Erdogan says Muslims, not Columbus, discovered Americas

[Stelio Kontos]

http://news.yahoo.com/erdogan-says-m...162759161.html

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that the Americas were discovered by Muslims in the 12th century, nearly three centuries before Christopher Columbus set foot there.

"Contacts between Latin America and Islam date back to the 12th century. Muslims discovered America in 1178, not Christopher Columbus," the conservative president said in a televised speech during an Istanbul summit of Muslim leaders from Latin America.

"Muslim sailors arrived in America from 1178. Columbus mentioned the existence of a mosque on a hill on the Cuban coast," Erdogan said.

Erdogan said that Ankara was even prepared to build a mosque at the site mentioned by the Genoese explorer.

"I would like to talk about it to my Cuban brothers. A mosque would go perfectly on the hill today," the Turkish leader said.

History books say that Columbus set foot on the American continent in 1492 as he was seeking a new maritime route to India.

A tiny minority of Muslim scholars have recently suggested a prior Muslim presence in the Americas, although no pre-Columbian ruin of an Islamic structure has ever been found.

In a controversial article published in 1996, historian Youssef Mroueh refers to a diary entry from Columbus that mentions a mosque in Cuba. But the passage is widely understood to be a metaphorical reference to the shape of the landscape.


It's pretty startling that a national leader can be this deluded.

[Dave696]

The Chinese discovered North America. The Portuguese can vouch for them.

[Chelly]

And Leif Erikson discovered it even earlier.

[Deleted]

Yeah but the Vikings were there even before that. Not to mention the indigenous people.

[Independent voter]

Well, Chinese have said they discovered the new world, Northern Europeans have discovered the new world. The Con Tiki experiment showed that Polynesians may have discovered the new world. And then there is the fact that Native Americans were already here.

[Attackrabbit]

It's pretty startling that you seem to think Columbus discovered the Americas

[Deleted]

Erdogan's whack. Why do the Turks keep supporting the guy?

[Dave696]

Someone left people behind to colonize and those people became the native tribes. Native Americans have always looked slightly Asian to me.

[Stelio Kontos]

It's pretty startling that you seem to think Columbus discovered the Americas

I did a text search in my post for it, and nothing like that came up.

Weird :/

[Deleted]

Phew, for a moment there Ats i thought your name was Gravemind...

OnT Kekbur.

[derpkitteh]

a buddhist monk found it first, then the chinese, then the vikings.

it's possible that aborigines found it even before the "native" americans crossed the damned land bridge.

[Cradyz]

Erdogan is such an obnoxious smug prick, let's just hope he goes away soon..

Erdogan's whack. Why do the Turks keep supporting the guy?

Combination of liberal economic policy, conservative social policy and a lot of propaganda.

Someone left people behind to colonize and those people became the native tribes. Native Americans have always looked slightly Asian to me.

Well they did get there through Asia by crossing the bering strait.

[Theinquisition]

Pics or it didn't happen

[Dave696]

I don't really know or care who actually discovered. What I do is that the person who discovered North America first is dead and the second, third, fourth, hundredth, thousandth etc. are all dead too. None of them care about the recognition now if they ever did to begin with.

[Lolretadin]

Erdogan's whack. Why do the Turks keep supporting the guy?

If you think that's insane, look at Turkey's reaction to anyone mentioning the Armenian Genocide.

[Deleted]

I bet the native americans were really impressed when Columbus turned up and "discovered" america.....maybe they had the norsemen explain who he was, or got Leif Erikson to introduce him.....

[Rustedsaint]

[QUOTE=
It's pretty startling that a national leader can be this deluded.[/QUOTE]
I think its more startling that you find this startling ^_^
We have leadership ppl deigning holocaust/ other genocides that happen in the past hundred years for ever.

[anakin57]

native americans yet again do a collective facepalm

[zealo]

And Leif Erikson discovered it even earlier.

There's also theories about an irish monk having been there like 300 years prior to leif but no hard facts there.

[zhero]

doesn't really matter who saw it first, they never did anything with it and abandoned it.