Everything is Everything

Seems like I have truly forgotten how to write or maybe I am lacking in the motivation. Anyway I'll try to see what I struggle through and do today.

Read an interesting article in the Toronto Star the other day. Well interesting to me anyway. Its about a new book where the author is theorizing that the Mik'maq Indians on Cape Breton on Canada's east coast were in contact with the Chinese back in the day, before Columbus and the other Europeans reached the new world.

Pretty cool stuff in my opinion as he looks at Mik'maq clothing styles, structures, myths etc that just don't fit in with what the other native cultures were doing and exhibit a non-European outside influence.

Anyway this author isn't the first to theorize that the Chinese reached the new world prior to Columbus. Gavin Menzies in his book 1421: the Year the Chinese discovered the world gives a lot of evidence and tries to trace a story about how the Chinese sent out massive fleets which circumnavigated the world. You can check Menzies site for yourself or check out some of his critics who say his whole story is a fabrication. What you believe is up to you.

Still Menzies book (which half read a few years back) is good reading as he presents a tonne of research to show the correlation between the Chinese and other cultures. Who knows he may be right or he may be wrong.

Of course others have claimed that Africans reached the so-called new world before Columbus as well. Prof Ivan Van Sertima in his seminal work They came before Columbus made claims of several African civilizations reaching out to the new world way before Columbus. (Wunnah know he is West Indian right? Guyanese if ya please!) He claimed that the Mali Empire amongst others sent huge fleets across the Atlantic using the trade winds and points out the Negroid features of certain extremely old statues in South America as proof of Africans reaching South America.

So why I blogging about all this today? No reason just trying to get in the swing of writing again. Naa there is sort of a point to this somewhere. If any or all of these stories of other civilizations reaching the Americas are true then really and truly this just goes to show that old theorem that history is written by the winners is true.

Columbus gets all the credit for the discovery of the new world but really what did he discover? What really is Columbus' legacy? (Oh on another note some say Columbus had an African navigator and some say he had Chinese maps.) He discovered someplace that was already discovered. I guess we can say he opened up the way for Europe to colonize the Americas, indirectly paving the way for genocide, small pox and other diseases to destroy the natives of the Americas and you could blame him for the slave trade too so maybe he actually did achieve something. Quite a bit good or bad for a dude who got lost right cause I mean the man was searching for China and find Santo Domingo. I don't know tummuch geography but them places fairly far apart. I mean that aint like say a man was looking for a Chinese restaurant in Toronto and mistakenly run up in the West Indian store next door or to say a fella in a boat was searching for Trinidad and butt up on Tobago or anything so. This is China and Santa Domingo and on any map two of those places far far far far far from each other.

Anyway I done with that for now. Everything is everything.