COLUMBUS DAY: Was Christopher Columbus PORTUGUESE?

Remember the Knights Templar was prevalent in Portuguese society. They helped kick out the Moors from that part of Iberia (the Spanish-Portuguese peninsula). The Templars were famous for their immense land holdings, their banking and credit systems, their part in the Crusades, and their famous shipping fleet.

Shortly after the Templars were persecuted in France, their influence in France waned (at least openly). In other countries, it waned, too (for Pope-pleasing purposes), but then quickly regained prominence. This was the case in Portugal.

Remember that the Portuguese in these times (between the persecution of the Templars in France on Friday October 13, 1307) and the latter half of the 1400s, became the first Western world navigators, sailing down the west coast of Africa, around Cape Horn, and on to India for a lucrative trade with the "east".

I don't what what he was, but he sure as fuck didn't 'discover' America. Our history is such bullshit.

This is why Brazil speaks Portuguese, and the rest of South America speaks Spanish: The Treaty of Tordesillas...

[link to en.wikipedia.org]

Columbus wasn't Portuguese. He was a syphlitic, genocidal pedophile.





Yeah, I think that's much more accurate.

I agree. Even other Europeans had been before. The Vikings, for one. Also, there are tales of Basque fishermen sailing long distances west/northwest, following large schools of fish and whales seasonally, rumored to have reached the east coast of Canada. And who knows if the Templars, with their large and capable fleet, had been west and found North and/or South America, and kept it secret within their "halls of power", only revealing their discovery when the time was right -- when they, or others who shared their beliefs, held important positions of power in Portugal.

And there are rumors of the Chinese having reached the west coast of North America.

There is also evidence, becoming more accepted, that seafaring people from the South Pacific, came east and made landfall along the west coast of South America. Things like chicken bones (chickens, being endemic to southeast Asia and, through diffusion, Polynesia). Regarding that, think about this...

Look at the islands of Hawai'i on a world map. Notice their absolute ISOLATION in the middle of the north Pacific Ocean. Finding those islands would be like finding a needle in a haystack. Therefore, it's not only reasonable, but likely, that seagoing explorers sailed many, many, many times east withOUT reaching Hawai'i, before eventually coming upon Hawai'i (aka the "Sandwich Islands"), and settling them.

Also, once they found Hawai'i, why would they stop? After all, Polynesian seafaring explorers island-hopped throughout their history. Discovering. Settling. Exploring further west and discovering again. So after discovering and settling Hawai'i, these hearty, rugged, Polynesian navigators most assuredly continued east in search of still further lands. And evidence now suggests they did, in fact, reach the west coast of South America.

I highly recommend a great book on this subject -- "POLYNESIANS IN AMERICA: PRE-COLUMBIAN CONTACTS WITH THE NEW WORLD" by Terry Jones, Alice Storey, Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith, and Jose Miguel Ramirez-Aliaga. These authors are professors and experts in their field (anthropology), and come from America, Australia, New Zealand, and Chile.

LOL Nah. Let's not equate some of what happened AFTER Columbus' discovery with his actual discovery.

The decimation of the indigenous population of the Americas (especially North America) was overwhelmingly disease. That's awful and horrendous. Human suffering always is. But let's not pretend it was something it wasn't. Are we, then, to say that the Black Plague that killed 1/3 of Europeans in the 14th century was purposefully given to Europeans by cultures from the east from which it came? No. It decimated the population of Europe via contact with cultures of the Near East; as small pox decimated the indigenous population of the Americas via contact with European cultures.

The reason Columbus Day is recognized is because of the significance of Columbus' voyages to the New World. The consequences of Columbus' voyages to the New World have had world-wide implications (good and bad) for human civilization ever since.