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Post by Salvador on Apr 18, 2005 18:20:33 GMT -5
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Post by vela on Apr 18, 2005 19:56:31 GMT -5
The subject has been previously discussed quite extensively in this thread. You are welcome to add your opinions in either thread.
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Post by Circe on Apr 19, 2005 1:26:27 GMT -5
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Post by mmm on Apr 19, 2005 5:36:02 GMT -5
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Post by Circe on Apr 19, 2005 5:54:39 GMT -5
Indeed I loved the 1st answer ;D
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Post by Crimson Guard on Apr 20, 2005 13:21:47 GMT -5
italian!
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Post by vela on Apr 20, 2005 18:51:23 GMT -5
We have been reading in this forum many people claiming different nationalities for Columbus, Portuguese?, Norwegian?, Italian?,... years of confussion,... but finally we know the answer.... For those who tried to lie, who manipulated or omited information, who wished him to be from their country, whatever they did... I'm sorry, he was catalan..., so... F*CK YOU! ;D If you had read carefully the links above, particularly the answers from historian Charles Merrill, you would’ve realized that the lie started right there in Castile, the manipulated information or omission was deliberately made by the queen of Castile and the king of Aragon. So, now that you know, it seems to me like your spitting into the wind!
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Post by Salvador on Apr 21, 2005 6:02:00 GMT -5
I was just posting something I thought was interesting, but there seems to be a great battle between Italias, Spaniards and Portuguese.
Why are you guys so keen in trying to proove his origin. I mean, he was not even a scientist. He was simply a sailor.
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Post by SensoUnico on Apr 21, 2005 7:00:17 GMT -5
Actually it is a storm in a teacup. I am not American though I lived there from early childhood to end of college, so who the first Europeans to find the Americas is not that interesting. Vinland and the Norse settlers are somewhat uninteresting also. The argument is that Columbus was Catalan because he wrote odd castilian, he was trying to hide his identity, their are no Colums in Italy, there is a letter of his written in Catalan.... Nothing to tell me he was born in Catalonia or even the Iberian peninsula. There were no Spain, Italy and Greece like today only geographic zones occupied by certain groups with a particular language. From my hasty study of the roots and spread of Catalan, Columbus could have come from any place where Catalan was spoken like Sardinia, Southern Italy and Greece. Sardinia or Naples seems reasonable considering he was a foreigner in the Iberian peninsula.
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Post by Drooperdoo on Apr 21, 2005 8:13:55 GMT -5
Geneticists at least excluded one conspiracy theory--that Columbus was Jewish. He hid his origins and many Jews did--and still do--this (to avoid persecution and bigotry). So Jewish intellectuals long championed a Jewish Columbus. Unfortunately dna made short work of this assertion. He had Western European dna markers, not Middle Eastern markers. And the two dna profiles are vastly different and easy to distinguish. (So, sorry, guys. He wasn't Jewish.) But, then, any student of history knew how unlikely it was that he'd be Jewish--since Sephardic Jews didn't look like Swedes . . . and Columbus did. Contemporary accounts of him say that he had reddish-blond hair into adulthood, blue eyes and a long horse-shaped Nordic head. These features are not uncommon in both Germanicized Northern Italy and Northern Spain [especially Catalunya]. We have a letter where Columbus attempts to write in Italian--and he couldn't. We also have letters of him writing in Catalan--which he could. The whole lie of him being Italian probably arose when Columbus was on either one of two ships--a merchant ship from Italy or a pirate ship which attacked it from Catalunya. When Columbus washed ashore in Portugal, he had to say either one of the other--so he chose the Italian ship. But ship records prove that no one named Colon or Colom were on board. As for the Catalan ship? --It was owned by a wealthy Catalan named Colom. And several other Coloms were onboard according to the ship's manifest. So it seems clear, Colombus HAD to obscure his identity when he first washed ashore in Portugual. If he told the truth and said he was taking part in piracy, he might have met a vastly different fate than he did. Thus the beginning of a lie that would last into the current age--all started because of an impromptu falsehood designed to save his own hide.
P.S.--The geneticists established that, despite degraded dna samples, they WERE able to determine that Columbus was "Western European". So that excludes theories of him being Greek, too. [Greek dna is not even remotely close to Western European dna.]
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Post by Crimson Guard on Apr 21, 2005 14:37:41 GMT -5
Columbo and Columbu are Italians names found in Italy.
Columbus also wrote in latin and Greek.Genoese Italian was not a written language in the 15th century.
He was not a nordic /germanic either.
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Post by Salvador on Apr 21, 2005 14:49:34 GMT -5
I don't see how he can not be a jew because of a DNA test. To be a jew is a matter of religion, not race.
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Post by SensoUnico on Apr 21, 2005 23:15:56 GMT -5
That is an interesting side issue. How many Jews do not have Jewish or Middle Eastern markers? What some folk seem to forget is that many of those literate people in the past wrote in Latin and not their native vulgar language.
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Post by Drooperdoo on Apr 22, 2005 0:37:45 GMT -5
Sensunesco, It is always tempting to apply the realities of the present to the situations of the past. In 1492, Spain was not like modern-day Eastern Europe. (They didn't have Jews who were a Slavo-Turkic mix from Khazaria. They had the real thing: Jews straight from the Middle East.) In other words, they were ethnic Jews who arrived in Spain with the Arabs in the 1000s. They were fellow Middle Easterners who carried their language, religion and culture to the Iberian peninsula. Because of the dictates of their religion, they DIDN'T interbreed with local populaces or intermarry. In fact. Jewish law forbids the marriage of Jews and non-Jews. Even in the year 2005, only a reform Rabbi will marry a Jew and non-Jew. So in 1492, let's just say: It wasn't the all-loving, multicultural world we see today, of brotherhood and non-racism. The Jews saw themselves as the descendants of Abraham and believed in ethnic purity. The Spaniards, too, were Catholics who lived in and under the dictates of the church. (They didn't live without marriage--and under church law no one married you to people of different religions. It wasn't allowed. ) So they didn't intermarry with Arabs or Jews. In fact, in 1492, such was the racial tension between these groups that the indigenous Spaniards kicked them out. So, no, it wasn't a hotbed of mixing and brotherhood. Even today geneticists have confirmed that surprising little gene-flow happened between the Moors and the Spaniards--and only in the South of Spain, where less than 2% of the people show any Middle Eastern genetic markers. The rest of the 98% are wholly Iberian. As for the Center and North of Spain the admixture rate approached 0%. So, no, there wasn't a modern multiculralism where all these groups blended and melded into one race. And, no, Jews from North Africa and the Middle East, who arrived in Spain with their Semitic brothers [the Arabs] didn't look like Swedes . . . as Colombus [and many Northern Spaniards] did. Sorry. I don't mean to sound like a meanie. But they just didn't.
P.S.--Read up on Jewish genetics and look into the dna markers of Sephardic Jews. No geneticist would ever confuse Western European dna with Semitic dna--because their profiles are radically different.
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Post by SensoUnico on Apr 22, 2005 2:51:28 GMT -5
I think we have veered off topic. My point is Columbus could be born anywhere in Europe or North Africa where Catalan was spoken which was quite a few places in the time before his birth. As to Jews, I know quite enough thank you and do not need any more information. I think that a person born in the 20th century is presuming too much to know what Jews looked like in the 13-14th century. And I do not buy the Khazar story, sounds something from the vaults of nazi mythohistory.
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