Christopher Columbus' Remains

Netscape News ^ | 1/17/05 | DANIEL WOOLLS

[TexasTaysor]

MADRID, Spain (AP) - Spanish researchers said Monday they've won permission to open a tomb in the Dominican Republic purported to hold remains of Christopher Columbus, edging closer to solving a century-old mystery over whether those bones or a rival set in Spain are the real thing.

[David1]

Finally!

[Conspiracy Guy]

I thought he was buried in Elvis' backyard!

[newgeezer]

(This just in from the WGAS dept. of CNN...)

[Shortwave]

Amazing first pictures just released!

[elli1]

Yeh...this is getting to be just plain annoying. Don't these folks understand that some of us just plain like unsolved mysteries? Leave the old bags of bones alone & leave something for us armchair detectives to ponder about. :-(

[NordP]

LEIF ERIKSON discovered America

Just had to include that.

[Shortwave]

I agree! You ever hear the one about "Oak Island" and the Knights of Templar? You want a strange mystery, check that one out!

[twigs]

There were some Irish monks who may have beat Leif by hundreds of years. We just don't know. Personally, I think America was visited sporatically by many over the millennia.

[Sacajaweau]

Add:,p.Betsy didn't make the first flag.

Washington killed his mother's favorite colt (the real story behind the cherry tree).

etc, etc

[NautiNurse]

LEIF ERIKSON discovered America

and it's a good thing our continent isn't named Vepucciland.

[Rodney King]

It was named Vinland, and I won't rest until our land is resotred to its rightful name and ownership. Which means that most of ya'll can get the hell out.

[Rodney King]

Just curious... Is there an official time lapse when it is ok to go around digging up peoples remains? I mean, you can't dig up graves that you find lying around as far back as the colonial error, yet if you find a grave from before then it seems to be ok to dig it up. Is there any guidance on this?

[The Great RJ]

I'm sure CBS could "gin" up some documents proving the authenticity of either set of bones and that Columbus was drunk on watch at least once. Certainly there was word processing in the 15th century.

[ncdrumr]

Send Geraldo to cover it live!

[LiveBait]

There are an increasing number of regulations governing both remains and "cultural artifacts." The most prominent one in the USA is NAGPRA, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which has been used to force the return of native remains and religious artifacts from museums.

[An Old Marine]

"Personally, I think America was visited sporatically by many over the millennia."

There are many arguments for this but one of the most compelling is a note by the French explorer Sieur de La Salle in 1669 of an American Indian tribe on the north shore of Lake Huron. This tribe was uniformly light skinned, blue-eyed, and had red hair. Further intensifying the mystery La salle wrote that the red haired Indians had several words that he thought sounded Celtic. When La Salle returned to the region in 1672 the tribe had abandoned the area and were nowhere to be found.

This "lost tribe" pops up in comments by several other early explorers. The Jesuit Jacques Marquette was acting as a missionary among the Huron Indians in 1671 and met a red-headed captive of the Hurons that he initially mistook for a European. The Huron referred to the red-headed captive's people as the "fire haired people".

Pierre Esprit Radisson was a captive of the Iroquois and had a similar experience. Even Lewis and Clark refer to rumors of the light skinned people they heard when passing through what is now Yellowstone National Park.

[Verginius Rufus]

According to the Saga of the Greenlanders, Bjarni Herjolfsson discovered the lands to the west of Greenland before Leif, but he did not land. Leif was aware of Bjarni's voyage and retraced his route.

[dfwgator]

Everybody knows the Chinese discovered America, they discovered everything, just ask a Chinese person, they'll tell you.

[steplock]

Who (deleted comment) would REALLY care whose 500 year old bones are there?