Does Columbus Matter?

While no one really thinks Columbus discovered America… it was always here… there are plenty of contenders for who was “first” to travel from the eastern to western hemisphere, previous “discoveries” were either accidental (like those of Japanese fishing boats that washed up in the Baja Peninsula sometime in the 13th century), relatively unknown expeditions simply for the joy of exploring (such as the early 14th century voyage of Emperor Abubakari II of Mali), or small scale settlements, like Leif Erikson’s “Vinland” of around 1000 AD). Along with various legendary voyages, all… like Columbus 1492 expedition… based on the assumption that the Americas were just waiting to be discovered, and overlooking the very real possibility that people from the Western Hemisphere might have gone the other direction (by accident or design) … but, none of those previous voyages had the impact of the one in 1492.

That Columbus — Cristobel Colon, or whatever he real name might have been — was a particularly gifted late medieval skipper isn’t to be doubted. Nor that he was any better, or worse, a human being than any other sea captain of his time. Floggings, hanging or beheading disobedient sailors, taking hostages, rape and sodomy (“rum, sudomy and the lash”) were stanards of his time, and he was of an era when “conquest” had yet to be renamed “genocide”.

That Colomus was a dick, that he didn’t discover the Americas, is not what should be celebrated or bemoaned or even remembered today… rather that we can date a plantary change… in ecology, agriculture, human relations, economics. the whole of human existence… to one moment in October 1492.