Did Marco Polo Discover America?

[shawomet]

Odds on the maps are fake I suppose...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... umbus.html

[Minimalist]

His book, The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps, is due out in November.

What a surprise!

[Cognito]

Carbon dating on one of the sheepskin maps reveals it was created in the 14th or 15th century - meaning that even if it is authentic, it is a copy of the original.... The ink on the map, however, has not been tested - meaning it could have been forged after the sheepskin was created.

Would be nice to nail down salient facts before making and wild ass claims. At best, the map appears to be a copy. I wouldn't get too excited until the ink is tested by someone competent.

If the name "Fu Sang" is really on the map and the ink pre-dates Columbus, then that would be cause for celebration. However, I'm betting that Gunnar Thompson has spent countless hours studying a forgery in order to write a book that won't make him rich. Test the ink, Gunnar, don't be so careless and gullible.

[Minimalist]

Would be nice to nail down salient facts before making and wild ass claims.

That could negatively impact book sales, Cogs.

[Kalopin]

happy Columbus day,
Amerigo Vespucci wins! ;-]]]]]]]

[kbs2244]

The real argument is not who got here first, but what happened because they did get here.

I think that a good argument can be made for many pre-Columbus visits to the Western Hemisphere.
Pole to pole, on both coasts.

There may even have been local, sophisticated, large area, empires as a result.

But what were the consequences?
Was there any effect on world history?

Columbus, good or bad, first or fortieth, told the then world dominant, expanding and land hungry European world that here was a entire half of the globe out there waiting to be claimed.

That is what changed world history.

[Minimalist]

Columbus got back.

[kbs2244]

So did Marco Polo.
By ship, no less.

[Kalopin]

...cept Columbus told everyone it was India and Vespucci told everyone it was a new land...
...that the indigenous tribes already had plenty nice sounding names for [- Mississippi-'father of waters' or is it from a french word ''Messipi", Alaska-'the Gret Land',... wow, what great discoveries do to actual history!]
[yes, the people that were here had actually looked down below their feet!] ;-]

...wonder what the Asians thought about the European's "discovery"?

...wonder what the people living here thought?!
[we've been discovered -or- we're being slaughtered?!]

The French and Spanish,... [European 'adventurers'] did not 'discover' or even 'conquer' near as much as they destroyed! Many important artifacts, carvings, and most of the passed down knowledge [...it was "evil"!?] was lost due to such gross incompetence!
...yea, what a discovery... [plunder!]

[kbs2244]

You make my point.
Columbus, as I said “For good or bad,” reported back and said “Lets go get it.”

Personally, from my readings, I think he knew that he had not found a shortcut to Japan, or the spice islands.
He was too good a navigator and sailor.
But he also needed money for his expeditions and he was not above selling what his investors wanted to buy.

Eventually it became clear this was not a shortcut to the Orient and Spice Islands.
But by then the value of what he reported became clear and he could get his financing with more accurate reports.

[uniface]

You people are speculating about information you could just learn. The Indes business was a smokescreen. Almost at random :

The connections between the timing of Columbus's voyage and the expulsion of Spanish Jewry are indeed curious. Historians have noted that, though Columbus was not scheduled to set sail until August 3rd, he insisted that his entire crew be ready on board a full day earlier. The timing becomes more intriguing when we consider that August 2nd 1492 was the day that had been ordained for the last Jews of Spain to depart the country.

Contrary to popular belief, the expedition was not funded by Queen Isabella, but by three prominent Jews who all stumped up 17,000 ducats. This theory is supported by the emergence of the first two letters written by Columbus, which were sent to his 'backers' instead of the royal couple, revealing what he had found and thanking them for his support.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z3HStyYcpY

Jewish filiopietists, as well as several non‑Jewish historians, have speculated that the "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" was a Jew. They note that the Spanish name, Colon, was a not uncommon one in Hebrew tradition; that his father was a weaver, one of the few trades open to Jews in his native ­Genoa; that his mother, Susanna Fonterossa, was the daughter of Jacobo Fonterossa and granddaughter of Abraham Fonterossa [also common Jewish names]. The hypothesizing has been extensive, and Columbus himself doubtless was responsible for much of it. His letters in the Archives [the Archives of the Indies in Seville] drop tantalizing hints: "I am not the first admiral of my family, let them give me whatever name they please; for when all is done, David, that most prudent king, was first a shepherd and afterward chosen King of Jerusalem, and I am a servant of that same Lord who raised him to such a dignity."
In his ship’s log, Columbus makes frequent references to the Hebrew Bible, to Jerusalem to Moses, David, Abraham, Isaac, and Sarah. He computes the age of the ­world according to the Jewish calendar: ". . . and from the destruction: the Second Temple according to the Jews to the present day, being the year of the birth of Our Lord 1481, are 1413 years…" In his last will and testament, Columbus asks that one‑tenth of his income be given to the poor; that a dowry be provided for poor girls “in such a way that they do not notice whence it comes" ‑- a characteristically anonymous technique of Jewish philanthropy.

. . . The Crown offered the inducement of great land encomiendas (estates) to loyal soldiers and farmers and shared profits for the prospectors, engineers, and overseers of South America's boundless silver mines. Ostensibly, the constraints of limpieza de sangre [purity of blood] excluded New Christians from these ventures, or even from settlement in Spanish America.

Yet conversos aplenty found ways to emigrate to the New World. Spain's notoriously venal bureaucracy was quite prepared to sell permits of exemption. For the right price, ship captains were equally willing to disembark New Christian passengers at secret inlets along the Gulf Mexico south of Veracruz, or on the Honduran coast. [The migration of conversos is important to Jewish history for at least two reasons: 1. Crypto-Jews made up a portion of the converso community. These Jews continued to practice Judaism in secret and often, if the opportunity presented itself, resumed living openly as Jews. 2. Conversos, whether they accepted their new identity as Christians or not, still maintained personal and professional ties with their Jewish families--siblings, cousins, parents, grandparents.]

Indeed, the infiltration of conversos became something of an influx once the Spanish throne assumed its rule over Portugal in 1580…In the early seventeenth century, between three and five thousand Portuguese New Christians may have departed for the New World. They anticipated important commercial inducements overseas, and they were not disappointed. In New Spain, as many as two thousand conversos settled in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Vera Cruz, Puebla, and Guatemala City. In New Castile, approximately the same number of New Christians resided in Lima, Poto Tucuman, and Cordoba. By the 1630s, hardly a town in the Spanish Empire did not shelter at least a scattering of conversos, some of whom migrated as far as New Mexico and Florida.

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/history ... orld.shtml

Spanish colonial archives are full of complaints from priests in the New World complaining that although only Christians were to be allowed entry, each new ship disgorged more Jews . . .

[kbs2244]

Wow!
We have gone from Marco Polo maps if Columbus was a Jew?

Is the next question if he was following long kept secret Jewish/Samaritan copper merchants sailing directions on how to get to the Rio Grande and then to the copper of Arizona?

After all, the Samaritan inscriptions at Los Lunas must be there for some reason.

[Minimalist]

After all, the Samaritan inscriptions at Los Lunas must be there for some reason.

Mormons.