Posted on 10/12/2015 6:44:28 AM PDT by truthfinder9
Last year I asked, Should Columbus be Celebrated? It is a controversial question, since that day in 1492 meant the eventual end of many cultures in the Western Hemisphere. The other side of the sword is that new cultures arose from those escaping the Old World. In all likelihood, using Columbus as the poster child for all that did go wrong is not fair.
One has to dig deep into many studies of the man to even begin to unravel his mind. He was secretive, put himself in the middle of politics and was the target of his enemies. All of this, and the distance of time, have made any study of the explorer a difficult one.
As Carol Delaney argues in Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem, acquiring wealth for the Spanish crown was not his primary goal. He sought allies and money for one more Crusade to the Holy Lands. Religious motivation has been suggested before, but by writers couching everything in esoteric conspiracies. It has also been suggested he knew the New World existed. As plausible as that is, most of what we know seems to point elsewhere. Beyond that:
(Excerpt) Read more at darrickdean.com ...
>>How many cultures vanished unrecorded before Columbus’ arrival? What Columbus brought to the New World was History.
Exactly. While some people invent fictional histories of the Pre-Columbian stone age tribes in this hemisphere by using a few facts that fit their narrative and ignoring all other facts, the truth is that they had a culture of little more than survival and war (and avoiding war to survive, of course). Europe had disease and hunger as the cost of its success in building cities and producing viable offspring that exceeded the capabilities of the land. But, even then, Europeans could feed a lot more people off an acre of land than the hunter-gatherers of the western hemisphere.
As you point out, Columbus was not the first destroy a culture in this hemisphere. He was just the first to do it after written history came here.
Thank you-it isn’t like he could just sail back to Spain and tell his patrons/investors/employers Ferdinand and Isabella that he didn’t find India-or anything even close-just a bunch of people living like it was in Europe before the Roman empire.
People didn’t just get fired and have a bad reference then-for not delivering to the king and queen-and probably other stockholders/investors, he would have gotten prison and maybe lost his head-you can’t blame the guy for lying a bit and painting a picture of profits to be made to save his employment and his skin...
Now that would be celebrating diversity.
;’)
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