Odds on the maps are fake I suppose...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... umbus.html
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His book, The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps, is due out in November.
Carbon dating on one of the sheepskin maps reveals it was created in the 14th or 15th century - meaning that even if it is authentic, it is a copy of the original.... The ink on the map, however, has not been tested - meaning it could have been forged after the sheepskin was created.
Would be nice to nail down salient facts before making and wild ass claims.
Frank Weltner wrote:The connections between the timing of Columbus's voyage and the expulsion of Spanish Jewry are indeed curious. Historians have noted that, though Columbus was not scheduled to set sail until August 3rd, he insisted that his entire crew be ready on board a full day earlier. The timing becomes more intriguing when we consider that August 2nd 1492 was the day that had been ordained for the last Jews of Spain to depart the country.
Contrary to popular belief, the expedition was not funded by Queen Isabella, but by three prominent Jews who all stumped up 17,000 ducats. This theory is supported by the emergence of the first two letters written by Columbus, which were sent to his 'backers' instead of the royal couple, revealing what he had found and thanking them for his support.
Jewish filiopietists, as well as several non‑Jewish historians, have speculated that the "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" was a Jew. They note that the Spanish name, Colon, was a not uncommon one in Hebrew tradition; that his father was a weaver, one of the few trades open to Jews in his native Genoa; that his mother, Susanna Fonterossa, was the daughter of Jacobo Fonterossa and granddaughter of Abraham Fonterossa [also common Jewish names]. The hypothesizing has been extensive, and Columbus himself doubtless was responsible for much of it. His letters in the Archives [the Archives of the Indies in Seville] drop tantalizing hints: "I am not the first admiral of my family, let them give me whatever name they please; for when all is done, David, that most prudent king, was first a shepherd and afterward chosen King of Jerusalem, and I am a servant of that same Lord who raised him to such a dignity."
In his ship’s log, Columbus makes frequent references to the Hebrew Bible, to Jerusalem to Moses, David, Abraham, Isaac, and Sarah. He computes the age of the world according to the Jewish calendar: ". . . and from the destruction: the Second Temple according to the Jews to the present day, being the year of the birth of Our Lord 1481, are 1413 years…" In his last will and testament, Columbus asks that one‑tenth of his income be given to the poor; that a dowry be provided for poor girls “in such a way that they do not notice whence it comes" ‑- a characteristically anonymous technique of Jewish philanthropy.
. . . The Crown offered the inducement of great land encomiendas (estates) to loyal soldiers and farmers and shared profits for the prospectors, engineers, and overseers of South America's boundless silver mines. Ostensibly, the constraints of limpieza de sangre [purity of blood] excluded New Christians from these ventures, or even from settlement in Spanish America.
Yet conversos aplenty found ways to emigrate to the New World. Spain's notoriously venal bureaucracy was quite prepared to sell permits of exemption. For the right price, ship captains were equally willing to disembark New Christian passengers at secret inlets along the Gulf Mexico south of Veracruz, or on the Honduran coast. [The migration of conversos is important to Jewish history for at least two reasons: 1. Crypto-Jews made up a portion of the converso community. These Jews continued to practice Judaism in secret and often, if the opportunity presented itself, resumed living openly as Jews. 2. Conversos, whether they accepted their new identity as Christians or not, still maintained personal and professional ties with their Jewish families--siblings, cousins, parents, grandparents.]
Indeed, the infiltration of conversos became something of an influx once the Spanish throne assumed its rule over Portugal in 1580…In the early seventeenth century, between three and five thousand Portuguese New Christians may have departed for the New World. They anticipated important commercial inducements overseas, and they were not disappointed. In New Spain, as many as two thousand conversos settled in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Vera Cruz, Puebla, and Guatemala City. In New Castile, approximately the same number of New Christians resided in Lima, Poto Tucuman, and Cordoba. By the 1630s, hardly a town in the Spanish Empire did not shelter at least a scattering of conversos, some of whom migrated as far as New Mexico and Florida.
After all, the Samaritan inscriptions at Los Lunas must be there for some reason.
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