How Portugal Discovered America BEFORE Columbus

Although the Pizzigano map was made 68 years before Columbus officially stepped foot in the Bahamas, it’s clear that it depicts a big landmass west of the Iberian peninsula, when at the time no one even imagined such possibility.
This island also went by the name of Isle of Seven Cities. It originates from an old Iberian legend, set during the Muslim conquest of Hispania in 714 AD. Seeking to flee from the Muslim conquerors, seven Christian Visigothic bishops embarked with their flocks on ships and set sail westwards into the Atlantic Ocean, eventually landing on an island (Antilha) where they founded seven settlements.
But let’s not lose track of the topic. In the Pizzigano map, if you follow the studies of historians and give some slack to 500 year old mapping techniques you can identify several known landmasses depicted in it.
First let’s look at the island with the description of “Balmas” which is argued to be modern day “Andros” in the Bahamas, funnily enough the exact island Columbus first landed in his famous trip.
Second, there’s “Ynma” which looks quite similar to modern day “Prince Eduard Island”, then there’s “Satanazes” similar to what nowadays is the Avalon peninsula. Further north there’s the easily recognizable half moon which even today’s sailors often recognize it as being the south tip of Greenland.
The historian jhon d.irany himself wrote a thesis about the pre-discovery of america by the portuguese, in it he states that on waldseemuller's map it's clear the portuguese already knew about the pacific ocean (officially discovered 6 years later than the map in 1513) as well as the istmo no Panamá, os andes, the sierra nevada mountains in the US and even the west coast of canada. For all these discoveries spanning 18800km the historian calculated that (pg88) the date of first contact had to be AT LEAST 1481, not accounting for shipwrecks, the time that information took to arrive to waldseemuller, the time it took him to fabricate the map, the much bigger effort and damages the ships took when compared to exploring the african coast with subsequently more damages and time wasted lost at sea and repairing the ships (for example colon lost the ship santa maria and almost lost the ships nina and Pinta in what is arguably a much shorter trip than if he were to explore south america or the other side of the american continent) and the ships couldn't count on local civilizations to re-stock supply like, so the most probable date was determined to be 1477 by the historian.
This date coincides exactly to 2 years before the treaty of Alcáçovas, but why does that matter, well, you see, in this treaty made in 1479
king Fernando and Queen Isabel of Spain officially gave order to the start the Spanish era of long distance exploration, Portugal was the clear dominant at sea when it came to ocean currents, ship technology and sailing techniques and overall capabilities, Spain wasn't even close
Pope Alexandre I had just given to Spain the right to every land to the west of Cape Verde, he drew an imaginary line of 100 léguas curting right throw the Atlantic ocean and tried to devide the world into 2. But the portuguese king wasn't having any of it, he quickly gathered arguments and stormed the Vatican city arguing against the pope decision, which gave start to diplomatic talks between Portugal and Spain and soon later in 1494 in the famous treaty of Tordesilhas this imaginary line along the Atlantic ocean was moved 270 léguas west which conveniently now allowed Portugal to claim Brazil.
[ ] The lack of documentation is the most argued points against the theory (fact) of pre-colon finding of europe by the portuguese, but even this can be refuted. In 1755 Lisbon woke up to one of the deadliest and most destructive acontecimentos in history, the earth started shaking, full buildings started crumbling to the ground, fires ignited all throughout the city (due to the intensive use of candles for illumination) and if this wasn't enough a massive tsunami made sure to finish the job and bring the almighty capital of the Portuguese empire to its knees, it's still visible today in the few remaining buildings the level of destruction that this event brought to the city and it's also clear that A LOT of precious documents, books and official exploration reports were forever lost to the same sea who gave Portugal so many opportunities.
[ ] I know the video is getting long but I still have a few stories about this era, it's reported that the the King Jhon the II of Portugal told colon about about "firm land south of the canary islands" and that there was a "a big continent" in his words, at the time firm land meant that it wasn't an island and big continent well it means the same and that's when colon became so obsessed with exploration to the west of the iberian peninsula and years later set sail to Cuba

Select video clips courtesy of Pexels