The Myth of Columbus

The Myth of Columbus

It amazes me that although we claim to have one of the best education systems in the world how we can let erroneous information as large as Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America to be so long lasting and widespread.  Christopher Columbus and his crew never believed the Earth was flat.  Nor were they attempting to prove the Earth is round by sailing all the way around it!  This came from “The History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus” published by Washington Irving in 1928.  Although he received much praise for his work and today is still considered one of the greatest American authors “The History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus” which was presented as a biography was really more a work of fiction, a story.  His real goal for the journey was to find a newer, faster trade route to China.

Unfortunately, the myth of Columbus and trying to prove the Earth was round was included in textbooks and taught to children for generations here in the United States.  As a teacher, I have had difficulty presenting some of the material in school texts to students because of these types of myths.

It is amazing to me that more students did not question this information.  After all, don’t we also study Greek civilizations?  We know from our studies of them that they not only knew the Earth was round, but they were also able to use basic geometry to calculate approximately how large it was almost 2,000 years before Columbus was born.

Another myth about Columbus that children were taught for many generations was that Columbus discovered America.  Although this sentence can be true because “America” in this sense can mean all of this region of the World including South and Central America and the islands along its vast expanse, most teachers seemed to take it to mean “America”, the United States of America.  I know as a kid that was what I was taught by many different teachers and even parents. 

Besides, how can you discover something when it is already occupied by millions of indigenous people? Although we have no hard fast numbers on how many people occupied this previously European uncharted land, all scholarly estimates are in the millions to tens of millions.  The history books of my childhood never even came close to representing those numbers accurately.

Lastly, Columbus definitely was not the first one to land in what is now the United States because many independent tribes already inhabited this great land.  Nor was he even the first European as in the 1960’s archaeologists discovered the remains of a Norse settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland believed to have been settled for a season around 1,000 A.D. by a group from Greenland led by Leif Ericson.

So although we all enjoy a day off to celebrate the life of Columbus, let us not continue to proliferate the myths that have developed around him.  He never thought the Earth was flat, he never landed in North America but he did have a large impact on changing the face of the Americas through jump starting exploration and colonization by Europeans of this region of the world.

These are things you should know…….S.M.