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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

#161

Post by Affric »

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…

Why is the ‘reconquista’ “ill named”?

Also, Columbus largely made his own legend. Everyone told him he was wrong (and he was) but he just so happened to discover land people might actually want. And so he was very much vindicated by the discovery in his own eyes. And it was daring. Everyone rightly told him he was mad and incorrectly told him he would die. It was one of the craziest expeditions of all time. And because of it the Spanish Empire became one of the richest the world has ever seen, the legacy of which is still felt today.

This is not to Lionise Columbus but you have to acknowledge the context of the time. Greenland and Newfoundland were not well known and are a long way from the latitude Columbus was aiming at. He was an idiot, and cruel by our standards, but he was great.

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

#162

Post by ywvcbk »

toyg wrote: post #94
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…

> since the Greeks that people knew the world was not flat Actually, most Greek knowledge had fundamentally disappeared from Western Europe for centuries, even before the official dissolution of the Western Roman Empire. Some of it had just reappeared in the XV century, largely through translations of Arabic books; this is why the Renaissance produced so much stuff inspired by classic material - because it was all ne…

> Some of it had just reappeared in the XV century, largely through translations of Arabic books;

I thought it was mainly the Greek refugees fleeing from the Byzantine empire who “kickstarted” the Renaissance?

Of course all the pillaging the by the Venetians etc. as well. A lot of Greek texts that survived the Sack of Constantinople ended up in Western Europe.

Regardless, most “Greek knowledge” that we know of survived in the Greek half of the Roman Empire which remained a part of the “Christian Civilization”. In fact it was the undisputed center of it until the 800s and in many ways much later.

I’m not entirely downplaying the Arab influence which was very significant as well (especially considering that the Orthodox Church wasn’t really that supportive about the preservation of some philosophical texts).

Also it started much earlier than the 15th century, the translation of various Greek and Arab texts into Latin was well underway in the 1100s and 1200s, following the Reconquista which was effectively over by the 1300s, and the conquest Sicily.

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

#163

Post by WalterBright »

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…

There are many claims of discovery of the Americas (even by ice age Frenchmen), but the one that had impact was Columbus'.

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

#164

Post by WalterBright »

Affric wrote: post #161
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…

Why is the ‘reconquista’ “ill named”? Also, Columbus largely made his own legend. Everyone told him he was wrong (and he was) but he just so happened to discover land people might actually want. And so he was very much vindicated by the discovery in his own eyes. And it was daring. Everyone rightly told him he was mad and incorrectly told him he would die. It was one of the craziest expeditions of all time. And becau…

I seriously doubt he was an idiot. But his thinking was constrained by what was known at the time and what was commonly thought to be true.

Our modern thinking is also constrained by similar misjudgments, we just like to think we're smarter than that. 500 years hence, people will laugh at our idiocy.

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

#165

Post by samastur »

WalterBright wrote: post #164
Affric wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the ‘reconquista’ “ill named”? Also, Columbus largely made his own legend. Everyone told him he was wrong (and he was) but he just so happened to discover land people might actually want. And so he was very much vindicated by the discovery in his own eyes. And it was daring. Everyone rightly told him he was mad and incorrectly told him he would die. It was one of the craziest expeditions of all time. And becau…

I seriously doubt he was an idiot. But his thinking was constrained by what was known at the time and what was commonly thought to be true. Our modern thinking is also constrained by similar misjudgments, we just like to think we're smarter than that. 500 years hence, people will laugh at our idiocy.

I don't think it will take 500 years.

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

#166

Post by dumbo-octopus »

pvaldes wrote: post #159
dumbo-octopus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of Jesus’s original disciples were Jewish. And you can be certainly be Jewish without having Jewish DNA, but there’s some controversy as to whether the reverse is true.

There is not such thing as "Jewish" DNA. Is a culture and religion, but not a fully different race. Some genes could be in the past more represented, but it was just "Mediterranean dotation". A mix of European, African and Asian. Today is much more mixed fortunately.

What would you call that genetic information which was passed down from Israel to his twelve children’s tribes?

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

#167

Post by ywvcbk »

juunpp wrote: post #104
WorkerBee28474 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You pretend like it was a bunch of villages living in happy harmony until the Catholics arrived. You're lying. It was part of the post-Roman empire, then it got conquered by Muslims, then it got re-conquered by Catholics. Hence, reconquista.

I don't pretend or lie. Historians put the start of Spain as a unified nation with the Catholic monarchs. Spain did not exist as a nation prior to then. Hence, nothing to conquer "back", just a succession of empires and smaller kingdoms and a melting of cultures consolidating into the birth of the nation that it is today.

Well.. the people doing the “reconquering” viewed themselves as [Roman] Christians first and foremost, that was the core of their cultural and political identity.

Since they considered that territories were part of the Roman-Christian Empire in the past from their perspective they were certainly taking it back.

Spain being or not being a nation at the time seems entirely irrelevant..

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

#168

Post by ywvcbk »

juunpp wrote: post #91
LAC-Tech wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely the intent of the name was a "re-conquest of Iberia from muslims by christians".

Named by whom? The term did not even show up until the 20th century, so it wasn't the christians who named it like that. Pure Spanish myth. Oh, and the battle that started it all? Never even existed. Pure historical revisionism for nationalistic purposes with no more reality that horned vikings. There are many things wrong with the term. A "reconquest" also makes it sound like the area was under siege by the Arabs or…

> It's not like those christians

In their view they did, the existence of the “Spanish nation” is tangential. From their perspective they were culturally/politically Christians and whatever exact language they happened to speak was secondary to that. So in that it was obviously a “reconquest” from the perspective of the Christians living in Iberia.

> So it's just a ridiculous term altogether.

Hardly more ridiculous than claiming that the fact that some common Spanish national identity didn’t exist back in the 1100s is somehow relevant.

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

#169

Post by Affric »

WalterBright wrote: post #164
Affric wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the ‘reconquista’ “ill named”? Also, Columbus largely made his own legend. Everyone told him he was wrong (and he was) but he just so happened to discover land people might actually want. And so he was very much vindicated by the discovery in his own eyes. And it was daring. Everyone rightly told him he was mad and incorrectly told him he would die. It was one of the craziest expeditions of all time. And becau…

I seriously doubt he was an idiot. But his thinking was constrained by what was known at the time and what was commonly thought to be true. Our modern thinking is also constrained by similar misjudgments, we just like to think we're smarter than that. 500 years hence, people will laugh at our idiocy.

Other people brought the receipts. He fully just wishfully thought the earth was smaller. He continued to refused he hadn’t landed in the indies for the rest of his life.

Idiot was a strong word. But not as brief.

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

#170

Post by ywvcbk »

shsbdksn wrote: post #83
franciscop wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH there's well known and documented anti-Spanish propaganda during the centuries by basically the rest of Europe (Protestants specifically), so I start to doubt claims from both sides (disclaimer: I'm Spaniard): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_legend

The English and Elizabeth projected their crimes onto Spain. Proof is in the pudding where is the percentage of natives highest? Where Spaniards colonized (Mexico, Bolivia, Peru)? Or the Brits (Virginia, Connecticut, all of Canada except Quebec)? (Disclaimer, I'm... I don't know what I am)

Presumably the population density in Mexico, Bolivia and Peru was much higher.

Also Spanish emigration into their colonies was quite low and they were much spread out.

e.g. more English/British people emigrated to the Americas in the 1600s than Spanish despite the fact that they controlled many times less territory.

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