to find the passage to India or any great
riches, they stopped in the Bahamas. They raided
the islands, captured 232 natives, packed them
into the hold of the ships, and took them back
to Cadiz to sell as slaves. It's just a grim
reminder that these weren't purely scientific
expeditions. They were commercial ventures driven
by profit, often in the most brutal ways. The
Spuci was a man of his time, and that time was
brutal. So he gets back to Spain in 1500. The
profits from the slaves are mediocre. Stain isn't
exactly throwing money at him for another trip.
So being the adaptable businessman he is, he
switches teams. He goes to the competition. He
goes to Portugal. He does. King Manuel I of Portugal
commissions an expedition to investigate Brazil.
Now, you have to remember, the Portuguese explorer
Pedro Alvarez Cabral had accidentally bumped
into the coast of Brazil the year before in 1500
while trying to sail around Africa to India.
The famous story of being blown off course. Right.
So the king of Portugal wants to know what he
actually owns. Is this landmass just a big island?
Is it a continent? And most importantly, is it
on the Portuguese side of the line drawn by the
Treaty of Tordesillas? The treaty that divided
the unknown world between Spain and Portugal.
Exactly. So he hires the Italian guy who just
got back from that neighborhood. Vespucci joins
as a pilot under the command of Gonzalo Coelho.
They leave Lisbon in May 1501. And at their first
stopover in Cape Verde, something incredible
happens. One of those small world moments that
changes the course of history. They run into
traffic. They literally bump into Cabral's fleet.
Coming back from India, the actual India. Okay,
this is a critical juncture. You have Cabral
with ships full of pepper, cloves, spices, silks,
porcelain, and stories about Calicut and highly
civilized Asian cities. And then you have Vespucci
heading to this wild, unknown new world. Think
about the data comparison happening on that beach
in Cape Verde. Vespucci gets to sit down and
interview Cabral's crew. He gets hard, verifiable
facts. He knows exactly what the flora, fauna,
people, and products of India look like. He has
his control group. Now he is going to the test
group. So they sail on to Brazil. They hit the
coast in August 1501. And this trip, this was
not a pleasure cruise. No, it was terrifying.
They landed on the coast and encountered a hostile
band of natives from the Tupinamba tribe. The
Spucci describes this horrific scene in one of
his letters where a crewman, a young Portuguese
man, was lured inland and then ambushed and killed.
And the crew saw this happen. They watched from
the ships as the natives butchered, roasted,
and ate the man. That is the kind of image that
sears itself into your brain and becomes the
defining story of a place. It certainly stayed
with the European public later on and fueled
the cannibal narrative. But despite that horror
and the obvious danger, they kept sailing south,
mapping the coast. On January 1st, 1502, They
found a stunning, enormous bay. They named it
after the date, the River of January. Rio de
Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro. I wonder how many people
sunbathing on Copacabana Beach right now know
their city was named by Amerigo Vespucci. Probably
very few. But they didn't stop at Rio. And this
is where Vespucci, the navigator, earns his keep.
They went far, far south into the cold, stormy
sub -Antarctic waters. Possibly as far as 52
degrees south, which would put them near the
Falkland Islands or the coast of Patagonia. And
the weather down there is just atrocious. And
the sky changes completely. That was the scariest
part for them. The North Star Polaris dropped
below the horizon. For a European sailor, that
was their anchor. That was how you had navigated
for thousands of years. It was gone. Vespucci's
there on the deck, freezing, seasick, struggling
with his astrolabe and quadrant, trying to map
the southern constellations to find a new way
to navigate. And while he's doing all this, he
realizes the coast just keeps going south. It
doesn't turn west towards Asia. It's endless.
It's a continuous landmass. And it's nothing
like the India described by Cabral. The animals
are different. No tigers, no elephants. He sees
tapirs and capybaras. The people are different.
No silks, no great cities, no kings. The plants
are different. The stars are different. This
is the Eureka moment. This is the intellectual
leap. Columbus had the courage to cross the ocean.
But he died trying to force the square peg of
his discovery into the round hole of Asian geography.
He was locked into his theory. He was a victim
of confirmation bias. Completely. Vespucci, with
his academic background, looked at all the contradictory
data, the sheer length of the coastline, the
power of the Amazon, the lack of Asian civilizations,
and he did the math. He realized this isn't Asia.
This is an island. This is a fourth part of the
world. And he puts this incredible realization
into writing. In 1503, a letter attributed to
him, Mundus Novus New World, is published. He
writes to his old patron, Lorenzo de' Medici,
We may rightly call a new world a continent more
densely peopled and abounding in animals than
are Europe or Asia or Africa. Continent. That
is the magic word. That is the claim. It was
revolutionary. Yeah. He is explicitly telling
the entire European establishment that the ancients
were wrong. Ptolemy, the god of geography for
a thousand years, didn't know about this. It
was a direct challenge to the classical view
of the universe. But let's be honest about why
Mundus Novus became a bestseller. It wasn't just
the nerdy geography updates. It was the tabloid
stuff. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It was the 16th
century version of a viral blockbuster. It was
sex and violence. The letter was filled with
these lurid, colorful descriptions of the natives,
their lack of clothes, their sexual customs,
and, of course, the cannibalism. It was shocking.
It was titillating. It went viral in a way that
dry ship logs never could. It was a perfect clickbait
for the new printing press technology. It was.
Twelve editions were printed in the first year
alone. It was translated into Italian, French,
German, Dutch. Everyone who could read was reading
Vespucci. Meanwhile. Columbus is sending back
these letters full of complaints about his arthritis
and mystical ramblings about finding the Garden
of Eden. Vespucci won the narrative war because
he told a better, more exciting story. And that
narrative victory leads us directly to the map.
The map that changed everything. And this part
of the story is just a total comedy of errors.
It didn't happen in the royal courts of Spain
or Portugal. It happened in a muddy little town
in eastern France called Sentier. Right. You
have to picture the scene. It's this small group
of humanist scholars, basically a little academic
startup. They were led by a man named Walter
Ludd. and a brilliant young cartographer named
Martin Walzmuller. And what were they working
on? They were working on a new, updated edition
of Ptolemy's Geography in 1507. They wanted to
create a grand new world map that included all
these recent discoveries, the sort of Geography
2 .0. But they are working with bad intel, or
at least incomplete intel. They are. They had
a French translation of the Sodorini letter,
remember, the sensational one that claims four
voyages, and that Vespucci discovered the mainland
in 1497. They didn't have Columbus's logs. They
didn't have the official Spanish records. So
as far as they knew, Vespucci was the primary
discoverer of this southern landmass. So they're
designing this huge new map, and they need a
name for this new landmass in the south. And
their logic was actually quite poetic. if flawed.
They looked at the other known continents, Europa,
Asia, Africa. In Latin, these are all grammatically
feminine names. All named for women, mythologically
speaking. Exactly. They reasoned the new continent
should follow suit. So they took Amerigo's first
name, they Latinized it to Americus, and then
they feminized that to America. The land of Amerigo.
And one of the scholars, a poet named Matthias
Ringman, wrote this justification in the book
that accompanied the map, the introduction to
cosmography. He said, I see no reason why anyone
could properly disapprove of a name derived from
that of Amerigo, the discoverer, a man of sagacious
genius. If only they knew the centuries of academic
brawling they were about to unleash. So in 1507,
Olsey -Muller prints this massive, beautiful
12 -panel wall map. It's the first time the word
America appears, printed right across the continent
of South America. And because the map was a masterpiece
of cartography, it sold. A thousand copies were
printed. It hung in universities, libraries,
and palaces all over Europe. The name literally
got put on the wall. But here's the twist that
I absolutely love. Waldseemuller eventually realized
he screwed up, didn't he? He did. It's an incredible
historical footnote. Years later, by 1513, he
got access to better data. He learned that Columbus
had actually been there first in 1498. He clearly
felt bad about it. He tried to take it back.
How? He published a new Mac. where he completely
removed the name America and just labeled the
land Terra Incognita, Unknown Land. He also labeled
a part of Brazil Land of the Holy Cross, which
was the official Portuguese name. He tried to
delete the tweet. He tried, but you can't put
the toothpaste back in the tube. The 1507 map
had already circulated widely. Other mapmakers
had already started copying the name America.
It was catchy. It sounded good. And then, in
1538, the nail in the coffin comes from the most
famous cartographer of all. Gerardus Mercator.
He uses America to label not just the southern
continent, but the northern one too. And just
like that, the Western Hemisphere is branded.
All because a group of scholars in a small French
town read a sensationalized letter and made a
wrong, but very influential, assumption. It's
a powerful lesson in the power of the printing
press. Columbus discovered the land, but Vespucci,
or rather the publishers using his name, discovered
the audience. So what happened to the real Amerigo
Vespucci while his name was becoming immortal
without his knowledge? Did he know he was famous?
It's very unlikely he ever knew the extent of
it or that a continent was being named after
him. He was back in Spain by 1504. And surprisingly,
King Ferdinand of Spain didn't hold the Portuguese
voyages against him. In fact, he realized Vespucci's
practical value. He didn't just forgive him.
The king gives him a massive promotion. A huge
one. A job created specifically for him. In 1508,
Vespucci is appointed piloto mayor, the master
navigator of the Casa de Contratación in Seville.
We need to explain what that actually means because
it sounds like a ceremonial title, but it absolutely
was not. Not at all. It was one of the most important
technical and secret jobs in the entire Spanish
empire. The Casa de Contratación was the central
clearinghouse for all Spanish exploration and
trade. Vescuci was the head of the navigational
department. So what were his duties? He was responsible
for training and certifying all the pilots who
sailed to the New World. He established a school
for navigation. He had to personally examine
them to ensure they knew how to use the quadrant
and the astrolabe. No one sailed without his
approval. He was the dean of the School of Exploration,
the top gun instructor. Exactly. But most importantly,
he was in charge of compiling and updating the
Padron Real. The master map. The secret map.
It was a state secret. Every captain returning
from the Indies had to report directly to Vespucci
and surrender their logbooks and charts. Vespucci
would then synthesize that new data to update
the official master map of the Empire. A copy
of that map was then given to the next captain
sailing out. This really validates him, doesn't
it? If he were just a fraud or a pickle dealer,
the King of Spain would never have entrusted
him with the Empire's most sensitive navigational
and trade secrets. Exactly. You don't put a con
artist in charge of your nuclear codes. The Spanish
crown knew he was a competent, serious, and brilliant
navigator and cosmographer. He held that prestigious
job until the end. He died in Seville on February
26, 1512. He was 57 years old. And in his will,
he left his navigational tools to his nephew,
right? Yes, Giovanni Vespucci, who in true Vespucci
family fashion became a pilot himself and then
got fired from the same Spanish organization
for spying for the Medici's back in Florence.
Once a Medici man, always a Medici man. Seems
so. So let's bring this all back to the Vespucci
question. His reputation has been on this wild
roller coaster ride for 500 years. It really
has. In the early 1500s, thanks to Mundus Novus,
he was a hero. The discoverer. Then, starting
with Las Casas in the mid -1500s, the backlash
hit hard. He was branded a thief who stole Columbus's
glory. And that hatred lasted for centuries.
It became the accepted narrative. I have a quote
here from Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great American
philosopher, writing in 1856. And he was not
a fan. He was firmly in the anti -Vespucci camp.
Oh, the Emerson quote is absolutely scathing.
It's the peak of that sentiment. He wrote, strange
that broad America must wear the name of a thief.
Amurgo Vespucci, the pickle dealer at Seville,
whose highest naval rank was Bosun's mate in
an expedition that never sailed, managed in this
lying world to supplant Columbus and baptize
half the earth with his own dishonest name. Pickle
dealer. It's such a dismissive, powerful insult.
That sticks. Emerson was channeling the righteous
anger of centuries of historians who felt Columbus
got ripped off. But is that fair? Based on our
deep dive today, what's the modern take? Modern
historians don't think so. The consensus now
is that Vespucci himself likely didn't write
the sensational Sotorini letter that claimed
he was first. That was almost certainly a publisher
trying to make a buck by combining and embellishing
real letters. In a way, Vespucci was framed for
success he never claimed. When you look at the
private letters and his incredibly important
work as pilot mayor, you see a totally different
person. You see a man who is a competent navigator
and, more importantly, a brilliant synthesizer
of information. He was the guy who could see
the forest, not just the trees. Columbus saw
islands and coasts and tried to force them into
his mental map of Asia. Vespucci saw the same
things and was willing to step back and say,
hold on, this doesn't fit. This is something
new. It's a kind of intellectual flexibility.
Or intellectual courage. Exactly. Columbus had
the drive and the raw courage to cross the ocean
first. No one can ever take that away from him.
But Vespucci had the intellectual tools and the
open -mindedness to understand what had actually
been found. He realized it was a mundus novus.
And in the history of science and geography,
understanding a discovery is just as important
as making it. So maybe he deserves the name on
the map after all. Or at least we shouldn't feel
too bad about it. I think we can make peace with
it. America is named after a man who was curious,
educated, adaptable, and willing to change his
mind when the data contradicted the established
theories. That's not a bad legacy for a continent
when you think about it. It certainly beats being
known forever as the pickle guy. It certainly
does. So here's a final thought for you to mull
over. We often say history is written by the
victors. But in this case... History was written
by the writers. Columbus did the heavy lifting.
He braved the unknown. He took the risk. But
Vespucci, or the people writing under his name,
told the better story. They captured the imagination
of Europe with tales of a new world, cannibals,
and strange constellations, while Columbus was
still arguing about Asian trade routes. It raises
a really profound question, doesn't it? Does
history belong to those who make the history
or to those who describe it most effectively,
the deed versus the word? In the case of Amerigo
Vespucci and the naming of America, the word
won. Something to think about the next time you
open Google Maps. That's it for this deep dive.
Thanks for listening. Thank you.