China Discovered America First?

Stoo

Well-known member
DiscoLad said:
Which one sounds more respectable.
-Christopher Columbus
-Random China man.
You started this thread about the possibilty that North America might have been 'discovered' by the Chinese but "hate" the theory because "random China man" doesn't sound respectable. You're a real winner.:rolleyes:
DiscoLad said:
As for adding something substantial. I've made more words than the past three "Indeed" posts combined. :D
We're glad for you. Like the # of post counts, the # of words mean squat if they have no substance...and, Lord knows, yours hold none.
 

DiscoLad

New member
Stoo said:
You started this thread about the possibilty that North America might have been 'discovered' by the Chinese but "hate" the theory because "random China man" doesn't sound respectable. You're a real winner.:rolleyes:
We're glad for you. Like the # of post counts, the # of words mean squat if they have no substance...and, Lord knows, yours hold none.

Gee thanks Stoo.
I love you too man. ;)

Party in the Young Indy cave!!
 

Stoo

Well-known member
Disco, you created this thread. Do you truly wish to discuss the topic or are you simply here to act like an idiot?

Once again, why do you "hate" this theory?
 

DiscoLad

New member
Stoo said:
Disco, you created this thread. Do you truly wish to discuss the topic or are you simply here to act like an idiot?

Once again, why do you "hate" this theory?

No I created this thread a while back when I still cared and was curious.

As soon as you stop insulting me, I'll stop acting like an idiot Sir Stoo Alot.

You gonna stop? :)

If so. I told you earlier, Stoo. I just think it sounds better with Christopher Columbus. Besides, I just don't want to give anything to China, I dislike the them. (n)

It's a personal thing. You can go about it however you want.
 

Stoo

Well-known member
DiscoLad said:
I just think it sounds better with Christopher Columbus. Besides, I just don't want to give anything to China, I dislike the them. (n)
"Them". Why do you not like China?

P.S. Whether you like the Chinese or not, what does present day China have to do with a centuries-old, "random China man"?
 
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DiscoLad

New member
Stoo said:
"Them". Why do you not like China?

You think I'm gonna fall for that one?
Post an answer so you can completely destroy it with your quick, smarty-pants replies?

I. Think. Not.

Carry on. :hat:

Edit: Now I have to edit back . . .
Same China?
Another Edit: I wonder why you are pushing this so.
Don't you have a 20 questions game to play?
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
DiscoLad said:
You think I'm gonna fall for that one?
Post an answer so you can completely destroy it with your quick, smarty-pants replies?

I. Think. Not.

Carry on. :hat:

Edit: Now I have to edit back . . .
Same China?
Another Edit: I wonder why you are pushing this so.
Don't you have a 20 questions game to play?

While I'm weeping into my beer over here to see you two prepping for another donnybrook, the man's right on this one, Lad...your dislike seems pretty unmotivated, illogical, and neglectful of the darker, danker sides of the Columbus story.
 

DiscoLad

New member
Attila the Professor said:
While I'm weeping into my beer over here to see you two prepping for another donnybrook, the man's right on this one, Lad...your dislike seems pretty unmotivated, illogical, and neglectful of the darker, danker sides of the Columbus story.

Where did that come from?? :D

I just don't want to answer him because I know where he's going to take this.
 

Gear

New member
DiscoLad said:
Being American,

Which one sounds better to me.
"Christopher [Columbus], respectable explorer, discovers today's North America"
or
"Random china man and his crew lost an achor, dropped scrap metal, and scurried back to Asia after stumbling upon today's North America"

Bias but what the hell, What are you going to do?

Um, okay. So, you're content to believe convenient history instead of questioning authority and seeking truth? To me, that seems pretty opposite the ideals of an American, but more-so the arrogance and pompousness of Idiot America.

--

Actually, Chuck Norris discovered America first. He created and populated it. It's in the Bible. Well, the true Bible.
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
DiscoLad said:
Where did that come from?? :D

I just don't want to answer him because I know where he's going to take this.

I'll give you this much: revising the history that we've known all our lives is something that it is both easy and natural to resist. I know it certainly comes into play in my own impulses when conspiracy theories of whatever stripe start being bandied about.

But what would it really mean if a Chinese vessel had touched the shores of the Western hemisphere prior to Christopher Columbus? Not much more than it means that the Vikings did, or if any of these other pre-Columbian theories might actually be true. The real point is, none of them took. Sure, it would tell us something about the technology and tenacity (or dumb luck?) of those who might have made it earlier than ol' Christoffa, and there could be some ramifications should any of cross-cultural exchange occurred. But it wouldn't change the fact that the events of 1492 - misinterpreted though they were by the man who actually brought them to fruition - are the ones that led to the Americas, and the Europe, and the world that we know today.

And here's the other big thing: there's nothing to change the fact that, from many reports, he wasn't that great a guy, one who retained the power he achieved in the islands with an iron fist, and often incompetently at that. He was greedy, and possibly responsible for the commencement of what many have considered a genocide, and he also <I>never</I> knew what he had actually found.

But that doesn't matter, unless people are still in the business of idolizing him, or holding him up as a hero. He was pivotal, yes, but so was Vespucci, who actually figured out what it was, and everyone who followed, who we all learned about in grade school. (Well, those of us in the continents, anyhow. I can't speak for education elsewhere, and I'd presume it's lacking on this subject, just as non-American colonial history is given much less emphasis, and understandably so, in my experience.) He's part of the <I>story</I>, and that can't be taken away from him. But let's have some sense of who he actually was, and what he actually did, and recognize that the import of the event doesn't offer much in the way of moral reflection on the man.

(All of this, of course, is also leaving aside that he was a Genovesi in employ of Spanish monarchs who never set foot on anything that's part of the United States, a society that he, like so many of his contemporaries, would scarcely have understood nor endorsed.)
 
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DiscoLad

New member
I think it is safe to say I can't argue with that.
I'm out.

Haha. I don't care anymore who found America, the thing's discovered. . .:p
Tiresome.
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
Stoo said:
Wow A.Prof you really know your stuff *cough*;)

DiscoLad said:
That's why I backed out. :)


Do you mean to say that after all this time, all I had to do to bring you two together was reveal just how overbearing and Hunnishly professorial I can be? ;)



Seriously though...I wasn't trying to shut down the debate, but rather offer the lens through which I see it.
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Attila the Professor said:
I'll give you this much: revising the history that we've known all our lives is something that it is both easy and natural to resist. I know it certainly comes into play in my own impulses when conspiracy theories of whatever stripe start being bandied about.

But what would it really mean if a Chinese vessel had touched the shores of the Western hemisphere prior to Christopher Columbus? Not much more than it means that the Vikings did, or if any of these other pre-Columbian theories might actually be true. The real point is, none of them took. Sure, it would tell us something about the technology and tenacity (or dumb luck?) of those who might have made it earlier than ol' Christoffa, and there could be some ramifications should any of cross-cultural exchange occurred. But it wouldn't change the fact that the events of 1492 - misinterpreted though they were by the man who actually brought them to fruition - are the ones that led to the Americas, and the Europe, and the world that we know today.

And here's the other big thing: there's nothing to change the fact that, from many reports, he wasn't that great a guy, one who retained the power he achieved in the islands with an iron fist, and often incompetently at that. He was greedy, and possibly responsible for the commencement of what many have considered a genocide, and he also <I>never</I> knew what he had actually found.

But that doesn't matter, unless people are still in the business of idolizing him, or holding him up as a hero. He was pivotal, yes, but so was Vespucci, who actually figured out what it was, and everyone who followed, who we all learned about in grade school. (Well, those of us in the continents, anyhow. I can't speak for education elsewhere, and I'd presume it's lacking on this subject, just as non-American colonial history is given much less emphasis, and understandably so, in my experience.) He's part of the <I>story</I>, and that can't be taken away from him. But let's have some sense of who he actually was, and what he actually did, and recognize that the import of the event doesn't offer much in the way of moral reflection on the man.

(All of this, of course, is also leaving aside that he was a Genovesi in employ of Spanish monarchs who never set foot on anything that's part of the United States, a society that he, like so many of his contemporaries, would scarcely have understood nor endorsed.)

Well put, Attila.

History isn't ours for the choosing, based on how we'd like it to be. That way lies dictatorship and the illusory world of propaganda. We should never lose sight of the evidence, and always be prepared to accept that things aren't always as we've expected.

Columbus stumbled upon the New World motivated by trade and the maximization of profit, but he wasn't responsible for America. Others had already been there for quite a while, and others had settled briefly. The European conquest of America began first with the search for greater wealth.

As with the history of many nations, America's past wasn't noble. Land grabbing, oppression, genocide, slavery, a late eighteenth-century class war in which the bourgeoisie wrested control from the aristocracy, and a nineteeth-century bloody civil war. The history isn't pretty or particularly glorious, just as the history of the British Empire wasn't truly pretty or glorious.

Whether this was the will of a "respectable explorer" or some "random China man" is immaterial. Just let the evidence decide, and not some personal preference.

EDIT: I spent so long typing that this debate moved on without me!
 

Montana Smith

Active member
DiscoLad said:
. . . How long have you been stalking around here, Montana?? :D

I woke up less than an hour ago. I've got the 'flu again and I'm drugged up. What day is it? Where am I? What is this strange place? What are all you people doing here? :confused:
 
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