Columbus discovered a country!
That's laugh-out-loud funny.
True.
The old boy discovered an unexpected hemisphere - a New World - unknown to anyone in the Old World (in any of Europe, Africa or Asia).
As to the
Revisionists and
Latter-Day Apologists and
Native-Firsters Too Late crowd who bemoan the 'discovery', well...
Those not of Indian (Native American) ancestry can always donate their land and goods back to the Natives, and leave the hemisphere, or commit hari kari as penance.
Most folks (myself included) feel no such compulsions, and have a good laugh at those who do, at their expense.
Hell, the scattered, neolithic and nomadic primitives already here weren't doing much with the place anyway, and were still centuries (millennia?) away from being able to compete or hold their own with newcomers who were light years ahead of them in literacy and science and mechanical engineering and trade and culture and the like.
Darwinian '
survival of the fittest'.
Nature
de-selected them.
It's a 'done thing'... long-since over... and it worked out for the best, for everybody but the handful of Natives, anyway - and, at this distance in time, there's absolutely no point in putting on the hair shirt and sprinkling earth over our heads and flagellating ourselves for things that happened hundreds of years ago.
Ain't gonna go there. Neither are most other sane people. We (America, at large) did what we could to compensate a bit after the fact, and that's about as good as it's going to get. Enough already.
When it comes to other explorer(s) who might have landed in the Western Hemisphere prior to Columbus...
Journeying to a 'new land' but failing to document or share the knowledge nor to properly exploit the discovery (
as reportedly happened with the VIkings, or, more incredulously, with the Chinese) is a zero sum game which, in the long run, doesn't count for much, in practical terms.
Journeying to a 'new land' and documenting the 'find' and sharing the knowledge - and, yes, even exploiting the 'find' - is what signifies - what leaves a lasting impression.
So - yes - celebrate Columbus Day - as the day of
Old World landfall in the
New World - under circumstances in which the knowledge would be documented and eventually shared with the rest of the Old World.
