How about "Discovers' Day," not Explorers' Day or Columbus Day?

[No Elephants]

Or not.

Yesterday was Columbus Day, a day we celebrate theoretically because Columbus discovered "America" in 1492, sailing for Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain.

Columbus was supposed to have been an incredible navigator. However, he never set foot in North America, let alone discovering any of the the lands that now comprise the United States. And he never thought that he had discovered anything other than a shorter route to India. which is what you call a huge mistake, perhaps even wilful ignorance.

It was Amerigo Vespucci, sailing variously for Spain and Portugal, who realized that there were huge land masses here that were not on European maps and this was not India at all. I am not sure if even he set foot in America, either.

According to the human genome project, sll humans now on this planet are descended from Kalahari Bushmen. They and their descendants spread out from Southern Africa to various countries, adapting surprisingly quickly, sd evolution goes, to things like to sun and lack of sun as they traveled and inhabited the Middle East, Australia, etc.

As to when they first arrived in the Americas, information conflicts. Sources I have looked at quickly say thinks like around 12,000 yeares ago and maybe as much as 50,000 years ago.

Some say all the original settlers of what is now North America arrived via the Bering Strait. However, others say they came from several places, like Japan and Phoencia.


http://www.atlantisquest.com/America.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/11/041118104010.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clovis_culture+

http://courses.csusm.edu/hist337as/hb/h37hb1.htm

I do not know enough to resolve the conflicting information. However, one thing is very clear: Columbus did not discover any theretofore undiscovered land. Neither did the Vikings.

As for my day of discovery: I have known for years that that Columbus and his men had been brutal. However, I did not know until yesterday that they had actually penned the people they found living here.

I also learned for the first time yesterday that mass suicides occurred when the people who had been here for thousands of years before Columbus "discovered" a new route to India understood that the Europeans were never going to leave for good.

In all, I have no idea why we celebrate Columbus Day.

True, Italians were a large immigrant group, and honoring their countryman was probably politicially expedient. However, Amerigo Vespucci was Italian, too, and not as stubborn as Columbus about a route to India; and the nation had, after all, been named after Vespucci. So, why we have not been celebrating Vespucci Day instead of Columbus Day is beyond me, even if we assume that we have to have an Italian holiday.

Because people are finally owning up fully to the reality that Columbus neither discovered America nor was a nice guy, there is now talk of re-styling Columbus Day and instead celebrating it as Explorers' Day which, would, I assume, include space exploration.

The other explorers have been dead for a long time, and no one knows who their descendants are. So wouldn't "Explorers' Day pretty much turn out to be a celebration space explorers? That would fine, I guess, but...

Why don't we include the true discoverers of the huge land masses that we now refer to as the Americas, the ones who arrived here somewhere btween 12,000 and 50,000 years ago, all the tribes that we once called Indian tribes, in "tribute" to Columbus's massive error?

I vote for Discovers' Day, which would be broad enough to include anyone who makes a significant discovery. That would honor the first inhabitants of this land, guys like the Vikings and Columbus and Vespucci and Magellan, and maybe even some great inventors.

[madokie]

1. Looking at it from the native Americans perspective

I would say something along the lines of the beginning of the end for them. We may be more technically advanced than they were but look at the mess we have ourselves and our/their country in today. If I could change history I'd change it back to before the white man came here.
I'm mostly a white man in case you wonder

[No Elephants]

2. Thanks,. madokie. Nice to see you again. You are right. that

we can't change history. Changing Columbus Day is an option, though.

[Enthusiast]

3. Me too.

Well, according to the oral tradition of my paternal side we do have some native American heritage, but, as with Elizabeth Warren, is in a small undocumented quantity.

In my younger days I was an avid hunter and fisherman. I often imagine the abundance of fish and game before the Europeans built dams that stopped annual fish migrations and cut down the forests that held game in unimaginable numbers. If it was up to me I would take measures to completely restore habitat by tearing out dams on rivers with significant fish migrations, navigation and hydroelectric power be damned(no pun intended). And I would replace domestic cattle with wild bison on the great plains wherever possible and practical. But then, I'm a dirty fuckin' hippy so what do I know.

[Enthusiast]

4. No Elephants I agree.

Science found some Peruvian chickens they cannot explain. It appears these chickens genetic mirror those found in a small area in China. The only possible explanation for this was that some Chinese sailor reached the new world in pre-Columbian times with their cargo of remaining chickens. Some speculate that not only Vikings but also Phoenicians, Greeks, Polynesians and possibly even Egyptians reached the Americas before Columbus. :fistbump:

[No Elephants]

5. Well, we know for certain that Native Americans reached this land thousands of years

before Columbus.

If anyone should be honored for discovering America, it should be them.

[No Elephants]

6. Oh, dear. That should either be Discoverers' Day or Discovery Day, shouldn't it?

I wish I had the decency to be more embarrassed about things like that than I am.

Soon, I won't even have the decency to fake embarrassment.