A recent article on MSNBC refers to a British "amateur" historian's claim that China discovered the New World and circumnavigated the globe before Europe.. pretty bold claims... http://www.msnbc.com/news/721582.asp?0dm=C22BN
It's nothing new that Christopher Columbus is one of the biggest frauds in history... The Vikings were rowing across the Atlantic about 500 years before Columbus made his voyage. All they did was plunder villages and rape women, though...They didn't worry about documenting and mapping and all that other crap Erik the Red would kick Christopher Columbus's ass, slice off his little pecker, and skewer it up for dinner
Didn't the people living in the Americas find the Americas first? Columbus was the first European to travel to the New World and document it. He helped establish the following journeys. So what if some Chinese found it first? What did they accomplish besides maybe having made some maps that somehow got to Columbo but that he didn't need? I also heard a rumor about ten years ago that the phoenecians may have been to America first. Jackie Robinson wasn't the first black to play baseball, but he is the one celebrated because his playing accomplished something more than just baseball. What about Leif Erickson?
but then shouldn't Chris Columbus still get credit as the discoverer??? I mean, if the Vikings were simply raping and plundering, are they really discoverers??? Columbus mapped and brought the information back...his journeys changed the face of the world at the time. The Vikings trips were fruitless for the development of man.... i have never heard this story of Chinese explorers...interesting....but seems to me that a culture that holds on to its history so strongly as the Chinese do would have made this claim centuries ago if it were true.
For me, this isn't about "discovering a new world" or changing the world, or anything like that...Once again, this can be summed up with a Simpsons quote, as Nelson so eloquently said to Lisa on yearbook signing day, "If you hadn't done it, some other geek would have!" This is about being a fraud. Christopher Columbus didn't know where he was going, didn't know where he was when he got there, used another person's ships and money, and barely made the voyage over there (his crew was on the verge of killing him when they arrived). Then, he offered a reward for the first person to spot land, but took credit for first spotting land himself, even though one of his crewmen spotted it first. To top it all off, he brought a bunch of groovy new diseases like smallpox and scurvy to the new world, and started what is probably the largest case of genocide in history by almost eradicating the entire race of Native Americans...But, millions of American kids get his birthday off from school each year, so I'll get off my soapbox now before they all kill me... All that so the queen could make her stupid soup taste better...
You have taken every possible negative about the discovery of the New World you could possibly come up with and completely ignored the advancement of the world in "discovering" the West!!! I have never read a more glass half-empty post than that one!! He didn't know where he was going....and the Chinese and Vikings did??? did anybody know where they were going until Columbus went there, mapped it and brought back the info to Europe?? He used someone else's money...do you know how common this was back then??? it's not like Spain had nothing to gain!!! it was an investment, and he risked his life in the undertaking. He personally brought smallpox??? he carried it over in a jar, or something??? or did the other europeans who came with him (maybe even the one who spotted land!) bring that disease too...along with subsequent other europeans who followed in his footsteps. He personally started the genocide??? are you serious??? come on!!! there are plenty of folks to blame for the treatment of Native Americans...somehow I don't think this all rests entirely at his feet! You're ready and willing to give the Vikings all kind of credit, yet you admit they came merely to rape and pillage. i'm not saying columbus is a saint...but you paint him as either 1. Satan or 2. insignificant. He clearly is neither of those.
