The man who made perhaps the most consequential voyage of discovery in human history is being buried in a wave of guilt about exploiting his find. Christopher Columbus is one of the most unlovely characters in our history books. But whatever his faults - and they were legion - he should be honored for opening an entire continent to settlement and resource exploitation. What's that you say? There were people here already? That's very true. But the history of humanity has been a history of restless movement since the beginning of our species 125,000 years ago in Africa when homo sapiens spread throughout the world - including Europe, where Neanderthals were well established.. By 30,000 years ago, the Neanderthals were gone - either absorbed by modern humans or wiped out. Over the milennia, each and every place on earth has seen newcomers come in, and those already established either pushed out or eliminated. It is unreasonable to expect that singular fact of history to...(Read Full Post)