The ANNOTICO Report
BUT, When Columbus Discovered America, It STAYED Discovered!!
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS DIDN'T REALLY DISCOVER AMERICA. SO WHAT?
Canada Free Press
Opinions
by Klaus Rohrich
Monday, May 9, 2005
An article in the weekend papers about Gavin Menzies’
book, 1421: The Year
China Discovered the World, states that if Menzies’ hypothesis
is correct
it will "turn much of modern history upside down". Menzies’
claims that a
"distinguished Canadian architect" discovered the remnants
of a medieval
naval base somewhere on Canada’s east coast and postulates
that the alleged
base was established by Admiral Zheng He who commanded
a fleet of ships
that discovered America’s east coast.
Periodically throughout the past 100 years numerous individuals
have
stepped forward with evidence that America was actually
discovered by a
number of other, earlier explorers and that credit for
that discovery
should be taken away from Christopher Columbus. There
is some evidence that
Leif Ericsson first settled America in about 1000 AD.
There are also
stories about Irish monks having visited the shores of
the new world in the
middle ages, as well as legends among some of the central
American Indians
that detail visits from red haired, bearded adventurers
over 1,000 years
ago.
Discrediting Christopher Columbus appears to have become
a modern pastime,
as more and more "research" that touts other explorers
who predated
Columbus comes to light. Many of the more politically
correct luminaries in
North America today go so far as to say that Christopher
Columbus’s
"discovery" of America was one of history’s great disasters,
resulting in
the eventual establishment of North America’s current
geopolitical reality.
That’s certainly a valid point of view, given that the
indigenous peoples
of North America suffered greatly as a result of Europeans
settling here.
But at the same time the reality of the here and now
is that North America
is what it is and suggesting that the accepted discoverer
of the continent
didn’t really discoverer it after all will not alter
the current state of
this continent. Yes, the Vikings probably discovered
America 500 years
prior to Columbus and yes; it’s entirely possible that
many others
including the Chinese may have done so as well. So what?
The truth is that neither the Vikings, the Chinese nor
any plethora of
others who may have discovered America centuries before
Christopher
Columbus did anything significant with their discovery.
It was Columbus
that returned to Spain to tell Ferdinand and Isabella
about the fabulous
new land that he had discovered, setting off the great
surge of exploration
that characterized the next three centuries.
One of the reasons claims such as those made by Menzies
receive such rapt,
breathless attention here is that culturally we have
attained an
unprecedented level of self-loathing. Participating in
the destruction of
our historical icons provides the guilt-feelers among
us a sense of
atonement. We now freely accept guilt for the crimes
wreaked upon North
America’s aboriginals by individuals that have been dead
for hundreds of
years. We accept responsibility for the slavery that
was prevalent in parts
of North America, even though none of us has ever "owned"
a slave or have
had any actual complicity in the slave trade. In fact,
slavery is alive and
well in Africa today, without the participation of Europeans
or North
Americans. Some of us want to blame ourselves for the
terrorism that
fanatical Islamic fundamentalists want to bring down
on us because of the
Crusades, even though the Crusades were about the liberation
of lands that
had been forcibly taken from Christians by Muslims. When
Osama bin Laden
talks about the "tragedy of Andalusia", what he is referring
to is the
expulsion of the Muslim invaders from Spain. (This co-incidentally
took
place in 1492, while Christopher Columbus was "discovering"
America.)
While the original discoverer of America is a subject
that will enjoy
years, if not decades of spirited debate, the point regarding
the
significance of the discovery remains moot. Only Columbus
understood the
implications of his discovery and as such can honestly
claim credit as its
discoverer.
Klaus Rohrich is President and Creative Director of Taylor/Rohrich
Associates Inc. Email: letters@canadafreepress.com.