By Stephen B. Aranha, COB History Lecturer

Every child in this country knows that Christopher Columbus landed on the Bahamian island of San Salvador on the morning of October 12, 1492. This marked the first landfall of European discoverers in the Americas.

There are many issues and debates about this discovery. Some people argue that Columbus was in fact not a discoverer but a conqueror. Arguing that the Americas did not need to be discovered, because there were already people living here, the proponents of this school of thought focus mainly on the fate of the Native Americans. Indeed, the Lucayans and other Native American peoples did not gain much from this encounter, this "discovery." These first Bahamians were extinct within a generation.

It is also true that the Spanish conquest of the Americas was begun by Columbus. However, holding him personally and solely responsible for European crimes against humanity in the Americas from 1492 onward fails to recognise that he did not act alone. Many Spanish Conquistadores contributed to the genocide and the exploitation of the lands they conquered. One must also bear in mind that the motive of the Spanish Crown in financing Columbus' expedition was not an altruistic love of science and discovery; the history of colonialism is a history of the pursuit of profit and power.

The search for riches was Columbus' mission. No one had planned for Columbus to discover a New World. Columbus was supposed to prove that the Earth was round and that rather than sailing around the Southern tip of Africa or trekking overland for thousands of miles, there was an easier route to India and China by sailing West across the Atlantic Ocean.

Was this Columbus' idea? While in 1492 many did not believe that it was possible to sail from Europe to India by going West, Columbus did not wake up in the middle of the night to hurry to his study and write down a revolutionary theory about the shape of our planet. Columbus did what many explorers did and still do. He read.

He read a text by the Ancient Greek scientist and philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC), who wrote approximately 1,800 years before Columbus that the Earth was spherical. Aristotle backed up his theory by geographical and astronomical observations, and he did it so convincingly that Columbus – and many others – were persuaded. Aristotle's conclusion was: "Hence one should not be too sure of the incredibility of the view of those who conceive that there is continuity between the parts about the Pillars of Hercules and the parts about India, and that in this way the ocean is one."

The Pillars of Hercules (or Heracles) were the Ancient name for the Strait of Gibraltar, the narrow sea passage between Spain and Morocco which connects the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean. True to Aristotle's assessment, Columbus set out from Spain to find a new route to India, and when he ended up in the Americas, he actually thought that he was in Asia, which is why he called the people he found "Indians" and why the islands are called the West Indies. Because of this momentous error of judgement, Aristotle's text has become something like the oldest source of Bahamian history.

There were other contemporary scholars, too, who probably influenced Columbus. The Italian doctor and mathematician Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli, for instance, calculated in 1474 that the distance between Lisbon, Portugal, and China was 6,500 miles across the Atlantic Ocean, and he drew a map to go along with his theory.

Considering that Columbus lived five centuries ago, the information about him that is available to us is remarkable. There are more recent periods of Bahamian history that we know less about. Of course this is also due to the fact that Columbus' discovery changed the course of events not just locally but globally. There are few historic individuals that have fascinated generations of researchers the same way Columbus has.

Yet it is too early to close the case file on Columbus. More research will be done. In 2001, treasure divers discovered an old wreck off the coast of Panama. It is suspected that this wreck is the Vizcaína, a ship that was lost during Columbus' fourth journey to the Americas. If this can be proven, the Vizcaína will be the oldest wreck ever discovered in the New World. Currently, marine archaeologists from Texas A&M and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, sponsored by the German news magazine Der Spiegel, are researching the site, and the world anxiously awaits their findings.

As so often, if scientists are fascinated, so are people that are typically referred to as conspiracy theorists. Even contemporaries of Columbus came up with conspiracy theories about the "true" events that led to the discovery of America. One such theory was publicised by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, a Spanish aristocrat who claimed that there were reports about a Spanish caravel that got caught up in a storm en route to England and that the ship's navigator sailed so far west to avoid the bad weather that the ship eventually reached the West Indies.

De Oviedo's story alleges that the navigator before his death confided in Columbus and helped him – Columbus was a learned mapmaker – to draw a map of this mysterious journey, a journey that Columbus then simply had to repeat to reap fame and fortune. Fulfilling all the criteria of a conspiracy theory, de Oviedo fails to explain why nobody else told the world about this journey. 15th-century caravels could not be steered by one person alone, to make the trip from Spain to America and back to Europe, it must have had a crew, and these crewmembers would have seen America, too. These crewmen would have spoken out.

Judgements about history must be made carefully. It is true that the history of the Americas during the age of colonialism recorded manifold crimes against humanity – such as slavery and genocide – or against nature – such as the overexploitation of the continents' natural resources. Yet the discovery of the Americas by the Europeans also created a variety of opportunities that is impossible to list.

When the Bahamian artist Eric Minns recorded an album for the Quincentennial celebrations, he asked us all a simple question: "What have we accomplished since 1492?" Simple as the question might be, the answer is inevitably much more complicated. The Bahamas have accomplished much over time. Every people who came here, every generation that has lived here contributed to our country and where it stands today. This was made possible by the discovery of Christopher Columbus, because no matter what else he did, he found land by sailing West across the Atlantic Ocean, and he told the Old World about it. Publicising one's findings is one important step in being a discoverer. So please forgive the History lecturer for wishing you all a happy Columbus Day.