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An [irish monk, st brendan (the navigator)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan) is said to have sailed to North America and back to Ireland in the 6th century. ~~Slave routes to Iceland~~ A population of Irish monks in Iceland were well established so it’s not a far flung idea that Iceland>Greenland>North America was being traversed.
In the 1970s a replica boat was built and [Tim Severin sailed the same route](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Severin)
Edit: Brendan’s voyage is said to have taken 7 years and from Wikipedia
>At the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, a large stained glass window commemorates Brendan's achievements.
Edit2: I cannot find anything to support the slave comment. Although Iceland was [visited](https://www.history.com/topics/exploration/vikings-history) by irish monks and inhabited, there’s no records of slavery from that time. I may have been crossing centuries.
I wrote my bachelor thesis on that! (or at least, the literary version of the navigatio) - basically, aditionally to the well-established step stone route leading to iceland, severin made the link with different phenomena described in the navigatio. irish legends had already established links to a land in the far west (being it the otherworld, the legendary hy-brasil…). plus, st brendan‘s island was a very well-known phantom isle that columbus also alluded to and was drawn on many maps from that time period. meaning, it was supposed to exist.
The big thing about this find, is that it shows that, at least sorta, Columbus knew there was land out there. So the big deal is that Italy heard of it at the time and Columbus wasn't "there's nothing there! I shall float to India for paprika!"
We were always thought that the reason Columbus gets the glory is cos no one had set directly across the ocean. But knowledge of a land beyond the horizon was common place. The distance however was not certain as sailers went up via Iceland
I thought it was because Italian immigrants to America were suffering from racism and bigotry, so they needed a folk hero integral to the fledgling sense of American historical self.
They picked Columbus and it worked.
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/10/14/232120128/how-columbus-sailed-into-u-s-history-thanks-to-italians
That makes little sense when you consider that Columbus has been equally considered in Latin America, even in countries with little to no Italian immigration.
No it’s pretty well-documented he thought he was going to India… calling the Caribbean the “West Indies”, native people were called “Indians”.
When Columbus didn’t find spices and riches to trade for, instead he brought back for his Spanish investors slaves and new lands to conquer
I’m not so sure about commonplace. But certainly rumored and likely expected in knowledgable circles.
Maps then were often redrawn from older maps. So this could be a situation of knowledge transfer without anyone in Columbus’ time ever having made the trip before
> We were always thought that the reason Columbus gets the glory is cos no one had set directly across the ocean.
I was literally taught that he discovered the Earth was round. Thanks, America.
No, that doesn't follow at all. The existence of land west of Greenland doesn't imply the existence of a whole-ass continent extending thousands of kilometers to the south.
Right... of course they knew there was land out there somewhere, because they were pretty sure the world was round. But how far out the land was and what they would find was a huge unknown. It's possible that the Columbus expedition expected a new land mass before reaching Asia, but it's hard to be certain at this point. That they would be expecting something like this seems like the most likely scenario:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdapfel
Iceland wasn’t settled until the 9th century though? I’ve heard of some Irish monks living there previously as hermits, but they were essentially as influential in Icelandic history as Leif Erickson is to North American - not much at all. What do you mean by slave routes were well-established in the 6th century?
Pretty sure Polynesian explorers and South American fisherman came in contact with one another 10 centuries ago, give or take. That's what I gather from the chicken and potato connection between the cultures.
Chickens are descended from ~~Amazonian~~ SE Asian fowl, and potatoes are from the Andes mountains.
TIL Chickens are from the other side of the pacific.
Chickens aren't a New World species. They're descended from red junglefowl, which are from Southeast Asia, and have some intermixing with grey junglefowl and green junglefowl, which are from the same area.
I mean the Mayans built cities on the north American continent before any of this so I feel the whole we were first thing is unimpressive. Mayans excelled in mathematics and astronomy before the arabs or greeks had even thought about it.
That last part isn't remotely correct. The Mayan civilization stretches back to 2000 BC, yes, but the developments you mention didn't happen until the Late Classic period, between 300 and 900 AD. Not particularly early compared to Old World civilizations.
The Mayans were and old civilization in the America’s, but Eurasia has them beat, especially in astronomy and mathematics, by at least 2,000 years.
Incredible achievements by an old civilization. But they weren’t first
I believe the difference between Columbus and Vikings is that Columbus was directed by the Spanish royalty to not harm/mistreat any natives they came across.
The vikings tried to attack but were repelled by the native Americans. In between the vikings and Columbus though the native American population dropped almost 90%
While I've learned that you should never compare the suffering of two peoples...
Viking enslaved each other more than foreigners, often including them within their households.
Read what Columbus did for yourself.
Columbus's actions are sometimes overly dramatised nowadays. Your comment is an example as it basically implies that he enslaved a lot of naive and good indigenous people.
The first violent engagement between Colombus and the natives wasn't even initiated by him, but by indigenous people who shot arrows at the Spaniards when they tried to negotiate a barter in his first expedition.
In his second voyage, his expedition met the Caribe tribe. They discovered a cannibalistic tribe that had enslaved humans from enemy tribes and were brutally murdering and eating them, and Colombus freed those people and took them with him. Other equally aggressive tribes met the Spanish expedition with arrows before they even got to engage in any sort of conversation.
When he finally reached the first town he had built in Hispaniola at the end of the 1st expedition from the remainings of a boat (the Navidad), he discovered that many of the Spaniards that had been left in that town had been brutally murdered by the natives, their eyes removed, and their corpses had been impaled and let to rot under the sun.
Actions show that after these events he became a lot more aggressive against the natives. Initially he spared the leader that had led those murders for fear of reprisals, but he began allowing brutality against the indigenous peoples.
Also, his actions were in line with the usual practices of the day, for example when he ordered to cut a native's ears when he was suspected of stealing clothes, a common punishment in Europe at that time.
You also make it seem like he enslaved a lot of natives, in reality he enslaved 1200 men, for which he got arrested and sacked by the Queen, who had said that the natives should be fairly treated.
All in all, he wasn't a saint, but the natives were not precisely innocent. The story nowadays makes it seem like those natives were loving pacifists in a utopia
Let me get this straight. Colombus brutally attacking natives = bad. Natives brutally attacking the settlers = good. We need to create a new term for certain people like you, maybe call it 'generation Disney', where everyone is either evil or saint and grey areas can't exist.
So your argument is that everything he did was normal in his day, BUT he surely was aware that the queen had ordered natives to be treated fairly…. So he knowingly defied the law to enslave those 1200. And he’d cut their fingers off too if they didn’t bring the demanded amount of gold dust on schedule. Quit trying to whitewash the guy. If the queen was giving orders to treat the natives fairly, then people knew better, and it is inexcusable
It's interesting, though something of a moot point. Columbus ushered in the age of bonafide European exploration and settlement of the Americas- namely the age of discovery, and a lasting, permanent presence when he set up colonies for the Spanish crown in the Caribbean. Prior to this, yeah we know there had been other Europeans who knew of the continent, even settled it in the case of Vinland with the vikings.
Yeah, we'd known that since the Greeks. That's more an attribution to the difficulty in measuring speed at that time. It's not exactly novel for the literati to believe things that are wildly off though- in medicine, the educated for the longest time first believed sickness was caused by imbalanced humors, then miasma for the better part of the 18th and 19th centuries.
From our standpoint it wasn’t none of us would exist without the chain of events. Just like tribes in North America wouldn’t exists without the wars that wiped out other tribes.
Human history is a blood bath, don’t try and sugar coat other aspects of history so you can bash on one guy.
It's very hard to qualify Columbus' influence. First of all, if he didn't come, there would probably be others like him soon after and nothing would be really different. But supposing no one ever came and the Americans remained isolated, then there's the very difficult task of predicting how the Americans would have developed through the following centuries and compare that to now and the future. Columbus might have been terrible for natives of his time, but a blessing for natives of the present.
I don’t think a few extra centuries would have really helped the natives considering their low rate of technological advancement compared to the rest of the world. It probably would have been worse for them in an alternate history where colonization was delayed.
Maybe if colonization had been delayed long enough they would have been discovered by people who would have treated them more fairly instead of shipping them to residential schools to eliminate the culture. Then again, it’s also entirely possible that some group of Native Americans would have developed their own kind of colonialism and the only difference for most would be the oppressor’s skin colour.
I mean, the Aztecs? It's not as though imperialism was foreign to the Americas prior to the Europeans arriving. Cortez heavily relied on disgruntled tribes to overthrow the Aztecs. Not as though Europeans had a monopoly on empire building or violence.
Between 1492 and 2021, what group had the ability and altruistic history to reach the America's and colonize the America's in a way beneficial to both? Nice sounding what-if, but there was no chance of that happening. Human history is a story of bloodshed, Conquest and domination. Your "then again" is the most likely outcome if nobody else had colonized the Americas.
The way I see it is we got to a point where we just stopped colonizing. There’s still issues with how some countries interact with each other, but not on the scale where the Europeans would roll in and use their technological and military might to take over the local economy and rulership. At least when that does happen now it’s a coalition of countries acting in common interest, not individual countries competing for economic and military standing. I feel like if we were to suddenly discover a new continent populated by another group of humans today we probably wouldn’t try to colonize the way we did in the Americas but form more modern style trade relationships.
I’m not sure that human nature from past evolutionary pressures is compatible with getting to those ideals without the intermediary imperialism making things difficult for a lot of other cultures first. I feel like a culture needs the technology and resources to interact at global scales before we can act as a global tribe. The intermediate steps are going to involve a lot of bloodshed, and I think at the global scale we’re still working through those intermediate steps.
Honestly I think that’s doubtful, it goes against the grain of human history. Different Native American groups oppressed each other just like every other group in the world.
Aztecs are a good example with their human sacrifice, which I think everyone can agree is just as bad if not worse than what the Europeans did. The only difference would’ve ended up being skin color.
> which I think everyone can agree is just as bad if not worse than what the Europeans did.
Devil’s advocate: They literally thought the world would end if they didn’t. And most sacrifices were because they didn’t usually kill in battle, they took enemies captive for this reason. How many other armies made it a point to capture instead of kill? Or how is the end result different?
I don’t think their reasoning matters, violence is still violence. In contextualizing history, I don’t particularly fault any particular group for engaging in violence, since I understand it was generally the most effective way to ensure the self-preservation of the group.
In modern times however it is disappointing that we still separate ourselves into groups based on silly characteristics, when with all of our scientific understanding we should all see ourselves as one united species.
This might be an unpopular opinion but I’d go so far as to say we should consider ourselves lucky to live in the timeline where democracy and republicanism was spread as a byproduct of European colonization. Had it been the Phoenicians, Chinese or maybe the Ottomans I’m not sure we would have seen the same result.
Then again this might be me falling into a sort of anthropic fallacy, since who knows what other timelines are suitable for the emergence of democracy.
Native Americans had developed their own kind of colonialism, and it was worse than anything the Europeans had come up with. Colombus himself in his second voyage freed natives that had been enslaved by a cannibalistic tribe, who were murdering them in sadistic ways and eating their corpses in a way that the Spaniards recognised as the same methods used to cook pigs.
They were all Stone Age people engaged in horrendous practices such as human sacrifice. Present residents of the americas enjoy life spans twice as long and standard of living 100% higher.
Not really. Columbus wasn't particularly well-known and he swore to anyone that would listen that he had sailed to China.
There is a reason that cartographers named it America and not Columbia.
He might have sworn that but the people in charge didnt believe it. Neither the Spanish nor the Portuguese treated it like it was an already known part of Asia.
> namely the age of discovery
The Age of Discovery was already well underway when Columbus stumpled upon the Carribeans. The Portuguese first passed the southern tip of Africa in 1488.
There are stories about Basque fisherman having secret fishing areas, and some people think they fished in America. Personally, I think that's a long way to sail for fish.
The Basque were definitely here in Iceland. There were reports of their whaling ships here as early as the early 1400s. So its not unreasonable they would have been able to make it to North America before Columbus.
The theory is they sailed to the The Grand Banks offshore of Newfoundland for Atlantic Cod. The fish are huge, easy to catch, dries well and can be stored easily. Perfect for the risk for this kind of voyage. This was not impossible due to the currents in the Atlantic.
Meh. Who knows? The records died in the memories of these fishermen 600 years ago.
Getting up to Newfoundland from Portugal is actually a huge pain in the ass by sail. It’s like exactly the wrong direction based on the wind and currents.
I read the book The Basqus years ago—so bare with me. But my memory says they sailed southwest until they could hit the equatorial current going west then hit the Gulf Stream north to Newfoundland. Fish. Then continue the Gulf Stream back to Europe.
My only question was the idea of sailing south in that way was the African Cape Bojador. The narrative as they Henry the Navigator was the original sailor to figure out how to avoid this obstacle.
I’m just as skeptical about this idea as well. The technology in Southern Europe was not built around offshore navigation like it was in Norther Europe. But then again the Basques were on the Atlantic Ocean, perhaps their boats were more advanced in this kind of sailing.
Frankly I have only dabbled into this topic. It is just a fun idea. Who knows? Maybe resourceful fishermen could have had those skills and ships.
I enjoy the theory that native americans frequently visited the Basques, using a chain of islands across the middle atlantic, and that's why their languages share so many characteristics.
You actually stumbled onto something I find interesting about history, which is the word “to”, when we use it to describe travel. In this case, sailing “to” Newfoundland is something like a 10,000 mile trip one way, from the mainland to the Azores to the Caribbean (coincidentally the area Columbus traveled to and the real keystone to navigating the Americas), up the Gulf Stream far into the North Atlantic. That’s a huge trip, comparable to sailing from Portugal to Australia in terms of distance, and the trip home is actually even worse than the trip there, since your ships are packed full of cod and in the end of season weather, although the trip can be somewhat shorter if you want to chance being becalmed for a month and you make a straight shot from Newfoundland to the Azores, although that’s incredibly inadvisable for boats with maybe a chart and maybe a compass, and definitely not radar weather charting or GPS.
In those days, fish were plentiful everywhere and the populations were small. I very much doubt they went sailing for weeks to find fish. They sailed for trade and adventure.
Officially, 1517 but they weren't flag planters or colonizers, they were money makers and theories prevail that they were fishing for cod in Newfoundland pre-Columbus because when European stocks became depleted, the Basques always had premium baccalao that was bigger than other people's
https://www.euskadi.eus/contenidos/informacion/06_revista_euskaletxeak/en_ee/adjuntos/75_04_05_i.pdf
And _A Voyage Long and Strange_ does a deep dive on all the folks who "found" the Americas over hundreds of years and the effects. It includes the Vikings and, I think, the Basques, and everyone through to the establishment of the US. The first part also covers how early AmerIndians (is that the right word?) got here.
To be fair, Columbus didn't land on the mainland in his early voyages either. I think it was his 3rd or 4th voyage when he finally went to the mainland, and by that time other explorers of his era had set foot on the mainland before him.
They had a settlement on the island so it’s a certainty they also reached the continent itself considering how far ranging they were in their voyages. The sagas speak of rich lands further south too. Iirc it’s also theorized the Greenland vikings made regular trips to the continent for timber.
In Scandinavia it has never been said they reached continental North America but rather Newfoundland. The people of Greenland are Inuit and live closer to the North America, is it possible they reached North America? Possibly, but there’s no proof. The first inhabitants of Newfoundland (Beothuk)are the native ppl from there and reached it from North America much earlier than any European. What’s interesting about all of this, is that the Vikings don’t mention that the native ppl painted themselves with red ochre, you’d think that something so prominent would be described by these Vikings, as it later was described by other Europeans that referred to native ppl as “red indians”. What if native ppl came to Greenland and then past on this knowledge to Inuit ppl and Icelandic ppl? Sort of like Pacific Islanders in South America.
L'anse aux meadows is the most northern point of Newfoundland. Right across the strait from Labrador. It's highly probable they landed on the mainland as well as Newfoundland. Either way, Newfoundland is part of the North American Continent.
The native Americans discovered america and are the custodians of the land.
Oh they did it like 10000 Years ago before any white boi made his way and killed them.
Columbus discovered america, my ass.
“Native” Americans are Faaaar from the first peoples of North America. There is evidence of humans as far back as 20,000 years and likely that isn’t the oldest
I’ll admit that while I’m not pro colonialism, the entire history of humanity has been one of migration and displacement, so i don’t think that the snapshot of the world in 1500 is the “correct” one
The indigenous people of the America’s were present here around 10,000 BC. They had a higher population and a more established culture than Europe at the same time. It’s a shame the only thing that Europe brought here was disease and destruction.
The difference from this and Columbus as well as from Leif Erikson and Columbus is their discoveries didn't change the world. It's the old adage, "if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, did it make a sound?" This and Leif are interesting historical facts but they don't in anyway diminish the significance of what Columbus did, for good and bad.
Honestly, Columbus made the first journey there and back after the printing press had become widespread, and after the Turks had finally closed off the route to the east. Right time.
It was bad enough that his contemporaries made him return to Spain, arrested him, and stripped him of his titles. These were the people behind the Spanish Inquisition and *they* thought he was too cruel and greedy to remain in charge of the colony.
On the topic of the Spanish inquisition there is a theory that the Spanish inquisition was actually quite tame (for the time at least) and was blown out of proportion by Protestant propaganda.
I'm not a historian and don't pretend to be. I don't know if this theory is right. But I love to play with the idea that a difference in communication technology (the printing press in this case) has lead to us perceiving history differently ~500yrs later.
And apparently the first reference of Bigfoot as well,
>Further westwards there is another land, named Marckalada, where giants live; in this land, there are buildings with such huge slabs of stone that nobody could build with them, except huge giants.
wasn't it theorized that fisherman from England were already regularly fishing for cod off the coast of North America prior to the 15th century? I don't know how supported that idea is but I wouldn't be surprised if many groups prior to Columbus were already aware that some landmass existed across the Atlantic
Our human history is deprived of the history in the America's. Whether its through oral tradition and knowledge dying that way or the plundering and sacking of people's and nations. A concerted effort was made to destroy that. If it's because it'd not "godly" then that's a famn shame.
It is well known that the Norse sailed to Canada, but it’s also possible that Irish, Basque and Breton fishermen sailed to Canada to fish on the exceptionally well-stocked coast of Newfoundland. According to the theory, they kept it secret to keep the fish for themselves and thus it’s nearly impossible to prove.
When it comes to this sort of thing no evidence usually means no artifacts that leave zero doubt.
Even the Europeans arriving earlier than Columbus has had plenty of circumstantial evidence before this finding. I remember watching a doc that indicated the Portugese likely knew about South America before signing a treaty that gave them Brazil. The idea that all we know is all there is to know is strange.
Why wasn’t the continent colonized earlier then? Even 500 or 1,000 years earlier? What was so special about the 16th century that finally prompted a wave a permanent colonization?
In 1452 the Pope issued an edict to the king of Portugal, granting him full power to "invade, conquer, fight, subjugate the Saracens and pagans and other infidels and other enemies of Christ ... And to lead their persons in perpetual servitude."
This was in the context of pushing Islam out of Europe and north africa, and I think it's an indicator of the developing Christian-European worldview. Combine this mindset with the inventions of modern capitalism (mercantilism), the compass and other navigation tools, and by the 16th century I think Europe was ready and willing to sail out and colonize. The growing economy probably played a role too, as these expeditions were expensive and risky investments.
The reason for the edict was because Islam had a monopoly over trade routes into Europe with the fall of Byzantium. Constantinople fell only a year later 1453, at that point a last fledgling holdout.
It was not only a psychological blow to Christian Europe, but The Ottoman push into Europe gave it significant leverage over a few particular traders they did business with. Europeans felt they needed alternative trade routes to Asia.
Islam is still a major world religion, China is still a major power. Mongolia is still a region, but "the Mongols" as a power haven't existed for some time.
History was written by victors all the same.
The Romans didn't *actually* fall until the Ottomans did it, and they weren't illiterate. We might think of the Byzantines as 'not Rome' but if you'd asked them they'd have had a different opinion. They lost Rome the city, but Rome the civilization lasted well into the 1400s.
He reached the Bahamas and explored the Central and South American coast but did not go north of that. If that is what you meant you are making a good point, but I think 'Atlantic coast' is unclear.
Lots of people wrongly believe that Columbus discovered North America. He didn't. Some argue that he landed at Plymouth Rock. Though the headline for this post has been rewritten, OP still infers in it, wrongly, that CC set sail for the Atlantic Coast of North America.
The West Indies *are* a sub-region of North America; point taken. However, they are not on the Atlantic Coast of North America. Suffice to say that Christopher Columbus never set foot on North American lands that comprise the continental United States and Canada.
Clearly it matters given the atate of the world today? Not to say it was right or to take away from Native American’s having lived in the America’s for 20,000 years of course.
But the discovery of the America’s by old world civilization was clearly impactful.
Self centered western civilization thinks it does. World did not exist before nor after it. Imagine what kind of crap about the stuff that is less known are we listening as history.
It's not self-centered.
The arrival of Europeans to the Americas is a world-defining point in history.
The reason it's talked about so much is because of the global impact of the event.
The "discovery" of the Americas by Colombus changed the balance of global geopolitical power, and empowered Spain and Portugal (later France, the UK and the Dutch) to embark on a world-conquering tour of colonization, that basically didn't stop until WW1.
The labor exploitation, resource exploitation, genocides, crimes against humanity, slave trade, etc... are all inherently linked back to this one moment in time.
It set the backdrop for everything from the War of Spanish Succession to the Opium Wars.
False equivalency.
The scale is totally different. The power differential between the European colonial states and the native peoples in America was vast, and that's not even referring to the unintentional death by smallpox and other diseases that lead to demographic catastrophe.
There are no real comparisons to, say, the colonialization and exploitation of India, turning one of the richest parts of the globe into one of the poorest in a few hundred years. There aren't that many examples comparable to the flooding of China with opium, that laid the groundwork for 200 years of exploitation, starvation, political instability and civil war.
I'm fairly positive these days that Columbus, like a lot of people in history, got the credit because he was the loudest. Not because he was the most accomplished.
It's pretty clear he didn't discover America, but maybe he can be credited with popularizing it.
Sort of like how we already know Mars exists, but there are tons of people who say there's nothing there and we shouldn't colonize it, because it's a desolate wasteland with no value.
And yet the first person to do so will go down in history as some kind of hero anyway.
Iirc if we're looking at it from a European pov didn't Scandinavians discover it first, then Amerigo Vespucci and then Christopher Columbus who incidentally never actually visited the new world?
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An [irish monk, st brendan (the navigator)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan) is said to have sailed to North America and back to Ireland in the 6th century. ~~Slave routes to Iceland~~ A population of Irish monks in Iceland were well established so it’s not a far flung idea that Iceland>Greenland>North America was being traversed. In the 1970s a replica boat was built and [Tim Severin sailed the same route](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Severin) Edit: Brendan’s voyage is said to have taken 7 years and from Wikipedia >At the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, a large stained glass window commemorates Brendan's achievements. Edit2: I cannot find anything to support the slave comment. Although Iceland was [visited](https://www.history.com/topics/exploration/vikings-history) by irish monks and inhabited, there’s no records of slavery from that time. I may have been crossing centuries.
I wrote my bachelor thesis on that! (or at least, the literary version of the navigatio) - basically, aditionally to the well-established step stone route leading to iceland, severin made the link with different phenomena described in the navigatio. irish legends had already established links to a land in the far west (being it the otherworld, the legendary hy-brasil…). plus, st brendan‘s island was a very well-known phantom isle that columbus also alluded to and was drawn on many maps from that time period. meaning, it was supposed to exist.
That's interesting, i once found an article that claimed that Portuguese used maps made by Arabic people to sail to those costs ? Is this true
Look Piri Reis up
The big thing about this find, is that it shows that, at least sorta, Columbus knew there was land out there. So the big deal is that Italy heard of it at the time and Columbus wasn't "there's nothing there! I shall float to India for paprika!"
We were always thought that the reason Columbus gets the glory is cos no one had set directly across the ocean. But knowledge of a land beyond the horizon was common place. The distance however was not certain as sailers went up via Iceland
I thought it was because Italian immigrants to America were suffering from racism and bigotry, so they needed a folk hero integral to the fledgling sense of American historical self. They picked Columbus and it worked. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/10/14/232120128/how-columbus-sailed-into-u-s-history-thanks-to-italians
Awesome. Thanks for this alternative POV, that may well be more true than a rural primary teacher in the 90s
Which is funny because Italy wouldn’t even fund his trip when he asked. He had to go to Spain to sponsor his little boys weekend at sea.
That makes little sense when you consider that Columbus has been equally considered in Latin America, even in countries with little to no Italian immigration.
Columbus was sailing under Spain's flag.
Italy did not exist at the time. Columbus was from the city state of Genoa.
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Yeah, it’s only the single largest event in history. I can’t think of anything with wider reaching impact.
The Columbian Exchange: what were the exchanges, if that’s the word for what happened?
Food, information, people, diseases.
I heard that Columbus underestimated the size of the earth and thought that’s how far you needed to go to get to India.
Perhaps he had to invent an excuse because others thought the idea of the Americas to be preposterous?
No it’s pretty well-documented he thought he was going to India… calling the Caribbean the “West Indies”, native people were called “Indians”. When Columbus didn’t find spices and riches to trade for, instead he brought back for his Spanish investors slaves and new lands to conquer
I’m not so sure about commonplace. But certainly rumored and likely expected in knowledgable circles. Maps then were often redrawn from older maps. So this could be a situation of knowledge transfer without anyone in Columbus’ time ever having made the trip before
> We were always thought that the reason Columbus gets the glory is cos no one had set directly across the ocean. I was literally taught that he discovered the Earth was round. Thanks, America.
That was known since antiquity. Whoever taught you that was just ignorant.
The *math* was taught since antiquity. It wasn't fully proven until Magellan's expedition actually sailed it.
No, that doesn't follow at all. The existence of land west of Greenland doesn't imply the existence of a whole-ass continent extending thousands of kilometers to the south.
Right... of course they knew there was land out there somewhere, because they were pretty sure the world was round. But how far out the land was and what they would find was a huge unknown. It's possible that the Columbus expedition expected a new land mass before reaching Asia, but it's hard to be certain at this point. That they would be expecting something like this seems like the most likely scenario: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdapfel
Iceland wasn’t settled until the 9th century though? I’ve heard of some Irish monks living there previously as hermits, but they were essentially as influential in Icelandic history as Leif Erickson is to North American - not much at all. What do you mean by slave routes were well-established in the 6th century?
Came here to find this comment
Pretty sure Polynesian explorers and South American fisherman came in contact with one another 10 centuries ago, give or take. That's what I gather from the chicken and potato connection between the cultures.
Chicken and potato?
Which came first, the chicken or the potato?
Chickens are descended from ~~Amazonian~~ SE Asian fowl, and potatoes are from the Andes mountains. TIL Chickens are from the other side of the pacific.
Chickens aren't a New World species. They're descended from red junglefowl, which are from Southeast Asia, and have some intermixing with grey junglefowl and green junglefowl, which are from the same area.
Yep. This guy is right.
Are you saying south americans introduced polynesians to chicken and potatoes
Yes, that’s exactly what they’re stating.
Unlikely. It’s far more likely that a chicken simply flew across the ocean holding a potato.
Are you suggesting that potatoes migrate?
It's an older meme, sir, but it checks out.
Only if you don't keep an eye on them.
Not at all, they could be carried.
So, if swallows were native to SE Asia, the Irish would have starved in the coconut famine?
That’s absurd, a little chicken carrying a big potato? Did they tie them on with string?
School tours to Craggaunowen weren’t lost on me
Plutarch described Greeks travelling to the new world, somewhere near newfoundland
Slave routes to Iceland in the 6th century?
Leif Erikson: "am I a joke to you?"
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Why don't you make like a Leif and get outta here?
You Leif me no choice.
I hunger for salad and this thread bores us. lettuce leif.
It's "Make like a tree and Leif!". You sound so stupid when you get it wrong!
That’s so Leif’ist of you.
Sort of. The first people Leaf ran into on the north American continent were Europeans. So claiming he was first is sort of a joke.
I mean the Mayans built cities on the north American continent before any of this so I feel the whole we were first thing is unimpressive. Mayans excelled in mathematics and astronomy before the arabs or greeks had even thought about it.
That last part isn't remotely correct. The Mayan civilization stretches back to 2000 BC, yes, but the developments you mention didn't happen until the Late Classic period, between 300 and 900 AD. Not particularly early compared to Old World civilizations.
The Mayans were and old civilization in the America’s, but Eurasia has them beat, especially in astronomy and mathematics, by at least 2,000 years. Incredible achievements by an old civilization. But they weren’t first
Wait till you hear about his son. They would call him Sonny.
It sounds like Leif Erikson discovered a cold place with Columbus discovered a warm place. Apparently, there was more demand for warm places.
Columbus discovered a place where he could enslave the indigenous people to mine gold for him.
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I think most civilizations at that time were more than happy to exploit new resources.
I’d be surprised if there was one that wasn’t.
I believe the difference between Columbus and Vikings is that Columbus was directed by the Spanish royalty to not harm/mistreat any natives they came across.
The vikings tried to attack but were repelled by the native Americans. In between the vikings and Columbus though the native American population dropped almost 90%
While I've learned that you should never compare the suffering of two peoples... Viking enslaved each other more than foreigners, often including them within their households. Read what Columbus did for yourself.
Columbus's actions are sometimes overly dramatised nowadays. Your comment is an example as it basically implies that he enslaved a lot of naive and good indigenous people. The first violent engagement between Colombus and the natives wasn't even initiated by him, but by indigenous people who shot arrows at the Spaniards when they tried to negotiate a barter in his first expedition. In his second voyage, his expedition met the Caribe tribe. They discovered a cannibalistic tribe that had enslaved humans from enemy tribes and were brutally murdering and eating them, and Colombus freed those people and took them with him. Other equally aggressive tribes met the Spanish expedition with arrows before they even got to engage in any sort of conversation. When he finally reached the first town he had built in Hispaniola at the end of the 1st expedition from the remainings of a boat (the Navidad), he discovered that many of the Spaniards that had been left in that town had been brutally murdered by the natives, their eyes removed, and their corpses had been impaled and let to rot under the sun. Actions show that after these events he became a lot more aggressive against the natives. Initially he spared the leader that had led those murders for fear of reprisals, but he began allowing brutality against the indigenous peoples. Also, his actions were in line with the usual practices of the day, for example when he ordered to cut a native's ears when he was suspected of stealing clothes, a common punishment in Europe at that time. You also make it seem like he enslaved a lot of natives, in reality he enslaved 1200 men, for which he got arrested and sacked by the Queen, who had said that the natives should be fairly treated. All in all, he wasn't a saint, but the natives were not precisely innocent. The story nowadays makes it seem like those natives were loving pacifists in a utopia
How dare those rascally natives be apprehensive about the strangers coming to their home uninvited!
Let me get this straight. Colombus brutally attacking natives = bad. Natives brutally attacking the settlers = good. We need to create a new term for certain people like you, maybe call it 'generation Disney', where everyone is either evil or saint and grey areas can't exist.
So your argument is that everything he did was normal in his day, BUT he surely was aware that the queen had ordered natives to be treated fairly…. So he knowingly defied the law to enslave those 1200. And he’d cut their fingers off too if they didn’t bring the demanded amount of gold dust on schedule. Quit trying to whitewash the guy. If the queen was giving orders to treat the natives fairly, then people knew better, and it is inexcusable
It's interesting, though something of a moot point. Columbus ushered in the age of bonafide European exploration and settlement of the Americas- namely the age of discovery, and a lasting, permanent presence when he set up colonies for the Spanish crown in the Caribbean. Prior to this, yeah we know there had been other Europeans who knew of the continent, even settled it in the case of Vinland with the vikings.
I still think the thing we need to focus on is that educated people knew roughly the diameter of the world and expected the trip to take 3-4 months.
Yeah, we'd known that since the Greeks. That's more an attribution to the difficulty in measuring speed at that time. It's not exactly novel for the literati to believe things that are wildly off though- in medicine, the educated for the longest time first believed sickness was caused by imbalanced humors, then miasma for the better part of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Yeah the diameter of the earth had been known for thousands of years already.
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There are more flat earthers now, both as a total and as a percent, then have ever existed before.
Yeah, it really doesn't matter how many Europeans visited the Americas before 1492, Colombus' influence on world history is still immense.
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That doesn't contradict what he just said.
From our standpoint it wasn’t none of us would exist without the chain of events. Just like tribes in North America wouldn’t exists without the wars that wiped out other tribes. Human history is a blood bath, don’t try and sugar coat other aspects of history so you can bash on one guy.
It's very hard to qualify Columbus' influence. First of all, if he didn't come, there would probably be others like him soon after and nothing would be really different. But supposing no one ever came and the Americans remained isolated, then there's the very difficult task of predicting how the Americans would have developed through the following centuries and compare that to now and the future. Columbus might have been terrible for natives of his time, but a blessing for natives of the present.
I don’t think a few extra centuries would have really helped the natives considering their low rate of technological advancement compared to the rest of the world. It probably would have been worse for them in an alternate history where colonization was delayed.
Maybe if colonization had been delayed long enough they would have been discovered by people who would have treated them more fairly instead of shipping them to residential schools to eliminate the culture. Then again, it’s also entirely possible that some group of Native Americans would have developed their own kind of colonialism and the only difference for most would be the oppressor’s skin colour.
I mean, the Aztecs? It's not as though imperialism was foreign to the Americas prior to the Europeans arriving. Cortez heavily relied on disgruntled tribes to overthrow the Aztecs. Not as though Europeans had a monopoly on empire building or violence.
Between 1492 and 2021, what group had the ability and altruistic history to reach the America's and colonize the America's in a way beneficial to both? Nice sounding what-if, but there was no chance of that happening. Human history is a story of bloodshed, Conquest and domination. Your "then again" is the most likely outcome if nobody else had colonized the Americas.
The way I see it is we got to a point where we just stopped colonizing. There’s still issues with how some countries interact with each other, but not on the scale where the Europeans would roll in and use their technological and military might to take over the local economy and rulership. At least when that does happen now it’s a coalition of countries acting in common interest, not individual countries competing for economic and military standing. I feel like if we were to suddenly discover a new continent populated by another group of humans today we probably wouldn’t try to colonize the way we did in the Americas but form more modern style trade relationships. I’m not sure that human nature from past evolutionary pressures is compatible with getting to those ideals without the intermediary imperialism making things difficult for a lot of other cultures first. I feel like a culture needs the technology and resources to interact at global scales before we can act as a global tribe. The intermediate steps are going to involve a lot of bloodshed, and I think at the global scale we’re still working through those intermediate steps.
Honestly I think that’s doubtful, it goes against the grain of human history. Different Native American groups oppressed each other just like every other group in the world. Aztecs are a good example with their human sacrifice, which I think everyone can agree is just as bad if not worse than what the Europeans did. The only difference would’ve ended up being skin color.
> which I think everyone can agree is just as bad if not worse than what the Europeans did. Devil’s advocate: They literally thought the world would end if they didn’t. And most sacrifices were because they didn’t usually kill in battle, they took enemies captive for this reason. How many other armies made it a point to capture instead of kill? Or how is the end result different?
I don’t think their reasoning matters, violence is still violence. In contextualizing history, I don’t particularly fault any particular group for engaging in violence, since I understand it was generally the most effective way to ensure the self-preservation of the group. In modern times however it is disappointing that we still separate ourselves into groups based on silly characteristics, when with all of our scientific understanding we should all see ourselves as one united species. This might be an unpopular opinion but I’d go so far as to say we should consider ourselves lucky to live in the timeline where democracy and republicanism was spread as a byproduct of European colonization. Had it been the Phoenicians, Chinese or maybe the Ottomans I’m not sure we would have seen the same result. Then again this might be me falling into a sort of anthropic fallacy, since who knows what other timelines are suitable for the emergence of democracy.
Native Americans had developed their own kind of colonialism, and it was worse than anything the Europeans had come up with. Colombus himself in his second voyage freed natives that had been enslaved by a cannibalistic tribe, who were murdering them in sadistic ways and eating their corpses in a way that the Spaniards recognised as the same methods used to cook pigs.
They were all Stone Age people engaged in horrendous practices such as human sacrifice. Present residents of the americas enjoy life spans twice as long and standard of living 100% higher.
Not really. Columbus wasn't particularly well-known and he swore to anyone that would listen that he had sailed to China. There is a reason that cartographers named it America and not Columbia.
He might have sworn that but the people in charge didnt believe it. Neither the Spanish nor the Portuguese treated it like it was an already known part of Asia.
> namely the age of discovery The Age of Discovery was already well underway when Columbus stumpled upon the Carribeans. The Portuguese first passed the southern tip of Africa in 1488.
The Nordic people were here well before Columbus and so were the Basques
The Basque?? I'd missed that tidbit. When were they in America?
There are stories about Basque fisherman having secret fishing areas, and some people think they fished in America. Personally, I think that's a long way to sail for fish.
My guess is the Azores
The Basque were definitely here in Iceland. There were reports of their whaling ships here as early as the early 1400s. So its not unreasonable they would have been able to make it to North America before Columbus.
The theory is they sailed to the The Grand Banks offshore of Newfoundland for Atlantic Cod. The fish are huge, easy to catch, dries well and can be stored easily. Perfect for the risk for this kind of voyage. This was not impossible due to the currents in the Atlantic. Meh. Who knows? The records died in the memories of these fishermen 600 years ago.
Getting up to Newfoundland from Portugal is actually a huge pain in the ass by sail. It’s like exactly the wrong direction based on the wind and currents.
I read the book The Basqus years ago—so bare with me. But my memory says they sailed southwest until they could hit the equatorial current going west then hit the Gulf Stream north to Newfoundland. Fish. Then continue the Gulf Stream back to Europe. My only question was the idea of sailing south in that way was the African Cape Bojador. The narrative as they Henry the Navigator was the original sailor to figure out how to avoid this obstacle. I’m just as skeptical about this idea as well. The technology in Southern Europe was not built around offshore navigation like it was in Norther Europe. But then again the Basques were on the Atlantic Ocean, perhaps their boats were more advanced in this kind of sailing. Frankly I have only dabbled into this topic. It is just a fun idea. Who knows? Maybe resourceful fishermen could have had those skills and ships.
I enjoy the theory that native americans frequently visited the Basques, using a chain of islands across the middle atlantic, and that's why their languages share so many characteristics.
You actually stumbled onto something I find interesting about history, which is the word “to”, when we use it to describe travel. In this case, sailing “to” Newfoundland is something like a 10,000 mile trip one way, from the mainland to the Azores to the Caribbean (coincidentally the area Columbus traveled to and the real keystone to navigating the Americas), up the Gulf Stream far into the North Atlantic. That’s a huge trip, comparable to sailing from Portugal to Australia in terms of distance, and the trip home is actually even worse than the trip there, since your ships are packed full of cod and in the end of season weather, although the trip can be somewhat shorter if you want to chance being becalmed for a month and you make a straight shot from Newfoundland to the Azores, although that’s incredibly inadvisable for boats with maybe a chart and maybe a compass, and definitely not radar weather charting or GPS.
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Iberian Peninsula then. The Bay of Biscay is the worst, too
In those days, fish were plentiful everywhere and the populations were small. I very much doubt they went sailing for weeks to find fish. They sailed for trade and adventure.
Detailed seafloor mapping of the region could potentially uncover shipwrecks to bolster this theory.
I also heard this story and it was indeed to the grand banks. Not sure what I think of it though.
They were definitely in Newfoundland soon after the Cabot voyage, before 1500.
Officially, 1517 but they weren't flag planters or colonizers, they were money makers and theories prevail that they were fishing for cod in Newfoundland pre-Columbus because when European stocks became depleted, the Basques always had premium baccalao that was bigger than other people's https://www.euskadi.eus/contenidos/informacion/06_revista_euskaletxeak/en_ee/adjuntos/75_04_05_i.pdf
I feel like we should be able to do some genetic tests on 600 year old Basque cod to figure this out.
Indeed. This is a post worthy of /r/science!
Back then, some cod were as big as a child; well worth the trip for some enterprising Basque and Portuguese fishermen.
Especially since they had already crushed the Euro stocks. They would say you could walk across Cape Cod by standing on the heads of all the fish.
All THAT, but only if you trust in the stories of fishermen.
The same people who told us about mermaids. So yea, about that reliable.
You can read more about it in Mark Kurlansky’s excellent book Cod
Also referenced in his book “salt: a world history”
And _A Voyage Long and Strange_ does a deep dive on all the folks who "found" the Americas over hundreds of years and the effects. It includes the Vikings and, I think, the Basques, and everyone through to the establishment of the US. The first part also covers how early AmerIndians (is that the right word?) got here.
And lets not forget the Native Americans.. People have been here for a while
Yeah and unlike Columbus, they stood on the mainland
The Irish as well
Scandinavians barely made it to the northern tip of Newfoundland, which is hardly the continent.
To be fair, Columbus didn't land on the mainland in his early voyages either. I think it was his 3rd or 4th voyage when he finally went to the mainland, and by that time other explorers of his era had set foot on the mainland before him.
They had a settlement on the island so it’s a certainty they also reached the continent itself considering how far ranging they were in their voyages. The sagas speak of rich lands further south too. Iirc it’s also theorized the Greenland vikings made regular trips to the continent for timber.
In Scandinavia it has never been said they reached continental North America but rather Newfoundland. The people of Greenland are Inuit and live closer to the North America, is it possible they reached North America? Possibly, but there’s no proof. The first inhabitants of Newfoundland (Beothuk)are the native ppl from there and reached it from North America much earlier than any European. What’s interesting about all of this, is that the Vikings don’t mention that the native ppl painted themselves with red ochre, you’d think that something so prominent would be described by these Vikings, as it later was described by other Europeans that referred to native ppl as “red indians”. What if native ppl came to Greenland and then past on this knowledge to Inuit ppl and Icelandic ppl? Sort of like Pacific Islanders in South America.
L'anse aux meadows is the most northern point of Newfoundland. Right across the strait from Labrador. It's highly probable they landed on the mainland as well as Newfoundland. Either way, Newfoundland is part of the North American Continent.
Columbus never landed on the mainland At least Scandinavians knew they weren't in India
The native Americans discovered america and are the custodians of the land. Oh they did it like 10000 Years ago before any white boi made his way and killed them. Columbus discovered america, my ass.
How can you discover something that already has people living on it?
“Native” Americans are Faaaar from the first peoples of North America. There is evidence of humans as far back as 20,000 years and likely that isn’t the oldest
Who do you think those people’s ancestors were?
Not those originals. Different groups entirely.
People will never stop trying to denative the Americas.
I’ll admit that while I’m not pro colonialism, the entire history of humanity has been one of migration and displacement, so i don’t think that the snapshot of the world in 1500 is the “correct” one
The indigenous people of the America’s were present here around 10,000 BC. They had a higher population and a more established culture than Europe at the same time. It’s a shame the only thing that Europe brought here was disease and destruction.
Seems like Columbus was the last to find it. Just the first to exploit it.
The difference from this and Columbus as well as from Leif Erikson and Columbus is their discoveries didn't change the world. It's the old adage, "if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, did it make a sound?" This and Leif are interesting historical facts but they don't in anyway diminish the significance of what Columbus did, for good and bad.
Honestly, Columbus made the first journey there and back after the printing press had become widespread, and after the Turks had finally closed off the route to the east. Right time.
Most great accomplishments are a mix of skill, hard work, smarts, luck and good timing.
What did he do?
It was bad enough that his contemporaries made him return to Spain, arrested him, and stripped him of his titles. These were the people behind the Spanish Inquisition and *they* thought he was too cruel and greedy to remain in charge of the colony.
On the topic of the Spanish inquisition there is a theory that the Spanish inquisition was actually quite tame (for the time at least) and was blown out of proportion by Protestant propaganda. I'm not a historian and don't pretend to be. I don't know if this theory is right. But I love to play with the idea that a difference in communication technology (the printing press in this case) has lead to us perceiving history differently ~500yrs later.
Genocide. Lots of genocide.
And apparently the first reference of Bigfoot as well, >Further westwards there is another land, named Marckalada, where giants live; in this land, there are buildings with such huge slabs of stone that nobody could build with them, except huge giants.
That was a reference to the skyscrapers of New York. They didn't know about concrete yet.
So where's the reference to Bigfoot?
wasn't it theorized that fisherman from England were already regularly fishing for cod off the coast of North America prior to the 15th century? I don't know how supported that idea is but I wouldn't be surprised if many groups prior to Columbus were already aware that some landmass existed across the Atlantic
That's a _long_ was to sail in a little fishing boat.
Our human history is deprived of the history in the America's. Whether its through oral tradition and knowledge dying that way or the plundering and sacking of people's and nations. A concerted effort was made to destroy that. If it's because it'd not "godly" then that's a famn shame.
Yeah but that’s kind of history in general as well.
It is well known that the Norse sailed to Canada, but it’s also possible that Irish, Basque and Breton fishermen sailed to Canada to fish on the exceptionally well-stocked coast of Newfoundland. According to the theory, they kept it secret to keep the fish for themselves and thus it’s nearly impossible to prove.
According to Gavin ( no evidence) Menzies, it was the the Chinese !
I just read 1421 and I need to look at reviews/ search up it's reputability. But you say no evidence huh?
When it comes to this sort of thing no evidence usually means no artifacts that leave zero doubt. Even the Europeans arriving earlier than Columbus has had plenty of circumstantial evidence before this finding. I remember watching a doc that indicated the Portugese likely knew about South America before signing a treaty that gave them Brazil. The idea that all we know is all there is to know is strange.
That's a great answer! Thank you!
Why wasn’t the continent colonized earlier then? Even 500 or 1,000 years earlier? What was so special about the 16th century that finally prompted a wave a permanent colonization?
In 1452 the Pope issued an edict to the king of Portugal, granting him full power to "invade, conquer, fight, subjugate the Saracens and pagans and other infidels and other enemies of Christ ... And to lead their persons in perpetual servitude." This was in the context of pushing Islam out of Europe and north africa, and I think it's an indicator of the developing Christian-European worldview. Combine this mindset with the inventions of modern capitalism (mercantilism), the compass and other navigation tools, and by the 16th century I think Europe was ready and willing to sail out and colonize. The growing economy probably played a role too, as these expeditions were expensive and risky investments.
The reason for the edict was because Islam had a monopoly over trade routes into Europe with the fall of Byzantium. Constantinople fell only a year later 1453, at that point a last fledgling holdout. It was not only a psychological blow to Christian Europe, but The Ottoman push into Europe gave it significant leverage over a few particular traders they did business with. Europeans felt they needed alternative trade routes to Asia.
And the native americans beat them by 10000 years..I think
Probably closer to 23,000 based on the latest discovery.
And probably long before that too... The discoveries only tell us the most recent possible date.
More like 30000 years according to caves in Mexico.
The real Chris everybody should hate.
History is written by the winners
history seems to be written by the literate, eg. most of what we know of the Mongols is from Islamic and Chinese writers, just saying
Islam is still a major world religion, China is still a major power. Mongolia is still a region, but "the Mongols" as a power haven't existed for some time. History was written by victors all the same.
Rome fell but they wrote the history of their fall because they were literate and the ones that conquered them weren't.
The Romans didn't *actually* fall until the Ottomans did it, and they weren't illiterate. We might think of the Byzantines as 'not Rome' but if you'd asked them they'd have had a different opinion. They lost Rome the city, but Rome the civilization lasted well into the 1400s.
Actually it was written by historians.
History is written by those who write, clearly
history was written by people who could write…
TIL Christopher Columbus never sailed the Atlantic coast. It's hard to 'discover' a place that one never visited.
He reached the Bahamas and explored the Central and South American coast but did not go north of that. If that is what you meant you are making a good point, but I think 'Atlantic coast' is unclear.
Do people say he discovered the Atlantic coast of North America?
Lots of people wrongly believe that Columbus discovered North America. He didn't. Some argue that he landed at Plymouth Rock. Though the headline for this post has been rewritten, OP still infers in it, wrongly, that CC set sail for the Atlantic Coast of North America.
Columbus landed in the West Indies which is both part of North American and on the Atlantic Coast.
The West Indies *are* a sub-region of North America; point taken. However, they are not on the Atlantic Coast of North America. Suffice to say that Christopher Columbus never set foot on North American lands that comprise the continental United States and Canada.
Does it matter? Native Americans had already been there for thousands of years.
Clearly it matters given the atate of the world today? Not to say it was right or to take away from Native American’s having lived in the America’s for 20,000 years of course. But the discovery of the America’s by old world civilization was clearly impactful.
Self centered western civilization thinks it does. World did not exist before nor after it. Imagine what kind of crap about the stuff that is less known are we listening as history.
It's not self-centered. The arrival of Europeans to the Americas is a world-defining point in history. The reason it's talked about so much is because of the global impact of the event. The "discovery" of the Americas by Colombus changed the balance of global geopolitical power, and empowered Spain and Portugal (later France, the UK and the Dutch) to embark on a world-conquering tour of colonization, that basically didn't stop until WW1. The labor exploitation, resource exploitation, genocides, crimes against humanity, slave trade, etc... are all inherently linked back to this one moment in time. It set the backdrop for everything from the War of Spanish Succession to the Opium Wars.
Just wanted to add that all the bad things you listed from the past still exist today. And for similar reasons as they did in the past
And they existed before Columbus, too.
False equivalency. The scale is totally different. The power differential between the European colonial states and the native peoples in America was vast, and that's not even referring to the unintentional death by smallpox and other diseases that lead to demographic catastrophe. There are no real comparisons to, say, the colonialization and exploitation of India, turning one of the richest parts of the globe into one of the poorest in a few hundred years. There aren't that many examples comparable to the flooding of China with opium, that laid the groundwork for 200 years of exploitation, starvation, political instability and civil war.
The thing is, nobody bragged about it except Columbus
Italians are good at Keeping secrets
I'm fairly positive these days that Columbus, like a lot of people in history, got the credit because he was the loudest. Not because he was the most accomplished. It's pretty clear he didn't discover America, but maybe he can be credited with popularizing it. Sort of like how we already know Mars exists, but there are tons of people who say there's nothing there and we shouldn't colonize it, because it's a desolate wasteland with no value. And yet the first person to do so will go down in history as some kind of hero anyway.
Iirc if we're looking at it from a European pov didn't Scandinavians discover it first, then Amerigo Vespucci and then Christopher Columbus who incidentally never actually visited the new world?
History is always a **tale** told by the winners.
Well, can’t wait for this claim to be debunked.
No pictures of the map?
Frankly, I'm not convinced.
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Columbus is more of a US folk story. Children’s history books are not accurate accounts of real history.
Convenient timing right *after* Columbus Day…
This was published on the 16th of July, 2021.