Christopher Columbus: Man of Mystery, Not Much Is Known, and

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Christopher Columbus: Man Of Mystery Not Much Is Known, And Some Of What's Been Discovered Isn't Good

World Main Page MADRID, Oct. 17, 2006 War On Terror (Christian Science Monitor) This article was written Iraq: After Saddam by Lisa Abend and Geoff Pingree. Reporter's Notebook Letter From Asia Diplomatic Dispatches Genovese nobleman or Catalan pirate? Adventurous Audible.com Downloads explorer or greedy tyrant? What if the Italian gentleman who discovered America was in fact a World Video brutal torturer and slave owner? And what if he wasn't even Italian?

Schoolchildren may learn about a daring hero who proved the Earth wasn't flat. But because his biography is pocked with holes, Christopher There are no known pictures of Christopher Columbus is a figure around whom elaborate theories Columbus made during his lifetime. (AFP/Getty and enigmatic rumors have long circulated. This year, Images) the 500th anniversary of his death, two Spanish INTERACTIVE QUOTE scholars are working to clear up some of the Inventing History mysteries. See a timeline of "No one likes to see the dark side of a inventions of the past mythic person." José Antonio Lorente, a geneticist at the University of and revisit predictions Granada, is attempting to resolve one of the greatest of the future. Historian Consuelo Varela enigmas — the question of Columbus's origins. In 1927, Peruvian historian Luis Ulloa Cisneros claimed WHAT DO YOU THINK? Columbus was from Catalonia — in what is today NEWS TOOLS northwestern Spain — rather than from the Italian Spain Go To Comments port city of Genoa. Learn about the people, economy and Since then, theories have proliferated, some history. suggesting that Columbus was a Catalan nobleman who rebelled against King Ferdinand's father, King John II, by engaging in piracy on behalf of the French, and then hid his origins to win favor with the son. Others maintain that he was the illegitimate child of Prince Carlos de Viana, a Majorcan nobleman related to Ferdinand and Isabella. Still others suggest that Columbus was a Jew, whose WORLD VIDEOS ALL WORLD VIDEOS NEWS TOOLS family fled to Genoa to escape persecution. More North Korean Nuke Tests? | Italy Learn about the A historian at the University of Seville asked Lorente (who had previously used genetic testing to Bloodbath In Balad | people, economy and determine that bones in the Cathedral of Seville belonged to Columbus's own illegitimate son), to North Korea Talks Tough | history. help resolve the Catalan/Genovese issue. More Nuke Tests For N. Korea? | Collecting saliva samples from hundreds of people in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, Genoa, Valencia, and the south of France with the last name of Colón, Colom, or Columbo, Lorente is ALL VIDEOS RELATED STORIES & LINKS TOP VIDEOS comparing their DNA with that taken from the bones of Columbus, his brother, and Prince Carlos de Columbus Remains Found In Viana. "This way, we can try to determine which population with the same last name as Columbus Bloodbath In Balad | has the most genetic similarities and differences to him," says Lorente. Spain Is Senate Up For Grabs? | Researchers Claim Bones In Cathedral In Seville Are Of The study, results of which were supposed to be released last week to coincide with the Spanish Dangerous Drug Side Effects | Explorer celebration of Columbus Day, has been delayed due to the technological difficulties. "Right now, we Mentoring Prisoners' Children | haven't developed sufficient markers that can be applied to DNA that comes from bones," says Lorente. "We're working on improving it every day, but we can't say when we'll have results." Who's Buried In Columbus' More Video Tomb? Until he finds conclusive answers, the geneticist finds the Catalan theory compelling. "Although the DNA Tests To Clarify Which Is majority think he was Italian," Lorente comments, "there are certain aspects of his biography that Famed Explorer's Final Resting suggest non-Italian origins." Place But while Columbus' origins remain undetermined, Consuelo Varela, a historian at Spain's Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, has answered another question: Why, once he was STORIES: The Search For Columbus governor of Hispaniola, did Columbus fall so far from favor that Ferdinand and Isabella ordered him Explorer's Alleged Remains CBS News' Christopher Glenn Dies | E-Mail Exhumed To Confirm Identity arrested and returned in chains to Spain? After Shootings, Some Teachers Get Guns | After archivist Isabel Aguirre discovered an uncatalogued transcript of Columbus's trial and brought E-Mail it to Varela's attention, the answer was clear to her: Even by the uncharitable standards of Mom Convicted After Teen Ill From Piercing | 16th-century Spanish colonies, Columbus was a brute. E-Mail

In her book "The Fall of Columbus," Varela uses the testimony from 23 witnesses contained in the Duke Rape Suspects Speak Out | E-Mail document to show that as governor of Hispaniola, Columbus regularly used torture to maintain order All Eyes Are On Ohio As Election Nears | E-Mail on the island. "It was far more brutal than we had known," says Varela. "It was a frontier society, with terrible misery and injustice." VIDEOS: Columbus was also a strong supporter of slavery, refusing to baptize the indigenous people of Bloodbath In Balad | Share Hispaniola so that he could enslave them (Spanish law prohibited the enslavement of Christians), Is Senate Up For Grabs? | Share and auctioning Spaniards into slavery, including a young boy caught stealing, as punishment. Varela also notes that Columbus was "surprisingly greedy. He was always tremendously worried about Dangerous Drug Side Effects | Share making money." Mentoring Prisoners' Children | Share Although academic specialists have largely hailed Varela's work, popular readers have been less More North Korean Nuke Tests? | Share welcoming. An Italian author of historical novels recently wrote her to complain about the unflattering portrait and accused her of falsifying the document. Varela understands the resistance. "No one likes to see the dark side of a mythic person," she says. Advertising Links | What's This? For both scholars, it is the mythic elements of Columbus's personality and history that explains public fascination with him. "Columbus is a universal figure," says Lorente. "When you add in the World Vision - Help Children in Need fact that he never said anything about his origins, you have the perfect mystery." Your $20 pledge can help one child after another escape a life of horror. Pledge now to help the world's most vulnerable © 2006 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved. children. www.worldvision.org

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...... Not so much a question of "or": Columbus was both an intrepid explorer and a tyrant. He was directly responsible for the enslavement, and ultimately the extinction of the Carribean Arawak peoples. He laughed at the passivity and trust demonstrated by these people, and even bragged in letters of how easy the process of enslaving them would be. Hooray for genocide! Let's take the kids to Wal-Mart and buy some more flags! For further details on this hero, you might like to read Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States".

p.s. Happy (belated) Columbus Day. Posted by redivider23 at 06:57 PM : Oct 17, 2006 + report this comment ...... I'm really tired of hearing about Columbus. This is not the United States of Columbia. Why don't we hear about Amerigo Vespucci? Posted by Boston1954 at 06:46 PM : Oct 17, 2006 + report this comment ...... funny...

janem4, I didn't read this article as a smear on Columbus. I read it as the title reads...'Man Of Mystery'. wow Posted by jh6379 at 04:29 PM : Oct 17, 2006 + report this comment ...... The Italian Colon,(christopher columbus) was not schooled, could not read, parents were not married, and worked as a cabin boy. (per info from recent trip to Italy). The spanish Columbus was a sea captian, could speak several languages, was from a wealthy family, was a pirate, did kill for others riches. I think the spanish columbus is the "real" columbus who did discover the americas, after Leif Erickson did, anyway. Posted by pghlady2 at 04:24 PM : Oct 17, 2006 + report this comment ...... Oh my God, now CBS is smearing Columbus. He must have been a republican back then. Posted by janem4 at 03:31 PM : Oct 17, 2006 + report this comment ...... To me, the mystery of mysteries is how he got credit for discovering America in the first place. About 500 years late and bumping into islands that got in his way, slaughtering indigenous peoples, while pursuing mostly his own wealth...he seems a poor candidate for yearly celebrations in N. America. Cheers to the first Europeans of Vinland! Can't we get a day off from work for the Eric or Lief, too? Posted by jetauma at 01:44 PM : Oct 17, 2006 + report this comment ......