A year ago today, I wrote about the hindrances, and risibility of Columbus Day.  In my limited opinion.

But it seems to me, the guy was hired to sail… to find a shorter passage to India.  He screwed that up.

As you know… he bumped his boat into a large land mass, which had not only been “discovered”… it had been inhabited and civilized by millions of people.

The peopling of the Americas…. scholars tend to agree…. happened sometime in the past 25,000 years. And here is what happened (or so those scientists have agreed upon.)  A wave of big game hunters crossed into the New World from Siberia at the end of the last ice age, when the Bering Strait was a land bridge.  So.  A long dang time ago.

If that isn’t good enough, scientists have found loads and loads of artifacts…. all across the continental United States.  For instance, they happened upon a group of very distinctive, exquisitely crafted,  projectile points…. called “Clovis points” (In New Mexico, in 1929, near a town named Clovis.  Hence the name.) With the aid of radiocarbon dating, archaeologists determined that the Clovis sites were 13,500 years old.

Okay.  So.  For argument’s sake, let’s just say 14,000 years ago.  Those big game hunters… found this place…. about 13,500 years before Mr. Chris Columbo.

And by the time he got here, the population of the Americas was in the millions.  Research by some scholars provides population estimates  to be as high as 112 million in 1492.   Other scholars put it as low as eight million.  Either way… there were a lot of people already here and getting along just fine.

Before you know it, those white men were staking claim to this place.  That would be sort of like someone who is out riding their 4-Wheeler, and they cross onto your property.  Then they say… “Well, hey… this is cool.  I shall make it mine. So…..  They kill you and take your farm.”

Now, not only is that bad form… but years later… people make a holiday commemorating Bubba, the guy on the 4-Wheeler… and his stealing of your farm.

I would wish you a Happy Columbus Day.  But.

The home should be the treasure chest of living.
Le Corbusier

The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.
Confucius

Home is where the heart is.
Pliny the Elder