Columbus? Muslims discovered Americas, Turkish president says

[B00Mer]

Turkish President Erdogan says Muslims discovered Americas

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is claiming that Muslim sailors reached the Americas more than 300 years before explorer Christopher Columbus.

Speaking this weekend at a gathering of Muslim leaders from Latin America, Erdogan said that contact between Islam and Latin America dates to the 12th century.

"It is alleged that the American continent was discovered by Columbus in 1492," Erdogan said. "In fact, Muslim sailors reached the American continent 314 years before Columbus, in 1178."

"In his memoirs, Christopher Columbus mentions the existence of a mosque atop a hill on the coast of Cuba," Erdogan said, adding that he'd like to see a mosque built on the hilltop today.

Scholars have disputed the claim in Columbus's writings, saying there is no archaeological evidence of Muslims having lived in the Americas before Columbus, an Italian, made his expedition in 1492 on behalf of the Spanish crown.

Who discovered the Americas has long been a controversial issue with various scholars and historians claiming that others arrived before Columbus.

source: Turkish President Erdogan says Muslims discovered Americas - World - CBC News

 

[Ludlow]

I was kind of thinking the folks who crossed the land bridge were here just a tad before the others. But who knows.

 

[Sal]

I was kind of thinking the folks who crossed the land bridge were here just a tad before the others. But who knows.

I laughed when I saw Columbus in there, meh, Muslims may as well lay claim everyone else does

 

[WLDB]

If you arrive in a new place and find there are already people living there you didnt discover it. You just showed up.

 

[Sal]

If you arrive in a new place and find there are already people living there you didnt discover it. You just showed up.

lol kinda like the sherpas and Everest

 

[bill barilko]

Lief was Lucky before Iqbal and his gang.

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

I was kind of thinking the folks who crossed the land bridge were here just a tad before the others. But who knows.

Non-Europeans don't count.

 

[darkbeaver]

Non-Europeans don't count.

That's what made it easy to steal land. Since the advent of TV counting among the non-euros has improved, many of them understand algebra these days.

 

[taxslave]

There is evidence of both Viking and Celts in NA long before Columbus. Polynesians too.

 

[Machjo]

I was kind of thinking the folks who crossed the land bridge were here just a tad before the others. But who knows.

Not possible. They didn't believe in the same religion as we did so that made them savages. Saying they discovered the Americas would be like saying the Buffalo discovered the Americas. And to say they invented the kayak on their own is ludicrous. Some pious coreligionists of ours from long ago must have taught them.

And conserning the thread title, since when does the Turkish president have the authority to speak on behalf of the entire Muslim world?

It's like the myths concerning Mayan mathematics, astronomy and architecture. Since a bunch of North American savages could not possibly have developed those sciences on their own, and there is no evidence that our coreligionists taught them, the only other possible explanation is that extraterrestrials must have taught them.

Sorry. I meant Aztec, not Mayan, though the Aztec were pretty advanced too.

Non-Europeans don't count.

Of course not. Sure they believed in God, but not in the same Book and they spoke all those funny languages and some of them still can't speak God's English language today. And even if they had believed in the same book, they would probably have had their own understanding of it rather than submit to the official interpretation of the European Churches.

Bunch of savages!

There is evidence of both Viking and Celts in NA long before Columbus. Polynesians too.

Wawa, a pre-European-contact pidgin language of the Pacific North-West (now a creole language of Grande Ronde reserve in Oregon and still spoken by some in BC, especially among some activists in Kamloops), contains some words of Hawaiian origin. There I'd also an indigenous minority on the Taiwan coast who speak a language of the same family as Hawaiian. This would suggest a knowledge of shipbuilding, astronomy, and navigation. The Wawa words of Hawaiian origin are mostly related to products that the Hawaiians would have traded with the Pacific North West.

Damn capitalists!