Poll of the Day > Leif Eriksson Day

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If Viking explorer Leif Eriksson Day reached N America hundreds of years before Columbus, should Columbus be credited with "discovering" America?

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Hinga-dinga-durgin!

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GenericGuy posted...

Hinga-dinga-durgin!

I don't speak that language. Sorry!

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Well they landed in Newfoundland, so technically they didnt find America.

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zebatov posted...

Well they landed in Newfoundland, so technically they didnt find America.

N America!

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Columbus should be vilified.
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BUMPED2002 posted...

If Viking explorer Leif Eriksson Day reached N America hundreds of years before Columbus, should Columbus be credited with "discovering" America?

Since absolutely nothing meaningful or long-term impactful came of it, no. In the same way that I don't really care whether or not the Portuguese got here in the early 1400s (very possible), the Chinese got here even earlier in the late 1300/early 1400s (less likely), or the Welsh at some point way prior to that (extremely unlikely), or Africans and Polynesians (relatively possible), and so on.

Though if Leif had spread enough disease to kill off 90%+ of the native population and pave the way for centuries worth of immigration, colonization, settlement, and total cultural restructuring, I'd be all about giving him his own day as a reward.

Like it or not, Columbus MADE the modern world. Leif... didn't even really "find" North America (his dad founded the first successful colony on Greenland, though his people knew it was there even before that). Leif heard rumors of land west of Greenland from other Icelandic sailors, eventually landed in Canada, tried to establish a colony that failed, and then he went back to Greenland and eventually died . -I've- done more meaningful things in my life. Give me my own day!

Leif basically became the default reaction to "Oh, we're starting to feel guilty about all that native-murdering we did, maybe we should stop glorifying Columbus", but he never really did much to actually deserve the praise. It's just that there aren't all that many other options where you can literally name a specific person, and "discovering" North America in 1000 AD is such a nice round number that people love the idea of it.
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SunWuKung420 posted...

Columbus should be vilified.

guilty sjw
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Bubble Buddy is a murderer!

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Krazy_Kirby posted...

guilty sjw

Both sides of my American ancestors were oppressed by Europeans believing they were sent by God but acted like the Devil. Fuck colonization. Fuck Columbus. Fuck manifest destiny.

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SunWuKung420 posted...

Both sides of my American ancestors were oppressed by Europeans believing they were sent by God but acted like the Devil. Fuck colonization. Fuck Columbus. Fuck manifest destiny.

Stop paying taxes to our colony then.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Though if Leif had spread enough disease to kill off 90%+ of the native population and pave the way for centuries worth of immigration, colonization, settlement, and total cultural restructuring, I'd be all about giving him his own day as a reward.

Did Columbus not arrive in the aftermath of that pandemic?

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SunWuKung420 posted...

Both sides of my American ancestors were oppressed by Europeans believing they were sent by God but acted like the Devil. Fuck colonization. Fuck Columbus. Fuck manifest destiny.

Mad ancestors didn't find Europe.

dedbus posted...

Mad ancestors didn't find Europe.

Full of dirty cities, tyrannical leaders and endless wars. Not mad at all.

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Nichtcrawler X posted...

Did Columbus not arrive in the aftermath of that pandemic?

That epidemic was entirely rooted in diseases that the Spaniards brought over from Europe, that the natives had no real resistance to. The general assumption is that smallpox is the one that did the most damage, though measles might have been a close second. In return, they gave Europe syphilis.

Basically, the Spanish in the Central and South American areas passed diseases to the natives by interacting with them, who then spread it to their neighbors, who spread it to their neighbors, who spread it to their neighbors, and so on, until it crossed the entire continent and affected places the Europeans had never seen.

By the time the British, French, Dutch, and others started establishing colonies a hundred years later, they were showing up in places that had already been annihilated by disease. Which made it a lot easier to establish footholds because there was no one left to fight them over the land (and a lot of the land was already cleared and previously cultivated, which made it easier to establish farms and towns than it would have been in complete wilderness). And, of course, the new settlers wound up passing their diseases on to natives they met, so the cycle continued.

It's similar to what happened when the Mongols started pushing west into what is present-day Crimea. They brought disease from Asia with them, that people in Asia had built up resistances to from centuries worth of regular exposure, but they were passing it to Europeans who have never caught those diseases, and never built up immunity, and thus, the Black Death winds up rolling across Europe and killing off half the population (about 100 million). A lot of disease got passed around Europe, Asia, and Africa that way (mostly through trade routes) over thousands of years, which is why there's always examples of minor plagues here and there, or more major outbreaks (like the Plague of Justinian or the one that hit England just before the Great Fire of London in 1666). But that constant ebb and flow strengthened immune systems against those diseases in general, so there usually wasn't a huge catastrophic outbreak (except for the Black Death).

People in the Americas had never had that contact, so they were exceptionally susceptible to those diseases, and something like 90% of the population (around 40 million people) died from them. Which completely disrupted their entire way of life, and radically changed the future of the world. In an alternate universe where the natives don't get sick, European colonization would be much, much more difficult (if it could succeed at all). In fact, this may be WHY the Vikings didn't colonize North America - they were facing the full strength of the natives, and lacked the guns the later colonizers brought with them.

Ironically, the fact that the American natives killed off most of the megafauna when they first arrived from Asia (which meant there were fewer species to domesticate once they settled down into agricultural civilizations, which in turn meant they didn't catch diseases from the animals, which meant their immune systems were weaker, and which meant the diseases they gave to the Europeans weren't as potent) helped play a role in their downfall. In an alternate universe where American natives had domesticated dozens of species and developed hundreds of unique diseases of their own, the Colombian Exchange potentially sets off sweeping lethal infection that devastates Europe, Asia, and Africa (though possibly not, because the long trip across the sea could potentially be long enough to prevent anyone infected from managing to get back to Europe alive). If if happened, the likely outcome there is that colonization becomes both impossible and unwanted, and by the time Europe recovered enough to begin another attempt at colonization the civilizations of the Americas would have recovered as well, and would potentially present much stronger resistance to conquest.

But yes, without Columbus (or someone like him, around that same time period), no disease, and the world winds up looking VERY different.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

By the time the British, French, Dutch, and others started establishing colonies a hundred years later, they were showing up in places that had already been annihilated by disease. Which made it a lot easier to establish footholds because there was no one left to fight them over the land (and a lot of the land was already cleared and previously cultivated, which made it easier to establish farms and towns than it would have been in complete wilderness).

I think that is where I mixed up things, putting them and Columbus closer together in time in my head, thinking the pandemic happened before Columbus, instead of because of him.

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Nichtcrawler X posted...

I think that is where I mixed up things, putting them and Columbus closer together in time in my head, thinking the pandemic happened before Columbus, instead of because of him.

Well, to be super-fair to him, it didn't happen because of him specifically. Other Spaniards like Cortes and Pizarro probably did more to spread disease (and just generally murder/conquer the natives). But the only reason the Spanish as a whole were there is because Columbus showed them the way, so he effectively opened the door to the hundreds of years of conquest and colonization that followed.

Though another interesting thing to note along those lines - the Spanish were mostly just interested in the gold and silver they could get from the Americas, and were mostly willing to co-exist with the natives (and try to covert them to Catholicism) as long as they cooperated (apart from a few atrocities here and there, which is what you get when violent men are operating without immediate oversight and tons of gold is involved). Which is mainly why the Hispanic population that exists today in Central and South America is basically a sort of hybrid of native and Spanish bloodlines (except in Brazil, where it's intermixed Portuguese and native instead). But the other European nations operated differently - the French mostly just wanted to establish trade (which is why they generally avoided conflict with the natives as much as possible), while the English were the ones most aggressive about driving natives off the land entirely (or outright killing them). The "New World" would likely be a VERY different place today if the only ones who knew about it were the Spanish, and the other empires never found their way here (or at least never attempted colonization).

It's also worth noting that, even if you traveled back in time and murdered Columbus as a child, thus preventing him from making the crossing, someone from Europe likely would have found the Americas eventually, and you would have gotten the same chain reaction of epidemic and conquest that happened in our history, so it's not even that he specifically was absolutely necessary for what happened. If anything, in a world without Columbus Europe might have advanced faster, and been even more violent once they got to America and could kill the natives with speed and impunity.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

It's also worth noting that, even if you traveled back in time

If I could travel back in time, I go back far enough to prevent the epidemic.

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SunWuKung420 posted...

If I could travel back in time, I go back far enough to prevent the epidemic.

lmao

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SunWuKung420 posted...

Both sides of my American ancestors were oppressed by Europeans believing they were sent by God but acted like the Devil. Fuck colonization. Fuck Columbus. Fuck manifest destiny.

The world wouldn't be what it is today without colonization, and we'd probably be a lot further behind as a species without the western powers that colonized the world. I'm not saying it's good but I'm not saying it's bad either, it can go either way depending how it's done. It worked well for America, Canada, Australia etc but really fucked up Africa and the middle east

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SunWuKung420 posted...

If I could travel back in time, I go back far enough to prevent the epidemic.

Have fun preventing the Agricultural Revolution.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Have fun preventing the Agricultural Revolution.

Mesoamerican farming technique, milpa, is more sustainable.

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SunWuKung420 posted...

Both sides of my American ancestors were oppressed by Europeans believing they were sent by God but acted like the Devil. Fuck colonization. Fuck Columbus. Fuck manifest destiny.

that isn't very zen. looks like your chakra isn't aligned
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SunWuKung420 posted...

Mesoamerican farming technique, milpa, is more sustainable.

Only at relatively low levels of population, but regardless, you missed my actual point by a metric mile.
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