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Comment by Affric | Hacker News Reader

Why is the ‘reconquista’ “ill named”?

Also, Columbus largely made his own legend. Everyone told him he was wrong (and he was) but he just so happened to discover land people might actually want. And so he was very much vindicated by the discovery in his own eyes. And it was daring. Everyone rightly told him he was mad and incorrectly told him he would die. It was one of the craziest expeditions of all time. And because of it the Spanish Empire became one of the richest the world has ever seen, the legacy of which is still felt today.

This is not to Lionise Columbus but you have to acknowledge the context of the time. Greenland and Newfoundland were not well known and are a long way from the latitude Columbus was aiming at. He was an idiot, and cruel by our standards, but he was great.

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I seriously doubt he was an idiot. But his thinking was constrained by what was known at the time and what was commonly thought to be true.

Our modern thinking is also constrained by similar misjudgments, we just like to think we're smarter than that. 500 years hence, people will laugh at our idiocy.

Knowledgeable Europeans knew that the Earth was round and they knew its size to within a few percent. Columbus thought that the Earth was much smaller though, and in that belief "he was an idiot". It's quite possible that he was trying to make an impossible voyage seem possible, but then again, he didn't take enough provisions, and it was almost a total loss.

This is not accurate. Everyone knew the Earth was round and had a good knowledge of the Earth's circumference, as this can be determined with geometry and some basic measurements. What was not well known at the time was the size of Asia, and specifically the distance from Asia's eastern coastline to Japan's easternmost islands, due to the lack of surveying data. Columbus grossly overestimated the size of Asia such that Japan would be approximately where North America actually is.

Eh, it would be like insisting the moon was made of cheese and in low earth orbit - and somehow getting someone to sponsor your (literal moonshot) - and then somehow reaching it in it’s real place, finding out it was made of gold instead, and then bringing a ton back.

Which single-handedly started a space race which led to colonizing the moon (and, uh, mostly exterminating the indigenous population which was totally different than the folks who were supposed to be there in the first place).

Oh, except it was also a completely different moon that we somehow weren’t aware was there.

Nothing he was proposing should have worked, and yet somehow not only did it, but it made everyone (who funded it) fabulously rich beyond their wildest imaginings.

Idiot savant?

Yes! I started typing up a moon comparison and half way through gave up because it just sounded so insane. Thanks for this.

Many otherwise intelligent people hold on to an idiotic idea, especially when it's to their advantage to hold on to it.

In fact, probably all of us do this.

Notably, he would have died out there if it hadn’t, somehow, worked out.

Truth really is stranger than fiction.

Other people brought the receipts. He fully just wishfully thought the earth was smaller. He continued to refused he hadn’t landed in the indies for the rest of his life.

Idiot was a strong word. But not as brief.

Actually, "On the other hand, in a document in the Book of Privileges (1502), Columbus refers to the New World as the Indias Occidentales ('West Indies'), which he says "were unknown to all the world".[284]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus#Legacy

So, it seems at some points he made claims he had a route to the orient and later he referred to it as 'West Indies'. Perhaps he knew the truth all along but had reasons to mislead.

He might have felt the need to understate the journey in order to get it funded at all.

I don't think it will take 500 years.

I also don’t think it’s ill named. The moors conquered and the Catholics took it back. It doesn’t defy logic.

> The moors conquered and the Catholics took it back.

This take only makes sense if you argue the Romans took it back, which would only be a valid claim from the perspective of the Roman Catholic Church, not war lords from the Iberian Peninsula.

The first large ethnic group in the Iberian Peninsula that the Romans conquered was the Gaels (Galicians); and for the largest part wiped them out. Primarily the Celtiberian Lusitanians.

> but he was great

Why was he great? How does that follow as a conclusion? By your own account of the events, his “accomplishment” is the very definition of dumb luck.

He was an explorer who set out to circumnavigate the globe and connect East and West, it wasn't "dumb luck" that in doing so he discovered the planet was bigger than he had estimated. Columbus was also perhaps the greatest navigator who ever lived -- he made the trip to the Americas four times, without loss of life in transit.

> he discovered the planet was bigger than he had estimated

Finding out you were wrong when everyone doubted you in the first place isn’t particularly impressive. Especially when we already knew the right answer over 1500 years before (Eratosthenes).

I like the Moon analogy someone else shared on the thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41835857

One doesn’t stop being an idiot because they struck gold under wrong assumptions. They just become a lucky idiot.

> Columbus was also perhaps the greatest navigator who ever lived

Highly debatable. We don’t even need to leave the peninsula to find another country (Portugal) with numerous examples of people who could fit that title.

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