# Why do people attempt to discredit the discovery of the New World? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 9, 2009, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-attempt-to-discredit-the-discovery-of-the-new-world/516878 "2009-11-09T03:53:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc348/32.png) [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Flying_Dutchman)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-attempt-to-discredit-the-discovery-of-the-new-world/516878/61 "2009-11-10T04:36:04Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > Except he measured it wrong. Actually he calculated it wrong. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-attempt-to-discredit-the-discovery-of-the-new-world/516878/62 "2009-11-10T05:56:06Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Note, however, that I directly linked Columbus to European civilization, not to random Europeans. The fishermen returned with cod, (and one could spend weeks on the Grand banks without ever catching sight of Labrador, much less the North American continent), but cod was available in Europe, already. The rest of the American influence on Europe, whether it was the large number of interesting crops, some amazing artwork, or the occasional disease, remained unknown to Europe until Columbus returned from his voyages, prompting others to follow him. Oh, can’t agree more, then. Just pointing out that, as always, it’s ‘more complicated than it looks.’ Columbus, to borrow a concept from The Science of Discworld, is a lie-to-children. > **[Lie-to-children](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie-to-children)** > > A lie-to-children is a simplified, and often technically incorrect, explanation of technical or complex subjects employed as a teaching method. Educators who employ lies-to-children do not intend to deceive, but instead seek to 'meet the child/pupil/student where they are', in order to facilitate initial comprehension, which they build upon over time as the learner's intellectual capacity expands. The technique has been incorporated by academics within the fields of biology, evolution, bioinform... It’s accurate _enough_, and it’s not entirely untrue, for a first approximation of a story. ---
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-attempt-to-discredit-the-discovery-of-the-new-world/516878/63 "2009-11-10T13:02:46Z")
> [@DanBlather](#): > > Like many words, discover has implications beyond it’s strictest meaning in the dictionary. Do history books refer to the native Americans brought back to England as having “discovering Europe”? Did the Caribe Indians “discover Columbus” when they saw his ships on the horizon? Did the Mongols “discover” Eastern Europe? As a matter of fact, plenty of historians do use ‘discover’ in precisely that way. Some of the best recent work on the early stages of European colonisation of North America has been about how this involved the native Americans ‘discovering Europe’. So much so that this is now almost a cliché. Other historians have written about [Africa](http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/he/subject/History/WorldHistory/GeographicalAfricanHistory/HistoryofAfrica/?view=usa&ci=9780195140842) and [Japan](http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=2811) in the same way. Mostly doing so, at least in terms of their booktitles, in self-conscious imitation of Bernard Lewis. [QUOTE=cckerberos] I think its legitimate to speak of it as a “discovery” but care should be taken to use appropriate qualifiers when doing so. I have no problem with a reference to “the European discovery of America.” We already do this with the word invention. Inventions can also technically only be made once, but phrases like “the European invention of the printing press” are commonly used. No one (AFAIK) claims that this steals credit from the Chinese. [/QUOTE] Exactly. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-attempt-to-discredit-the-discovery-of-the-new-world/516878/64 "2009-11-10T14:35:43Z")
> [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](#): > > The discovery of the Americas by Columbus is a discovery relevant to the entire interconnected Euroasian continent from which we all draw our relevant progressive history of mankind. Except those pesky [Eskimos](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo). A new continent from their perspective is not only absurd but completely nonsensical. If you’re going to credit Columbus for discovering something that he did not recognize for a new continent and mistook for something else, you might as well give even _more_ credit to Far East Siberians for “discovering” something (that their culture had known about for thousands of years), because while they _also_, **like Columbus did** , did not realize the significance of their knowledge, at least they never mistakenly thought they had discovered a secret passage to England! ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-attempt-to-discredit-the-discovery-of-the-new-world/516878/65 "2009-11-10T14:58:46Z")
> [@Spoons](#): > > Not far from my location is [Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-Smashed-In_Buffalo_Jump) (a Canadian National Historic Site, a Provincial Historic Site, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site)… …which, according to Dave Barry, is the world’s best tourist attraction ever. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-attempt-to-discredit-the-discovery-of-the-new-world/516878/66 "2009-11-10T15:01:20Z")
They…really call it Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump? …really? REALLY!? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-attempt-to-discredit-the-discovery-of-the-new-world/516878/67 "2009-11-10T15:56:52Z")
> [@The Flying Dutchman](#): > > To be blunt, only the Europeans saw any interest in developing a knowledge of the peoples, flora , fauna and geography everywhere in the world Sorry, but this is completely erroneous. The Islamic empires of the medieval period, for example, fostered a tremendous range of activity in cartography, geography, and study of different peoples, languages, flora and fauna. Check out [this discussion of Islamic botany](http://muslimheritage.com/topics/default.cfm?ArticleID=1163#sec_1) or google Islamic cartography, for instance. Yes, many cultures throughout history have been comparatively inactive or uninterested in large-scale exploration of foreign lands and cultures, but you’re wrong in thinking that the Europeans of the early modern and modern periods constitute the **only** exceptions. ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-attempt-to-discredit-the-discovery-of-the-new-world/516878/68 "2009-11-10T16:21:27Z")
> [@Laudenum](#): > > S > It just seems uneconomical to me, especially as food prices have only recently become very high. ??? Food is cheaper now than it has ever been. ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-attempt-to-discredit-the-discovery-of-the-new-world/516878/69 "2009-11-10T16:23:48Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Then of course their are the Iroquois in the East who everyone likes to think of as being the poor oppressed souls that the English/Dutch conquerors betrayed. These guys were in the habit of raiding villages and stealing women and children to increase the numbers in their tribe. They did this to the early white settlers as well as to other local tribes. So you are saying that Native American civilizations were similar to Europe? ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-attempt-to-discredit-the-discovery-of-the-new-world/516878/70 "2009-11-10T17:50:32Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > They…really call it Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump? …really? REALLY!? Yep. Got to love truth in advertising. Awesome, innit? ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-attempt-to-discredit-the-discovery-of-the-new-world/516878/71 "2009-11-10T17:53:45Z")
> [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](#): > > …which, according to Dave Barry, is the world’s best tourist attraction ever. Been there. It’s the best NAME, sure. It’s an \*attraction \*only if you’re really really interested in buffalo, or Plains Indian lore, or for something to see as you’re crossing Alberta. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-attempt-to-discredit-the-discovery-of-the-new-world/516878/72 "2009-11-10T18:03:24Z")
The other thing to remember is that even as late as the 1600s, Europeans were poorer than the Ottomans, the Indians, and the Chinese. Remember the fabled riches of the Orient? That was the impression Europeans got when they traveled to the Ottoman Empire–wealth, industry, prosperity, peace, and learning. Europeans wanted to trade with the East because Europe was poor relative to the East. And most of the silver and gold the Spaniards looted from the New World went east to the Ottoman Empire, to pay for high-quality imported goods that couldn’t be matched in Europe. The Spaniards made the classic mistake of confusing gold and money. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-attempt-to-discredit-the-discovery-of-the-new-world/516878/73 "2009-11-10T18:15:12Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > Except those pesky [Eskimos](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo). A new continent from their perspective is not only absurd but completely nonsensical. If you’re going to credit Columbus for discovering something that he did not recognize for a new continent and mistook for something else, **you might as well give even _more_ credit to Far East Siberians for “discovering” something (that their culture had known about for thousands of years)**, because while they _also_, **like Columbus did** , did not realize the significance of their knowledge, at least they never mistakenly thought they had discovered a secret passage to England! If their culture had _known about it for thousands of years_ then they didn’t discover it. Jesus, how many times am I going to have to keep repeating that discovering something means that _it is new to YOU._ If _YOU_ didn’t know about it before, and then you found it, then you _discovered_ it. It doesn’t matter if you thought it was something else; you still discovered it. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-attempt-to-discredit-the-discovery-of-the-new-world/516878/74 "2009-11-10T18:55:58Z")
My post was in response to a claim that the discovery of the americas was new to everyone on the entire Eurasianafrican land mass, which is not true for the trans-pacific group of cultures that, while I’m not sure if they engaged in regular trade with each other or not, spoke related languages and knew enough about each other that when Russian explorers in the area came around they casually told them about Alaska (and how could they not know, they were seafaring cultures less than a couple days journey away.) The **discovery of America** was indeed an important event in the history of European culture. However, Columbus’s discovery was not. We rightly (ha!) give the Wright Brothers major credit for making exponential strides in air flight even if they were not exactly the first to do most things, while I can’t really name any of their predecessors. Columbus should be relegated to a similarly obscure slot as an explorer whose voyages help others then fully realize and understand what he came upon. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-attempt-to-discredit-the-discovery-of-the-new-world/516878/75 "2009-11-10T19:06:10Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > I don’t have any problem with the term “Discovery”. I do, however, have a lot of problems with the implied “right to ownership and exploitation” that it carries. It seems to me that “Right of Conquest” is a very old tradition dating back to the first communities, and possibly common to most civilisations and cultures. Competition for hunting grounds, fresh water, and so on predate a lot of written records. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-attempt-to-discredit-the-discovery-of-the-new-world/516878/76 "2009-11-10T22:56:53Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > If their culture had _known about it for thousands of years_ then they didn’t discover it. If their culture had known about it for thousands of years that suggests they discovered it thousands of years previously. Either that or they heard about it from someone else, and I’m not sure who that “someone else” could be in this case. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc348/32.png) [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Flying_Dutchman)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2009, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-attempt-to-discredit-the-discovery-of-the-new-world/516878/77 "2009-11-11T03:42:24Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Sorry, but this is completely erroneous. The Islamic empires of the medieval period, for example, fostered a tremendous range of activity in cartography, geography, and study of different peoples, languages, flora and fauna. Check out [this discussion of Islamic botany](http://muslimheritage.com/topics/default.cfm?ArticleID=1163#sec_1) or google Islamic cartography, for instance. > > Yes, many cultures throughout history have been comparatively inactive or uninterested in large-scale exploration of foreign lands and cultures, but you’re wrong in thinking that the Europeans of the early modern and modern periods constitute the **only** exceptions. It is somewhat ironic, but it was the fall of Constantinople and the rise of the powerful Ottoman empire blocking the overland Asian trade that spurred the Portuguese and then the Spanish and finally the northern Europeans to explore and exploit around the cape towards the east and westward. Yet the primary interest of Islamic trade and geography based knowledge was limited to the Mediteranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. It certainly wasn’t global. The Europeans were exploiting everywhere, and their people developed the global knowledge that we all share today. Ever heard of a geographic society in an Islamic country? ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2009, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-attempt-to-discredit-the-discovery-of-the-new-world/516878/78 "2009-11-11T04:26:51Z")
They used it for 5500 YEARS? And it STILL WORKED? Jebus, bison are dumb. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2009, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-attempt-to-discredit-the-discovery-of-the-new-world/516878/79 "2009-11-11T04:29:02Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > They used it for 5500 YEARS? And it STILL WORKED? Jebus, bison are dumb. Yeah, you’d think that after the first hundred or so smashed in heads, they’d learn. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2009, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-attempt-to-discredit-the-discovery-of-the-new-world/516878/80 "2009-11-11T04:54:46Z")
> [@The Flying Dutchman](#): > > It is somewhat ironic, but it was the fall of Constantinople and the rise of the powerful Ottoman empire blocking the overland Asian trade that spurred the Portuguese and then the Spanish and finally the northern Europeans to explore and exploit around the cape towards the east and westward. > > Yet the primary interest of Islamic trade and geography based knowledge was limited to the Mediteranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. It certainly wasn’t global. Well, the Europeans’ interests didn’t become global either, **as you yourself have just conceded** , until they were forced by geopolitical changes to look for new routes to the Indies. Vasco da Gama and Christopher Columbus didn’t set sail out of some idealistic dedication to the mission of European intellectual curiosity in the abstract: they were looking for faster and cheaper ways to get pepper. Meanwhile, the Islamic empires were all over the place from southern Europe to China, India and Africa, and everywhere they went, their scholars and administrators collected information and documents on the geography, languages, peoples, cultures, climates, animals and plants in the newly encountered regions. Yes, their interests often had various practical motivations, but so did the interests of Europeans, as you’ve just admitted. > [@The Flying Dutchman](#): > > Ever heard of a geographic society in an Islamic country? :rolleyes: Now you’re really grasping at straws. You might as well say that Islamic societies were devoid of all technological genius because they never invented automobiles. Geographical societies and the type of recreational/national/imperial explorations that they helped sponsor are a very recent development in the history of the modern nation-state, and they say much less about any hypothetical uniquely European thirst for global knowledge than about the incentives of international politics and commercial enterprise in the industrial nineteenth century. Sure, even before the nineteenth century there were state-sponsored special expeditions for scientific research projects like observing eclipses and transits of Venus, but other societies besides Europeans had such expeditions as well. Ever heard of the Caliph al-Ma’mun’s sending out a commissioned group of scholars in the 9th century to get an accurate distance measurement of one degree of terrestrial latitude, for example? You’re not doing European culture any favors by disparaging other cultures in ignorance of their history. It just makes you (and by association, the rest of us European/Western people) look like a self-satisfied provincial hick boosting his hometown. His loyalty and enthusiasm may be admirable, but the ignorance and narrowness he displays in his boasting don’t inspire a lot of confidence in his critical judgement. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-attempt-to-discredit-the-discovery-of-the-new-world/516878.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-attempt-to-discredit-the-discovery-of-the-new-world/516878.md?page=5)