Morten St George Theory

[Morten St. George]

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During the Crusades, medieval boats appear to have had no problem traveling from England to the Holy Land and back, so surely they were capable of crossing the Atlantic. ..

A sailor would consider this to be a very poor argument.

Following coastlines, or island-hopping (e.g., from Hibernia to Iceland), where you can stop for food and water every few days (or at least within a reasonable period of time), is very very different from sailing across the middle of a vast ocean with no guarantee of finding land before supplies run out.

Most of the discoveries of new lands were not made by explorers. They were made by fishermen who plied the waters every day, sometimes venturing a little farther than usual or being blown off course. It was whalers who discovered most of the islands in the arctic and who brought back stories of their adventures.

Once they knew the land was there, explorers and colonists followed. The Vikings were quite possibly preceded by Basque whalers. Basque oral history includes stories of the discovery of a new world. They traveled to Iceland so frequently that many of them knew a bit of Icelandic. Unfortunately, early fishermen were not usually literate, so we don't have a lot of written testimony, although they did sometimes leave charts.

The Cathar option was a) stay in Europe and be burned at the stake, or b) take your chances on the open seas. Moreover, being in possession of ancient Greek and Arabic books on geography, they may have had reason to believe there was land on the other side of the ocean.