First Americans

whose drunken tall tales actually did contain a decent map of the Americas from Newfoundland down to Cape Cod. And he made it home to tell them.

Columbus was the first imperialist, though, claiming the land he found for a European monarch, to hell with the people who already lived there and thought it was theirs.

Monarchies were wealthy and organized enough to mount exploratory missions, military conquests, and large scale colonization as ships full of traders from seafaring cultures had not been.

Saying Columbus was the first has always been inaccurate. Saying he was the first imperialist takes care of that.