Christopher Columbus' Bones
The New York Times: DNA tests are proceeding to find the ancestry of Christopher Columbus, with choices being many - see http:///www.nytimes.com/2007/10/08/us/08columbus.htm. "Seeking Columbus' Origins - With a Swab."
Update: He is there. Really there. See http://www.nbcnews.com/id/12871458/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/dna-verifies-columbus-remains-spain/#.UggMa23b38k.
Other issues not resolved by the DNA that simply found that dem bones are those of The Christopher:
- Was the Columbus name Jewish, until the Inquisition forced his parents to convert. See CNN at http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/20/opinion/garcia-columbus-jewish
- Or was he from Genoese weaver stock, see http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/thevoyagesofcolumbus/p/08columbusbio.htm
- Or a Catalonian rebel, see http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/08/us/08columbus.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
- Or a Portuguese prince's out-of-wedlock son. Again, there are DNA tests that affirmed that the bones are indeed those of Christopher Columbus in the Seville Cathedral, see http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12871458/
Bastards. Was Columbus a bastard? Rights and privileges vary.
Do a search for bastardy in Spain, find at the bastard section of "The Close of the Middle Ages, 1273-1497," by Richard Lodge, and you will find (more sources in Google books as well) that note that inheritances still went in many cases to the child born of the wrong side of the sheets.
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Western Culture Colonialism.
Christopher Columbus was not interested in the commons
. Colonialism: Spain was a major colonial power, as were Belgium, Great Britain, France, and others. Explore the issue of colonialism as motivating later indigenous persons to take their revenge, their way. Colonialism includes that of corporations, oil companies in particular, taking over areas of indigenous populations and removing them in one way or another, for the profits, and etc.
This topic addresses one group taking what they want from another group, on the other group's turf, and subjugating them in the process, in order to get what they want because they are more powerful and can.
Western Colonialism: Do we all feel entitled, even in our gardens, to force what we want and kill off what is not pleasing. Equipoise in ecology. At what point, if any, does the goal of yellowjackets in the garden, their need for food and life, become less important than my want to garden there under the deck, unstung, where they hive.
Envy Gandhi. Then address rights of immigrants. What is the morality of making room, or not.
