Christopher Columbus
In class rooms Christopher Columbus is taught as one of America’s greatest heros. Historians have begun to notice that Columbus didn’t discover as much as he said he did. There were many discoverers before Columbus who were near north America, but the difference between then and Columbus was that they didn’t declare America theirs. Most people don’t realize that the discoverers of America could have been from another country then Europe, because thats where most of the famous discoverers of that time were from. The man or woman that discovered America could have been, African American, Asian, or middle eastern.
Text books usually start out with some basic facts about Christopher Columbus like. Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy in 1451. As Columbus grew up he decided he wanted to explore what hasn’t been found and become a discoverer. Before Columbus started to explore the world most people thought that the world was square and Columbus challenged that thought and said that the world was round. I think that all of this information is a bit unoriginal and most of the textbooks aren’t telling the full story.
Four Hundred and Fifty years before Columbus was even born Leif Erikson discovered the new world. Erikson was the one who lead the viking to the new world though the vikings did not continuously return to North America. Since no one was returning to the new world the land was left unclaimed and so someone else could claim it. That someone else was Christopher Columbus. The difference between Columbus and Erikson was that Columbus hurried back to his country where he could brag about his journey and be showered with money.
It wasn’t Columbus’s fault that he was given to much credit for his work. Columbus didn’t know that his discoveries had already been found. He discovered new land and claimed it as his own and then went back to country and announced his discovery. None of the people in Italy or Spain cared that the discovery had already been done they just cared that new land had been discovered.
