Imagine that…not knowing where to go on a previously undiscovered continent.
Columbus was so wrong that he didn’t even know he was on a previously undiscovered continent. There’s some debate about whether Columbus ever knew that he had discovered a new continent. Traditional historians believe that Columbus went to his grave thinking that he had landed in India.
What is known is that as late as 1502, Columbus wrote a letter to Pope Alexander VI in which Columbus asserted that the Cuba was the east coast of Asia.
When he hit Honduras, he encountered a Mayan canoe that was heavily laden with rich textiles and other trade goods far more sophisticated than anything that had previously been seen in the West Indies. If he had headed north instead of south following this lead he would have found the high civilizations of Mesoamerica. Instead, he headed south, driven by the theory that that way was the Golden Chersonese, or the Malay Peninsula. So he gave away his chance to find an empire with mountains of gold because he was attempting to follow the geography of an entirely different continent instead of following the evidence in front of him.
Likewise, when he reached Panama, he spent his time looking for the Straights of Malacca and a route to India. When he couldn’t find a strait he decided to stay in Panama and steal gold from the locals instead. Although the Indians told him about a Great Ocean only a few days march away, he didn’t bother to send out an exploring party and missed his opportunity to find the Pacific and the actual route to the Far East that was later used by Magellan. Columbus lacked any interest in exploration beyond it being a way to find gold or other riches.
Columbus was so blinkered by his idea that he had reached the Far East he attempted to interpret everything he saw on that basis rather than evaluate the evidence without preconceptions. This led him to miss opportunities to make several important discoveries. It also helped lead to the Americas being named after Amerigo Vespucci instead of him, since Vespucci was the first to propose that the Americas were a new continent, an idea Columbus refused to accept until his death despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Columbus was a textbook crackpot, developing an idee fixe and then following it blindly regardless of the evidence against it.
I learned that in 3rd grade. Indians?
What does that have to do with anything?
Yeah, I think we all learned that in the 3rd grade. The part that is new is that there is now some debate about whether or not Columbus learned the truth before he died.
They didn’t teach that when I went to school, but then I am an old fart. I don’t know what they teach now.
I understand your hatred for Columbus, but to expect him to figure out where all the riches were in a continent that all the brilliant folk back in Europe had no idea existed is a bit of a stretch. Sure a lot of luck went his way, but to call him a crackpot…
Me too.
I don’t particularly hate Columbus, but there’s no doubt that he was a crackpot. Not because he didn’t know where the riches were, or even because he never figured out that he was on a new continent. He was a crackpot because he completely ignored well-established evidence-based knowledge about the size of the earth, which had been known for over 1500 years, using fringe theories and outdated ideas to grossly underestimate the size of the earth to fit his preconceived idea that it was possible to sail west to Asia using 15th century technology. He was wrong and everyone knowledgeable in the subject knew he was wrong, but he stubbornly stuck to his ridiculous idea. Fortunately for Spain, he stumbled across America rather than perishing in the middle of the ocean as he deserved to do.
–Mark
It doesn’t have anything to do with hatred. Columbus as I said was the textbook definition of crackpot, pursuing a pet theory (which turned out to be completely wrong) in defiance of all the evidence as it accumulated over more than a decade.
My opinions are based on reading dozens of books on Columbus and the history of exploration and the colonization of the New World, including some of the original chronicles. If your opinions are based on what you learned in third grade, you may wish to update your knowledge… 
Look at it from another perspective.
Let’s say someone believed in the “Hollow Earth” nonsense that there is an entire world inside the crust of the planet despite the fact that all conventional wisdom and scientific knowledge says otherwise. They use a misunderstanding of physics, written works from conspiracy theorists, and wishful thinking to “prove” that their theory is correct.
They find a wealthy and eccentric multibillionaire to fund an expedition, allowing this person to use state-of-the-art drilling and exploration gear to burrow under the surface.
By sheer luck they find an underground cave system full of precious metals, fossil fuels, and other abundant natural resources that change the course of history. No hollow world but still an amazing discovery.
The person who proposed this whole thing is convinced that he discovered an entrance to another world and spends every penny he can beg from others in an attempt to keep looking and dies broke and homeless.
Was that hypothetical guy a crackpot?
He’s a crackpot because he thought he could make it to India, thinking the route was shorter than it was. He’s lucky because he found some other continent instead.
Then, even after finding land that was completely different from how India was described in other books, he continued to think he was in India. That made him a further crackpot.
Yes, any other person would have had trouble. But they would have realized they were on a new continent. So they would not have been crackpots.
And, FYI, I don’t particularly hate Columbus. I know he did bad things, and I know other people hate him, but I don’t really, any more than I hate most other historical figures. I just want people to be happy, so I’m fine with taking his name off the holiday.
That point was previously made.
Cite?
Doyle, you’re missing the point. Columbus wasn’t trying to discover America. He was trying to find a route to Asia.
Columbus was a crackpot because his route to Asia was based on wrong information and never would have worked. But Columbus got extraordinarily lucky; while he was going the wrong way to Asia, he stumbled across America.
The thing that really nags me is- what where the Russians doing? I mean, I get it’s pretty cold up there in the Bering Sea and it was kinda uninhabited back then and all, but not a single ship? Nobody was “Hey, let’s see what’s in there, just a few miles to the west”?
They started with…wait for it…Vitus Bering, from whom that straight and many other things are named for, around 1725.
Russia was still fighting the Golden Horde when Columbus sailed that Ocean Blue.
Evidently it can’t be made too often.
See my post #23. Other people, including Amerigo Vespucci, figured it out before Columbus did. Columbus had plenty of first hand evidence that he was not in the Far East, which he refused to accept.
Side question that occurred to me the other day: If everybody who was worth his salt knew that Columbus was dead wrong, how the hell did he get funded?
I got the point, I just felt like arguing for arguments sake. Everyone knew he was searching for a route to Asia and got lucky.