Here is one example:
King Joao II of Portugal was a statesman that supported the exploration and exploitation of the undiscovered world. Arguably the first nation to discover America, under Joao's reign Portugal made several other important discoveries while also advancing the field of nautical navigation.
The problem with this narrative is that it implicitly divorces the indigenous inhabitants from the rest of humanity’s history, as if nothing that they ever did ‘counted’ as history. If it had said, ‘the first European nation to find America,’ then that would have been acceptable, but suggesting that any Europeans ‘discovered’ America arrogantly dismisses the indigenous presence as somehow irrelevant or unimportant.
When we talk about Turtle Island’s history (like so), we never say, ‘The Native Americans discovered Europeans.’ Hell, I never see anybody say that the Romans ‘discovered’ Germania — or anywhere else, for that matter, and I think that that is because Germanic history is as much a part of human history as Turtle Islander history is (or should be, at least).
I know that I am really late to this party and that this narrative has been becoming less popular in recent years, but I have never seen anyone quite articulate the issue with it like this either, so I needed to rant.
Romans copied the Greeks, and for the most part of human history the latter was not considered European and was effectively part of West Asia, especially when you consider they got their education from North Africa. Consider how Greeks weren't even considered "White" to Western Europeans / the US till relatively recently (look up Operation Gladio for more cut throat dynamics as a microcosm of this). It's more galling when we consider that Ancient Greek philosophy and culture was introduced to Europe via Islam (which modern europe has decided it will separate itself from with "Judeo-Christian values") through the Iberian Peninsula of Spain.
The above is ignoring all the looting and pillaging both of culture and more tangible wealth from the Global South that makes up modern European cultures and ethnicities. All older European culturea have either become extinct or subsumed by the past couple of centuries of Western imperialism - they are essentially cosplaying older cultures at this stage (at best) when harking "authenticity".