Uchronia: An Alternate History Where Columbus Didn’t Discover America | VICE | United States

For two weeks in June 2015, photographer Maciek Pozoga and musicologist Christopher Kirkley spent time in Bamako, the capital of Mali, generating a body of work titled Uchronia: The Unequivocal Interpretation of Reality. It explores and elaborates on a story Pozoga came across on the internet: that, in 1311, the Malian emperor Abubakari II left West Africa to explore the Atlantic Ocean. Mali was then rich—arguably the most affluent nation in the world—but Abubakari wanted more: fame, perhaps, or additional land. He believed both lay on the other side of the Atlantic and took a fleet of 2,000 ships to find it. In the West, Christopher Columbus is credited with discovering America. In Africa, at least for some, it was Abubakari