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Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

theguardian.com

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Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#141

Post by chipdart »

juunpp wrote: post #73
chipdart wrote: post #35

From the article: > “Unfortunately, from a scientific point of view, we can’t really evaluate what was in the documentary because they offered no data from the analysis whatsoever,” Antonio Alonso, a geneticist and former director of Spain’s National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Sciences told El País. So, baseless speculation used by the Spanish regime to claim Christopher Columbus as Spanish during the Spani…

How does a Jew discovering the Americas benefit the Spanish regime when the Spanish Catholic monarchy precisely kicked all Jews and Muslims from the peninsula with their ill-named "reconquista"? If this turns out to be true, then it'd be rather embarrassing. Presumably this Lorente has more evidence he hasn't put on display, so it isn't completely baseless either. It's certainly sketchy and not very scientific, thoug…

> How does a Jew discovering the Americas benefit the Spanish regime when the Spanish Catholic monarchy precisely kicked all Jews and Muslims from the peninsula with their ill-named "reconquista"?

The question is not whether Columbus was Jewish of not. The question is whether he was actually Spanish. As the article states, that's heavily disputed.

From the article:

> Over the centuries, it has been suggested that the explorer could have been Genoese, Basque, Catalan, Galician, Greek, Portuguese or Scottish.

The article leads by referring to Columbus as a son of Genoa.

Then a Spanish researcher decides to claim Columbus is Spanish on Spain's national day, supposedly based on an authoritative scientific study but in spite of not presenting any evidence that supports his claim.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#142

Post by grardb »

amiga386 wrote: post #133
juunpp wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a Jew discovering the Americas benefit the Spanish regime when the Spanish Catholic monarchy precisely kicked all Jews and Muslims from the peninsula with their ill-named "reconquista"? If this turns out to be true, then it'd be rather embarrassing. Presumably this Lorente has more evidence he hasn't put on display, so it isn't completely baseless either. It's certainly sketchy and not very scientific, thoug…

> I also don't understand why people get a boner with Columbus. He is primarily of interest because Italian-Americans want a feeling of pride and so celebrate "one of their own", the Genovese Columbus. And America is very big and important, so whatever it cares about, a lot of other people care about. If you were Canadian instead, you'd probably be genned up on John Cabot (also Genovese) and Newfoundland and CODFISH!…

> He is primarily of interest because Italian-Americans want a feeling of pride and so celebrate "one of their own", the Genovese Columbus.

May I ask why you hold this opinion? I grew up with tons of Italian-Americans (NYC) and I can confidently say that I've never heard a single person express pride in the fact that Columbus was Italian. In fact, based on my experience, a lot of Americans—regardless of descent—think/were explicitly taught that Columbus was Spanish.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#143

Post by chucke »

juunpp wrote: post #107
kajecounterhack wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention that he was hugely genocidal and enslaved the Tainos; who really wants to lay claim to that.

I don't know that Columbus was genocidal. He was a slaver, rapist, murderer, gold digger and all-round motherfucker for sure, so much so that the Spanish monarchy sent an envoy to arrest him, bring him back to Spain to be tried, and threw him in jail I think for a couple years. Aside from gold and spices sent from him back to the Spanish monarchs after his first arrival, he also sent back slaves and the queen was, pr…

Calling Cortes genocidal is also quite farfetched, considering that he conquered the Aztec territory, despite being vastly outnumbered, because every native tribe and settlement they found on the way banded together to overthrow the Aztec.

I wouldn't call the Aztecs genocidal either, despite the ritual sacrifices, brutal treatment of other peoples, and everybody in mesoamerica who came to know them hating them so much that they preferred the uncertain fate of joining the white bearded men from the east.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#144

Post by jmorenoamor »

chucke wrote: post #63

Spain still working on the national identity while not reconciling that its two most famous sailors were a portuguese and a genovese. You can see it in claims like these or the internal reframing of the magellan voyage as the "magellan-elcano expedition ".

We are ok with that, really, there is always people who give more importance to this kind of things, but for the vast majority, whatever the results, they would be cool.

Also, italians and portuguese are close friends and cultural brothers and sisters to us.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#145

Post by ithkuil »

chucke wrote: post #143
juunpp wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that Columbus was genocidal. He was a slaver, rapist, murderer, gold digger and all-round motherfucker for sure, so much so that the Spanish monarchy sent an envoy to arrest him, bring him back to Spain to be tried, and threw him in jail I think for a couple years. Aside from gold and spices sent from him back to the Spanish monarchs after his first arrival, he also sent back slaves and the queen was, pr…

Calling Cortes genocidal is also quite farfetched, considering that he conquered the Aztec territory, despite being vastly outnumbered, because every native tribe and settlement they found on the way banded together to overthrow the Aztec. I wouldn't call the Aztecs genocidal either, despite the ritual sacrifices, brutal treatment of other peoples, and everybody in mesoamerica who came to know them hating them so muc…

Yeah I think the light use of the word genocide doesn't make justice for the instance where there was actual genocide, which is when you murder people with the explicit intent of destroying a nation/culture/group.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#146

Post by dumbo-octopus »

danans wrote: post #130
dumbo-octopus wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientists have no right to declare what does and does not exist based on what their machines are able to detect. Did gravity not exist before the LHC was constructed and the Higgs data analyzed? Jewish DNA is that which has descended from Abraham, through Isaac, to Jacob and the Jewish nation. Gravity is an attraction between masses. These things exist – regardless of your machines’ proclivities.

> Jewish DNA is that which has descended from Abraham, through Isaac, to Jacob and the Jewish nation. Gravity is an attraction between masses. These things exist – regardless of your machines’ proclivities. Including the term "DNA" in that statement is an anachronism. Cultural identification isn't a physical law like gravity, regardless of how aggressively or emphatically that may be stated. That doesn't make it unim…

Are you specifically claiming that a common ancestor does not exist, or that genetic information does not spread to offspring?

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#147

Post by amiga386 »

grardb wrote: post #142
amiga386 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also don't understand why people get a boner with Columbus. He is primarily of interest because Italian-Americans want a feeling of pride and so celebrate "one of their own", the Genovese Columbus. And America is very big and important, so whatever it cares about, a lot of other people care about. If you were Canadian instead, you'd probably be genned up on John Cabot (also Genovese) and Newfoundland and CODFISH!…

> He is primarily of interest because Italian-Americans want a feeling of pride and so celebrate "one of their own", the Genovese Columbus. May I ask why you hold this opinion? I grew up with tons of Italian-Americans (NYC) and I can confidently say that I've never heard a single person express pride in the fact that Columbus was Italian. In fact, based on my experience, a lot of Americans—regardless of descent—think…

I looked into it a few years ago when then anti-colonialists were insisting that the US should drop Columbus Day (or replace it with a Columbus' Victims Day) as they see him as a symbol of colonialism, eradication of natives, and support for slavery.

You might ask "if he's so evil and wicked and wrong and everything bad about the world (and not just a convenient famous person to scapegoat for more general ills), why did anyone ask the US to have a Columbus Day anyway?"

And the answer to that is Italian-Americans:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_Day

> Many Italian Americans observe Columbus Day as a celebration of their heritage and not of Columbus himself

> For the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's voyage in 1892, following lynchings in New Orleans, where a mob had murdered 11 Italian immigrants, President Benjamin Harrison declared Columbus Day as a one-time national celebration.

> In 1934, as a result of lobbying by the Knights of Columbus and New York City Italian leader Generoso Pope, Congress passed a statute stating: "The President is requested to issue each year a proclamation designating October 12 as Columbus Day

> in 1942, Franklin Roosevelt had the removal of the designation of Italian Americans as "enemy aliens" announced on Columbus Day along with a plan to offer citizenship to 200,000 elderly Italians living in the United States

> In 1966, Mariano A. Lucca, from Buffalo, New York, founded the National Columbus Day Committee, which lobbied to make Columbus Day a federal holiday

> San Francisco claims the nation's oldest continuously existing celebration with the Italian-American community's annual Columbus Day Parade, which was established by Nicola Larco in 1868, while New York City boasts the largest, with over 35,000 marchers and one million viewers around 2010

So, while the Italian-Americans you grew up with may not have been one of the 35,000 marchers in NYC, I bet most of those 35,000 marchers considers themselves Italian-American. They, and all other Italian-Americans, get a federal holiday which they can use to celebrate the connection between Italy and America (if they so wish), thanks to Italian-Americans lobbying for Columbus Day since the 1800s.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#148

Post by mytailorisrich »

juunpp wrote: post #82
shsbdksn wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ill named?

Ill-named because it wasn't a reconquest of anything; Spain did not exist as a nation anytime prior to that. It was a bunch of tribes originally, followed by the Greeks settling in, then the Romans, then the Visigoths, and then the Arabs. A mesh of many cultures until the main kingdoms united and wiped the land of "non-Christian blood". And thereafter the Spanish government has gone back and forth trying to wipe the…

The Iberic peninsula had been conquered by Arab Muslims, who moved into France before being pushed back.

The term "Reconquista" is perfectly suited to describe what hapoened: European Christians re-conquered that land. Especially in term of Christendom this was a re-conquest.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#149

Post by twelve40 »

fakedang wrote: post #140
juunpp wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that Columbus was genocidal. He was a slaver, rapist, murderer, gold digger and all-round motherfucker for sure, so much so that the Spanish monarchy sent an envoy to arrest him, bring him back to Spain to be tried, and threw him in jail I think for a couple years. Aside from gold and spices sent from him back to the Spanish monarchs after his first arrival, he also sent back slaves and the queen was, pr…

> Closer to "genocidal" would be Hernan Cortes, who pretty much took down the Aztecs. Well that's what you get when you go about enslaving and committing genocide against your neighbours for centuries prior. Cortes didn't even have to try - all the neighbouring nations eagerly joined the Spanish to wipe out the Aztecs. Even after that, the Aztecs weren't wiped out - they were just converted hard to Christianity and a…

The Maya suffered for sure, but they survived in numbers that exceed all of native American population in the US, for example, and kept their language. Others had it much worse.

Re: Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

#150

Post by Neil44 »

chipdart wrote: post #35

From the article: > “Unfortunately, from a scientific point of view, we can’t really evaluate what was in the documentary because they offered no data from the analysis whatsoever,” Antonio Alonso, a geneticist and former director of Spain’s National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Sciences told El País. So, baseless speculation used by the Spanish regime to claim Christopher Columbus as Spanish during the Spani…

You have to question why such a baseless claim merited an article promoting it.
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