Why was Christopher Columbus sailing west? From early on, we are told that Columbus sought to prove that the world was round, that he meant to sail south but the winds pushed him west, or that he was looking for a sea route to China and India. However, very little of that is actually true.
Much of the civilized world believed and knew that the world was in fact round. Aristotle received credit for proving that the world was round less than two thousand years before Columbus was even born.
Therefore, the next idea we were told also must be a fallacy. Since Columbus very well knew that the world was round, he had to have intentionally been traveling west in search of Asia Major or India. Although the shape of the earth was known, other land masses were not. Columbus managed to "discover" the Caribbean, and therefore goes down in history as the man who discovered America.
You must be asking yourself, "But what about the Vikings or the Native Americans?" Since no strong European power of world renown had managed to establish the existence of a New World, anyone claiming to have discovered new lands in the west were merely persuaded to think it was Asia and went right back home.
Fallacy or Truth?
Sunday, January 31, 2010
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