Columbus - The Worst Person in History - American Teacher Debunked 

Pro tip: if you ever ask "is it *technically* genocide though?" - somebody's going to call you out on your boot licking

I understand your point but... I mean this isn't a European thing. Europeans didn't just wake up one day in the 1500s and said "You know what? We're more advanced than X, Y, Z people. We should conquer them!". _Humans_ have been doing this since the moment we got out of the caves (probably even before that). I'm a Slavic person, ask me one day to tell you a story about the Ottoman empire and 500 years of slavery for my whole country. Have you ever heard of something called the Roman empire? How about the Mongol empire? Achaemenid empire? Seljuk empire? Qing dynasty? Akkadian empire? Avar khaganate? Abbasid caliphate? Han dynasty? Golden Horde? First Turkic Khaganate? Rashidun caliphate? Timurid Empire? Mamluk sultanate? Seleucid empire? Ancient Carthage? Kushite empire? Do you need me to list more or you get the point? We - as in _humans_ - have been doing this shit for over 4,000 years since ~2400 BC. And all of these empires and kingdoms - _all_ of them, no exceptions - were built on one simple premise - the strong and more developed conquer the weaker and less advanced. And yes, "conquer" as in blood and guts all over the place, not just a polite invitation "Hey, wanna join us? No? Cool, we'll leave you alone now." Every civilization that ever existed since the beginning of human existence has done it and no, I'm not saying that's good. But how come when Europeans did it - oh, now it's bad, now we have crossed the line. If you wanna be pissed at someone, be pissed at our collective stupidity as a species, not just the "evil" Europeans. Middle Age Europeans didn't invent war and slavery, in fact Europe has suffered quite a lot from them. It's just that at some point in history it happened to be the Europeans turn to be better at that than everyone else.

Seems like a strange choice to dig up a 6-year-old video that has been unlisted for 2 years in order to debunk it. But hey, have at it I guess.

Was on board until that white guilt rant... I didn't choose my circumstances of birth. I can try to do better than historical bigots and despots, but feeling guilty for something I didn't do is not constructive in any way, shape, or form, it's a waste of energy and a distraction from trying to live a good life and make the world better.

Ok so the video you are replying to is indeed extremely flawed, but you fall for the same trap as him. You both are using colectivist thinking for everything. Here is how this scenario should be evaluated: A bunch of explorers embarked on a journey and brought home information about a new continent. It doesn't matter if there were people there or not. So far no wrong doing here. The people of of his home region then started to migrate to this new land and develop it. So far still nothing wrong. The problem comes when very specific people gets into land disputes with the natives, and most of the time, these new migrants were in the wrong. They should have respected the native's property. Does that mean that the exploration was wrong? No. Does that mean that the migration was wrong? No. There is nothing inherently wrong in getting geographical information or moving to another continent even if there are people living there. The problem is the invasion of property that happened after that. Does that mean that the natives are great people that respected private property and just got invaded by mean property invading people? No. The natives also got into land disputes between eachother, just like any other civilization on earth. The problem is that these new migrants were very powerful, so if these disputes turned into violence, the natives would often lose. Does that mean that the natives were not victims? No. Most natives were indeed victims, some were not. Some natives violently attacked the new migrants without them attacking first. Xenophobia is not a new thing and not an european exclusive feature. These specific violent natives were wrong. Also, natives didn't had clear, defined and defended borders just like we have today. Their territories were basically the area they used for foraging and hunting, and the reason it got to be their territories is because they were able to kill any one they found on this region. This lack of territorial demarcation is easily prone to having ignorant invaders that didn't grew up knowing that that reagion belonged to that tribe over there and if you go there you get killed. This form of territorial control is also ineffective if the people stumbling into your territory is a lot stronger than you. If you are exploring the wilderness and you suddenly get attacked, you are not going to react by coldly saying "Oh, now I understand, this is the territory of a certain tribe". You will simply defend yourself and think that a bunch of crazy savages want to eat you. Does that mean the natives were in the wrong for not delimitating their territories? No. Does that mean the explorers were wrong for invading the natives territory? No. It just means that people of different cultures are meeting eachother for the first time and are due to their ignorance towards eachother are naturally not good at diplomacy. Over time they started to understand eachother better and these kinds of situations stopped happening. Does that mean then that Columbus specifically is in the clear? No. Maybe he commited crimes. Maybe he didn't. What we know is that he commanded an expedition which brought valuable information to their people. So it is quite natural that his people would see him very highly. However if he didn't made his discovery, someone else would. There is no scenario where the americas would just keep being out of reach from the europeans forever. They would eventually meet, they would not be the best at diplomacy, and some people involved would commit crimes to eachother. There is just no avoiding this. Therefore unless we are talking about a specific crime Columbus commited like he himself commanding an aggressive attack against a peaceful tribe, there is not really a point in comdemning him either. You might as well be condemning the course of history itself. Stop with the natives good, europeans bad platitudes and focus on specifics.

Can I ask for a citation on the Natives domesticating wolves, foxes, and bears? I'm not exactly refuting the claim, but... that's a pretty big claim and Skeptic just breezes through it like it is common knowledge. So, [Citation Needed].

This feels aggressively emotionally charged.

there's a saying in my country that goes: "the train doesn't wait for those takin a shit" if the europeans didn't conquer em, do you honestly believe the rest of the world would just leave em alone? only way that's happening is through force, so unless you think that europe should become a global travel police then chances are the muslims or even the chinese would've ended up there instead, and considering the former castrated their african slaves i highly doubt they would've treated the natives any better. also, the irony of you constantly saying "oh you're indoctrinated" when you're so emotional about this topic and tell people they should feel bad over the actions of people completely unrelated to them, that is literally just the same shit leftists push.

Hey man so, seriously as a long time viewer of this channel i am more than a little confused. I had sort of come to the conclusion that you were done with the whole skeptic character and i mean you haven't made a video like this in like 4 or 5 years? And if you really was planning to bring back the character, does it really make sense to go after such and old video out of left field? No response to a more recent issue or video or whatever like you used to. I personally think this video feels very passionate that's quite clear and i do agree with most of your points in the video but. Where's this even coming from? Having moved all your old videos to another channel would sort of give one the conclusion that you don't really want that character as a part of your newer videos.

Most of what you talk has nothing to do with Columbus. I'm bolivian. My first language is quechua, I'm a native, my culture is native, everybody around me is native. The spanish, portuguese, french and english treated native-americans differently. You're canadian-centric point of view is problematic, you're deducing that the natives don't have a nation because of Columbus, or, because he did what he did, natives are in such condition. But this isn't true. This is really far from the goalpost. We, natives, weren't a peaceful, loving people. We were like every other nation, we had wars, we killed each other, we would conquer each other, and that is it. Columbus discovering the Americas isn't an "evil deed", he was a man of his times, he was working for the crown, as many men were working for the Atahualpa army when they murdered every men who was a servant of Huáscar. They weren't evil. They were doing their part back then. The fact that disease killed so many of us doesn't mean that it was an evil act. Yes, it was terrible, a disaster. But people at the 16th century didn't know much about germ theory. Yes. The spanish weren't great to us, they forced us to be part of their empire, made us a vassal state. But, mostly, they didn't make anything other than that. They forced us to work? Yes. In the Mit'a system, same system the incas already applied to their subjects. They proselytized us? Yeah, they did. They also gave the common subject more rights than we had before, when we were subjects of the Incan Empire. We were so mildly mistreated that, the native royalty was still part of the spanish nobility. With Tupac Amaru II as a good example of a native who was born into wealth. Alas, fact is, Columbus has very little to do with the way certain countries treated their natives.

The problem with this "debunking" is that you attribute modern context into history. Sure, the Spanish conquests were brutal to the indigenous American population, destroying Tenochtitlan and all that. But the practices and attitudes of the Native Americans were not so great either. You forget that the Spanish could not have gotten far into the conquering business without Native American help and they did get it. Also in some instances, the Spanish didn't need to do anything. The Incas practically wiped themselves out with a civil war. The main problem with the whole Europe bad / Europe good arguments is that, the rest of the world was pretty brutal. Europeans just decided to be "better" for some weird reason and the rest of the world benefited. As for whether the Native Americans could have domesticated larger pack animals of North America. The answer is no. Africans were not able to repeat the success of the Horse with Zebras, it would unlikely for Bison too. There were horses native to North America, but they went extinct 10,000 years ago. Humans showed by just 5,000-10,000 years earlier. Coincidence? Edit: Also not recognising that there were Native Americans keen on helping the Spanish "invaders" removes their agency. What you seem to ignore is that the Europeans were a powerful external force that severely disrupted the existing power structures of the Americas. If you were part of the downtrodden, this was your chance to get back at the people who wronged yours.

Please do some basic biological research. you're confusing 'tame' with domestication. tame just means they're used to humans and do not see them as either a threat or prey. domestication is a whole different animal, it requires the animal in question to have a certain level of intelligence, but not too much, and a social structure we can subvert. that's why wolves were domesticated, we inserted ourselves as the pack alpha. or the herd alpha in the case of horses. A domesticated beast of burden is a requirement for agriculture to advance past the pure hand labor stage. and there's ample evidence the Indians of the great plains are the 'mad max' to use a popular franchise as comparison, savage survivors of such a early stone age agriculture civilization. one which was already on the brink due to population growth outstripping what pure hand driven agriculture could provide. That then got hit by the diseases unwittingly introduced by the early Europeans. other misconceptions. while it was known the earth was round. it wasn't wide spread and was more or less illegal to publicly state in many parts of Europe by christian law. The north american continent wasn't known to the general European populace and many of the actually educated elite either. the viking maps were buried in some church archives, and the popular conscientious was if one could store enough supplies for the long journey. crossing the vast swath of open ocean they thought was there, was an attractive way to get to India and, say around other large navel power's prowling the popular trade route of around the horn of Africa. Which of course means, by technicality, yes it was discovered. You're also forgetting or purposefully not mentioning the willing cross pollination of people. that 'toy' is one such example. they didn't have the wheel because the Indians near the coast didn't 'need' it, these groups never settled. and the plains 'mad max' ones didn't need it either because the wood and animal bone skids. pulled by their domestic dogs, slid very well on the thick carpet of plains grasses. Finally, i will not apologize nor kneel to those who think it was a bad thing that the meeting, and the subsequently uplifting of these people to a more advanced way of life. who now, even in the poorest parts, live better than kings of old and even much better than they would be now if were left alone. As the n.a. continent lacked some the vital things that Europe and eastern Asia had and allowed civilizations to form and advance.

Both civilisations were going to meet at some point and it's everybody's guess how things would have turned out. I don't think people back then had the scope that we have today to care about such things. The thing about history is that it repeat itself in one way or another and just like we criticize people for doing this or that back then, one day someone is going to judge us for doing this or that or not doing this or that and after some time, the same thing will happen to them and the cycle will probably never end.

Columbus is overrated.

Yes you can discover something even if people are already there because it's your civilization finding something they previously didn't know existed. The whole "people already lived there" argument is just crap to reduce the accomplishments of the age of sail.

I don't vilify people for being products of their time. I also don't boo hoo if my ancestors happened to come out on top during the age of conquest.

That's a wild statement, worse than Hitler? Worse than genghis khan?

For me the complication always comes down to my families own history, if these events never happened, the line of peoples that produced my family never happens. A french guy doesn't marry into a Cree Nation tribe and kick off part of my mother's heritage. My father's ancestors don't flee persecution from the Pogroms and another part later from the Bolsheviks to the USA. Yes, Columbus is evil, but like I saw from a couple other commenters, by the 90's when I was in Elementary in the US we weren't talking about him like he was the greatest thing since sliced bread. We talked about him discovering South America in the context of "For the Europeans." We have entire month long education on native peoples focused primarily on regional tribal groups and nations such as the Wampanoag where I grew up, as well as being assigned to write reports and give presentations on other North American tribes, as well as the Aztec, Maya, Inca, and Toltec. My mother has taught Kindergarten, First, and Second Grade students throughout her career, and rarely ever was told to only spin the colonization as a net good or net evil, especially considering at this point there is no easy answer to the question of how exactly it gets made right. A lot of people love to say, "Just give the land back!" And where do the billions of people since go? Where do the people who are intermixed in that web go? Do we "Go Back" to *vague gesture* Europe, where on one side of the family I have Danish, French, and Italian Heritage? Cultures I have no strong connection to other than passing interest from History? Do I get shuffled off to Manitoba where my Great Grandparents were from a native tribe? I wasn't raised Cree, hell my great grandparents left their tribal home because it was, "Too cold." according to what my grandfather told me about his father. Do I get shuffled back to Lithuania or Russia where my father's family fled persecution for being Jewish? The problem I see at this point is, it's yet another angle to just hate "Whitey." Isn't it grand that we've reduced it all to, "You're paler/browner/blacker/yellower/greener than this other other group! Here's more ways to just make it more publicly acceptable to treat you like shit!" when you can't know just by looking at someone where their ancestry fits into the sausage grinder of history. Do we ignore the fact that many of the Indigenous Nations warred among themselves, enslaved each other, but also at times allied and banded together to create amazing cultures? There's no clear answer to any of this, and so many just wanna go, "Columbus Hero!" or "Columbus Evil!" and then justify every vile thing they spew afterward. I was brought up with the understanding that with so much wrong done by the whole of humanity, people can see past differences to come together if they try. It's never clean and it's never easy. Name the day whatever you want at this point, just seems self-defeating to just make it "Colombus and All White People Evil Day!" if the point is to celebrate Indigenous Peoples.

TBH Armoured Skeptic I like you and I'll stay subbed but I think you are taking uncharitable interpretations with a lot of Knowing Better's points. Don't get me wrong, I disagree with the guy on a few things. But when I got to 11:36 I just have to ask, do you think that a lion is just as easily domesticated as a pig? Just asking.

Man you act like I give a shit just gimme another day off work tf

So, I hate Indigenous People's Day. It's disgusting. It's racist. Actually racist. I'm half-native and I absolutely hate this coddling way people treat the nations overall. There's a lot of baggage there already, and I feel like this trend of shitting on Columbus for something that was largely inevitable amounts to wishful thinking. But you know what? I have Internet just like everyone in the comment section. I lived in Kenya for two years and got to see some pretty different ways of life, some closer to what a chunk of my ancestry was used to just a few centuries ago. Is it possible the natives woulda developed to the level we have now independently? Maybe, assuming the Europeans just never sent any more explorers on the level of Columbus. It sucks, but I doubt anything woulda changed if Columbus was removed from the picture. Humans gonna human.

Columbus did NOT call the indigenous people "Indians." What he called them was "Hijos en Dios" which was Columbus's botched attempt at the Spanish "Hijos de Dios," meaning "Children of God." Hijos de Dios was the Spanish term for indigenous peoples. India was not actually called "India" at the time. It would be at least two centuries before the land would be named "India" for the Indus river. The term "Indian" originates from the British Anglicizing "Hijos en Dios" into "In Dios" and later "Indians." The reason the American education system fails to discuss the aboriginal peoples in the Americas is largely due to teachers not really knowing a lot about them and there being FAR too many nations and cultures to adequately cover. I DO agree, however, that the subject should be covered. The Chaco Canyon culture, for example, is FASCINATING, especially it ties to the Anasazi and Pueblo peoples of the American Southwest. I do want to point out that the Spanish of 1492 IS different from the Spanish of today - in particular, the Arabic influences were far more obvious than they are now - which would affect a translation of the text by an algorithm . Columbus's Spanish was also not that great, so any correspondence written by him in Spanish is going to have errors that will affect translation. That being said, we have a pretty good understanding of Spanish in that period, and errors made by poor speakers/writers are not that hard to figure out. Personally, I think we should rebrand Columbus Day to International Explorer's Day, as it would celebrate EVERYONE from every nation and culture who filled in the blank edges of the map, for good or for ill, and in so doing expanded mankind's understanding of the world.

To be fair, anyone can discover anything already inhabited. You can drive to another town, and text your friends about this New pizza place you "discovered". It's a true statement. If the First Nations had developed sailing, and sailed to Europe, they would have discovered a new continent. Columbus simply wasn't the "first" to discover it.

I was on board until you brought up Russia - Ukraine conflict. Ukrainian language is not forbidden in any part of Russia, yet Russian language and culture is systematically erased in Ukraine. It is practically a US colony.

Even though I agree with most of the stuff Skeptic is pointing out here, it's worth pointing out the following for context: 27:20 The Encomienda wasn't supposed to work the Taíno against their will, the Spanish were supposed to pay them for the work, and be treated as subjects to the crown, but sadly due to the lack of enforcement and corruption it quickly turned into slavery because it was more profitable for the Spanish to treat them as slaves until the treaty Barrionuevo happened. 30:23 Not necessarily because of their dwindling numbers, after the treaty of Barrionuevo the Taíno gained citizenship from the crown so they became free of the Encomienda, but this meant the Spanish needed a new source of labor so this is where they started bringing slaves from Africa (also there were already African slaves in Quisqueya, but most of them were brought from Spain), and this weren't granted rights so, yes this were treated as slaves. Greetings from the Dominican Republic. We still celebrate Colombus Day (under the name Día del Encuentro entre Culturas/Day of the Encounter between Cultures) because it holds historical precedent over events that occurred in this island, but it still baffles me that Americans and Canadians do because the guy never went there.

What about the people that lived there before the Natives that Columbus found... aren't they then the actual rightful owner of the land?

Ooh, this is gonna be a hot take, isn't it? I'm glad to see you back Skeptic, but putting Colombus of all people as the "worst person in history" seems like a reeaally narrow view of history.

Correction: Columbus was the first on a grand stage to demonstrate that the Earth was a globe The vikings had already been to the NE area of what is now Canada. They just didn't stay there in large numbers. They also had a weird term, that I can never remember, for the indigenous people. Columbus was the one to stood in front of the European monarchies with the idea of going west. That was the big difference. Correction #2: a location that is already inhabited can be discovered by another people Discovery simply means that something that is entirely unknown to a group of people becomes known. A separate continent/s such as the Americas would have been the alien planet of that era. Yes, there's life there, but that does not mean that it was not a discovery for Europe. Holy hell, this is a simple f'ing concept. How does literally everybody get this wrong? If humanity finds another inhabitable planet with life on it, is it not a discovery because we aren't the first life on that planet? If your answer is "it's not a discovery", then you are Narcissus himself. verb 1. find (something or someone) unexpectedly or in the course of a search.

Just a caveat where you are throwing shade on the smallpox hypothesis, as if you doubt that was a big figure. The people who study it at worse think maybe 90% is too exaggerated, but only idiots think it wasn't a massive number, and those that do can't account for how we have demonstated knowledge of some native villages in new England that were seemingly nearly WIPED OUT ENTIRELY BY DISEASE, days before the European explorer got there, and this was a known thing at times. So no, I reject out of hand your hypothesis that "oh no, it was the precedent that Columbus set, putting them into bad conditions that did it!". No, that's bad argumention. We can both agree Columbus was a disgusting evil villain while also acknowledging that smallpox by itself, just by the introduction of it had a HUGE impact on the native American population.

Very Canadian video bud

I understand the need for context in understanding history and how it impacts the world today but in no way will I ever feel any guilt or responsibility for any act that I myself haven’t committed. I’ll do my best to uplift those around me when and where I can but that doesn’t include apologizing for my supposed ancestors. Hope you’re doing well, Greg.

a little bit of a nitpick, but not a major one, the Americas didn't have Emus, those are native to Australia, and yes we can bring 1788 a little later on, if someone decides to create a video about it. did that guy just say that the passage never said "to conquer" he does realize that the word subjugated is another word for saying that they can be conquered.

from what I've seen (only halfway currently) from Sceptic and I know better (or whatever his name was) there's obvious problems and mistakes. 1. buffalo domestication. according to what I've read and seen, it's almost impossible to domesticate Buffalos, when successful they can easily go back to their instincts, which is probably a reason why they weren't massively domesticated like Llamas and wolves. 2. trade the trade Europeans and the Americans were beneficial for both, obviously corruption and other problems led to the Americans' disadvantage and later partial enslavement (don't think the Americans did not know about slavery, they enslaved people too) of those remaining. 3. the discovery of America as other have said, discovering some place doesn't necessarily equate to it being uninhabited, but I'll others explain that, the thing I briefly want to comment on is, I have read the Vinland Saga, it does not end well for Leif Ericson, he dies as his ships tries to flee from the American assault, it's specified who responsible for the starting the war between the Tribe and the Vikings, but by the end of the year battle ensues and only a few Vikings get away alive. there's probably more, equally I have to go over the video again to add the most obvious things I just forgot. because there are many problems. in short history is complex and and it's hard to predict what could have been, and it does not matter whether you are Native African, American, Asian, Australian, European, Martian or from Andromeda there's a likelihood our ancestors screwed at some point.

You're own take on this, Greg, is itself an extremely 21st century Western perspective that we can all just get along and everything can be rainbows and skittles if we really tried hard enough. All civilizations everywhere on the planet throughout all of time have conquered their less developed neighbors. Whether or not less developed civilizations deserve to be able to coexist in peace with more powerful neighbors is irrelevant, that's not the way human beings work, and never has been. It's not a European thing to go conquer less developed peoples, it's a human thing to do that. There is no right or wrong about it, it's just the way human beings are. To imagine it can be otherwise is a largely present-day western liberal notion. I know we humans like to fancy that our ability to reason and use logic and philosophy makes us superior to other animals, but when you look at actual human behavior in practice, such evolved intellectual capacities don't actually do much for us after all, and we really are not a whole lot better than other animals. We like to think we are, but are we really? Recall Nazism and Communism both happened in living memory (communism is still happening to this very day!), and that's after thousands of years of intellectual, moral, and philosophical development. Fat lot of good that did us. At least most animals mostly just kill to eat (a few exceptions, but only a few), we humans kill because of ideology, exactly because of our philosophy and morality, because someone thinks differently, or looks differently. That's not better, that's worse. But it is also completely, and uniquely, human. Not European, not western, not "white", but human. We've always done it, we always will, and imaging it could be otherwise is hopeless naivete. Also: too many errors in your arguments in this video to point out individually. The original video is pretty bad, but your response isn't all that great either. You are too eager to push your own counter-narrative.

Of course it was a good thing for Europeans to come to America. What the fuck is this video, Gregory 😂

I don't think we are worshipping the man himself rather the significance of thr historical events leading up to opening up the rest of the world to the Americas. Sure it was discovered before and already inhabited but Columbus' voyage led to a big migration eventually leading up to the formation of the countries that exist in the North and South American continents. Its about national pride celebrating the historical events that lead to the existence of your country. It doesn't really matter if Columbus was a good man or if he was a monster. His voyage to the west was a significant historical event regardless. If you are proud of the country that you live in you should celebrate the discovery of the continent. Most lands have been conquered, most countries have a pretty checkered past, no civilization is innocent but that doesn't mean you can't celebrate its history or the events that lead up to the formation of your country especially if you love your country.

I think whenever talking about this subject people forget or downplay the role of diseases in this conversation. The native Americans had no immunity to things like smallpox, measles, typhus etc the diseases traveled faster than the Europeans, decimated populations, so by the time Europeans reached a population center they only found small groups of weakened people and affected our view of Native Americans up until modern archeological discovery of long forgotten large population centers. Europeans did commit atrocities but disease killed WAY more people.

As an American Indian I hold no I'll will towards Columbus. He didn't do anything to us, we weren't already doing to each other. Trayvon Martin wasn't murdered, he attacked someone, who defended themself, as they should have. By the way, that man was a member of the minority community.

I don't really think Columbus qualifies as the worst person in history. I don't think we should celebrate him, that seems weird to me, but at the same time he's far from the worst.

The West be like: >then: let's try to ''help'' those indigenous people >now: let's try to ''fix'' the problems we caused to those indigenous people in the past The West and their obsession to ''help'' others and ''fix'' things is astonishing.

I think its dishonest and eurocentric in and of itself to refer to dozens of indigenous tribes as a single "native" population. People like to act like it was one people vs another but in reality it was several warring tribes that had been doing exaxtly the same thing to each other for most of their history. Europe was just more organised when fighting for territory.

the "they" in "do anything they want" are the king/queen, not the subjugated people

There's so much wrong with this video and the original guy's video.

Mexican here. My great grandmother was a feudal slave to a Spanyard Lord in the northern mountains of Mexico. She told us that when she was 9-10 the feudal lord was sent away by Pancho Villa (likely killed) she and all of the “Slaves” cried because the nation became chaotic and they Mexican leaders were worst. I now live in Mozambique. All of the elders that remember and were alive prior to 1976 when MOZ got its Independence say that life was better during the “Colonial rule” I’m Mexican descendent of a Slave, All my kids are African. Please tell me im wrong in my statement

Native American here, I hate the idea of name swapping Columbus to indigenous. Just don't celebrate it or do, I do not care. But to swap it is like adding a black person to your friends because you don't have one yet. It is race pandering. My culture doesn't need your pat on the back, the only natives that ask for it are the same one's who enjoy the attention they get playing victims and I don't think they have any merit in their thoughts. Also, calling "indigenous peoples" is just as dumb as calling us "Indians" because we aren't indigenous to the Americas. We migrated here from North eastern Asia. I hate all this dumb tribalism that everyone is indoctrinated into, yourself included.

The animals in america weren't as docile or naturally oriented to live within a human unit. Also, I didn't know America had emus. Edit: Skeptic should look into the history of animal domestication and take a break from his alien content.

This seemed really nitpicky and some of those differences you said about slaves being better than peasants was a ridiculous

31:27 Slave trade wasn't invented by Columbus, almost all human empires and kingdoms before him had a sort of slavery system as well as slave trade and slave markets, unless you are trying to suggest somehow that putting slaves on a ship somehow makes it worse than dragging them in metal chains across a desert, which obviously is not the case. Also Colmbus is far from being the worst person in history, whatever Colmbus did pales in comparison to the atrocities several other nations and empires did to people they conquered before his time, cannibalism, mass extremination, torture, public mutilation, r@pe, pillaging and burning entire cities to the ground, including native South American empires who regularly practiced mass human sacrifice to appease their gods, and invaded and massacred each other, so much so that when the Conquistadors arrived later some South American native tribes decided to join the Conquistadors aganist their old brutal oppressors to give them a taste of what they suffered, so this extremely bogus "noble savages" narrative you are trying to spin here is utter nonsense and is a very reductive dumbed down view of history that judges historical events based on modern day values (and in some cases based on dumb nonsensical progressive values) instead of their actual historical context. The original video might have some inaccuracies and poor arguments, but yours is equally bad if not far worse.

Dude I missed this format, mini skeptic, reactionary you should show your grinding gears more often. Way more creative then this (well thought out en executed experiment you had going for the past years :D)

Holy crap, I bet Gregory believes Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd. 😂 I feel like I’m watching a video from an alternate reality Mirror Greg 😂😂

Let me preference this comment by stating two wrong don’t make a right, but let’s be a little more real here, the Native Americans are not an innocent people, they subjugated each other, they slaughtered entire regions of each other, an if your religious, I’m not but if you are these people sacrificed each other to what essentially amounts to a blood god. Now I don’t agree with colonialism, but if we’re bound by our nature, an nature is very upfront with survival of the fittest then I’d say nature ran its course. It’s just a damn shame that we’ll never know what native Americans would’ve been had the English respected their borders.

The us education system taught me this

I haven't seen your videos in years. So I have to ask... Wtf happened to your glorious character?

I blame the Romans for all of this

Ah, old school Skeptic returns from his slumber

the fact that he said "viking never came back" alone shows how little he knows about this, not only did we come back, but some of us STAYED, because they ended up actually liking the area, and the people, HUNDREDS OF YEARS LATER there were light skinned fair haired people among the various northern tribes....hell even some natives went to england with the vikings, and came back bringing tales of adventure, and exploration with them when the vikings came back......the family history of the clan MacLeod is INTRICATELY tied with the vikings, and the native americans that they fostered a mutual respect with...hell coloumbus even mentions natives that spoke languages that his translator could interpret, because they learned them from the natives that explored the world with the vikings, and then came back to their home lands........

The sins of the father. The sins of the one we must cast all guilt upon, yet still hold guilt ourselves. I am grateful for elements of your critique of 'Knowing Better' but I have a great deal of disdain for your collective guilt you bestow upon one ethnic population(the Europeans) for atrocities against another population( the Indigenous peoples of the Americas). You state that those of the Americas were more than likely annihilated by a systematic process pioneered and perpetually propagated by Columbus across much of the Americas rather than by disease(Smallpox, etc.). What equation of evidence has led you to the conclusion that Columbus and his administration were solely or primarily responsible for such an atrocity? How was he able to move to so rapidly, interact with, subjugate & annihilate so many(particularly in the interior) of the Americas? And to the alternative about disease or germs from the Old World how could the Europeans or anyone from that epoch have known about bacteria, germs, or that someone who's asymptomatic can still be dangerously contagious? And yes Columbus' efforts did open various parts of the world to an exchange(Knowing Better said nothing about it being fair or equitable) of items, animals, foods, diseases, etc. I would address the reality of the Human Condition, and how the display of inhumanity from Columbus and the Spanish was not really exceptional when objectively observing the vastness of human history but others have already done so in this comment section. In closing, if this "stolen land" should be return to the remaining peoples of the Americas, how do you suppose that could be achieved? Are the descendants of the Europeans, Africans, Middle Easterners, South Asians, South East Asians to evacuate this "stolen land" in order for it to be returned to those Indigenous to the Americas? Are you this zealous towards what has occurred to other Indigenous populations across the world who have faced, to use your word, genocide like the Ainu of Japan? And how are you returning said "stolen land" to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas? What are you doing to set an example about what we all should be doing? "Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others, it is the only means."- Albert Einstein P.S. You may take my words & inquiries as you will, I've done something akin to this to Knowing Better himself concerning my perturbations/disagreements over reparations(and yes I'm Black and don't want reparations) but I am genuinely seeking sources based in evidence for when I can comprehensively start looking objectively into historical figures myself. "I know you won't believe me but the Highest Form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others"-Socrates

I prefer Michael Knowles' and Dinesh DaSouza's take on Columbus.

The more I heard that dude speak, the faster I could feel my braincells dying

🐥 emu is a bird... u sure it was used as a pack animal

Lol no natives were slaves. As if waring nations never took slaves…

Please. STOP MAKING HIM DEFEND ADAM RUINS EVERYTHING.

Regarding weather it was lucky that Columbus landed in the Americas or not, It was lucky for most of us who are alive today because that happened. I would never advocate for the things Columbus did, but they were important to the modern population. The things he did were horrible, but we wound not exist without him.

I agree, that was a bad take that Knowing Better had. But to Knowing Better's credit, he did make a 2 and a half hour long video detailing the Native Americans and their removal. In that video he, shared a lot of points you made. It might be worth it to watch that and see what you and him know, and ultimately what he corrected from this. Plus also, i know this was an older video because he stopped dying his hair, lol

Aboriginals? Emus? Are we talking about America ir Australia. Also, good luck trying to use Emus as beasts of burden.

12:03 - Emu's are Australian. Maybe you're thinking the Rhea (sp?)?

Why are you claiming Europeans thought China and Japan were part of India when Marco Polo described China as its own entity and wrote extensively on its culture hundreds of years before Columbus?

The only way I can think of to Devil's Advocate anything is that a constructive holiday focused on honoring indigenous peoples and maybe learning a bit about them would be more positive and able to reduce misunderstanding and hate than a destructive "tear down the pedestal" event that only focuses on that one thing. If you can balance both, more power to you, just don't forget the positive aspect.

14:50 I am not sure I agree with this, this is applying western liberal moral logic to a time that predates that mentality. For most of human history, nobody ever really talked about whether a stronger or more powerful civilization "has the right" to conquer or destroy a less powerful one. They just did, because they could. Might was right. And that was all. Native civilizations operated under this pretense just as much as every other civilization around the world, and probably would have continued to do so even after the completion of the Renaissance in europe. Conquest (when clear benefit to the aggressor is obtainable from it) is not a western invention nor a fascist invention nor even an imperial invention, it was the status quo for much of the world until basically 1945. Even then, plenty of states today are still operating under this pretense. Operating under the logic that a strong civilization has a "duty" to only fight equal or larger societies and to not fight or even protect technologically weaker societies is, if anything, projecting a western (in this case fundamentally liberal moralist) moral compass onto history just as much as KnowingBetters video does with western expansionism or manifest destiny or western exceptionalism.

Here's where this all went wrong: You see Columbus and the European colonizers as one and the same, conceptually. Thus, you see a defense of Columbus, the man, as a defense of European exploitation, the concept. That's an unfair interpretation, as Columbus didn't have much to do with Spanish colonization, seeing as he died before it started. He was just an explorer. Columbus wasn't Spain. Columbus was just some guy from Genoa. When you have a certain interpretation of something, you tend to find evidence that supports your interpretation. Even if that evidence is faulty. That's not being stupid, that's just how the human mind works. Just keep that in mind. I think you should take another look at KB. His videos may be a bit cheesy, but he is such a massive force for good in the online educational space. He's spent the last couple years taking apart what he calls the Standard American History Myth, the sanitized version of history he himself taught in school. I highly, highly recommend his video "They Were Just In The Way", which mercilessly deconstructs the absolute treatment of American aboriginals by the United States. Anyway, payday just came in, so here's a coffee on me. Don't count out KB, he's doing more to expose the lies woven into our history than anyone else I know of.

propagandist Bartolomé de las Casas, a proto-leftist Spanish monk who inaugurated the black legend of Columbus "estimated [the population of Hispaniola to be] three million to four million. [...] By analyzing the DNA of ancient Indigenous Caribbean people, a study published in Nature on Wednesday by one of us (Professor Reich) makes clear that the population of Hispaniola was no more than a few tens of thousands of people. Almost all prior estimates have been at least tenfold too large." cf. the NYT's "Ancient DNA Is Changing How We Think About the Caribbean" article

I never liked Columbus. In Napoli, a lot of people are not so happy for Columbus because he was from Genoa. The north of Italy always have the money and the power. They punish the south since hundreds of years. Even today, they put up their nose at us like we're peasants. I hate the north.

Homo Erectus as a (sub)species played a determinative role in the extinction of Homo Neanderthalensis, through various means including outright aggression. Would it have been better if it were the other way around? Or maybe it would've been better for every humanoid sub-species to evolve and progress alongside one-another? I have no idea how the history of our species/planet would've progressed under any alternate circumstance, and neither do you. This one should've gone up on the Armoured Speculator channel. How deep is the guilt for this "sins of the father" shit supposed to run anyway? Is there a cutoff? Is there a minimum time before it should start? How accountable should you be for wrongdoings of your immediate family? Certainly you have more influence in that regard? The only way to interact with history is to learn about it and learn from it. Everyone alive today is an extension of everything that preceded us. Take people as they come. Feeling guilty for something you had no control over is 100% as goofy as being proud of something you spent no effort to bring about. Paper thin ideology all around.

“Who’s looking back at the era of aggressive colonialism and going “yeah I could see myself on either side of that issue”” *sweats nervously in Englishman*

I take issue with "He didn’t discover it because there were already people there." No part of the word "discover" means "first".

I'm a huge fan of Knowing Better, about as much so as I adore your channel. I do agree his original video was largely trash and his second video does nothing to admit wrongdoing. However, I think it's worth recognizing that his views, opinions, and knowledge have probably changed over the past many years. In short, now, he knows better.

Dude, just because you made your video in an offended tone doesn't mean that what you covered was worth being offended over. A good chunk of what you were screeching at was stuff you agreed with or proof that you have no idea how colonialism, technology advancement, domestication, or disease works.

I think it’s a little disingenuous to say that he thinks lesser of native Americans as he literally has a video where he details the real horrors that the American government did to them. It’s also wrong to suggest that he is indoctrinated into thinking that the white man is all good when he gave up teaching because he didn’t want to teach the basic history myth that’s taught in schools.

7:35 Of course people were already there, everyone knows that, when we say "discovered" is obviously from a European perspective. We didn't know that land was there, then we knew -> discovery. To characterise this in any other way is disingenuous at best

pls educate me, im from australia. were there aboriginals in the americas too?

Youre a bit off here buddy, were they a series of sophisticated cultures? Yes. Should they desire to be as technologically as advanced as western culture at the time? Yes. The reality of contact between a more advanced technological society to a lesser one, the lesser loses in every situation, the only way to ensure survival is being able to compete back against other cultures, disagree if you will but that is the historical precedent across written history. The same thing will occur if we as a species come across an alien species if they are in anyway comparable to ourselves unless we quickly adapt and even then such a gap from a species barely able to reach our natural sattelite to an interstellar civilization would mean likely we would suffer as terrible if not worse a fate than the indians in the american continents from disease alone, not just forced strong arming or erradication.

i was a helper in a zoo with buffelos, there has never been a day in this time, that 1 false move to close to them couldnt have killed me and 2 others while interacting, i got kicked by cows and horses many times in my life, but those arent even in close in terms of power to buffelos. and there are no other possible animals to breed them into being more domesticated in NA.

This is a return to form

26:05 If you literally just read the two sentences before the highlighted portion, it talks about taking them as captives. lmao whoever this dude is, must have skipped reading comprehension in school.

bro you got my rollin 13 min through 15 min is perfect desctruction.... geez guys we got to better

I have to say, at the beginning I thought you were reaching, especially when you implied that knowing better claimed it was good that Columbus managed to get to the Americas when essentially all he said was "Columbus got lucky", but I can understand why you jumped to that because the rest of his video really is a dumpster fire, clearly showing his Eurocentric bias and his failing to see the natives as actual people when discussing things such as how 'primitive' they were. 🤦🏿

Oh no! We gonna keep crying over historical spilled milk? Real useful

I spat out my drink when I heard google translate

"Sign language" doesn't come from any of the particular North American variants (and there were multiple, not just one) Firstly there are different sign languages all across the planet. Heck, deaf people in Quebec speak a completely different language than American Sign Language. Also ASL was brought to the United States (specifically Hartford, Connecticut) by Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc from France. If you'd like to see the runner-up when it comes to Gallaudet's choice I suggest you look into British Sign Language

I get the sense that your perspective holds some idyllic form of Europe where we're not allowed to sail around. where we were intrinsically the higher order creature, therefore we had to take pity and mercy on all others. You are doing the same thing as that which you critique. We were well within our rights just bumping around shorelines. It's what comes after the first exchanges of diseases that matters. They very well could have bumped into us

Wuh, did I just wake up in 201X? Nice vid, enjoyable like the good ol' days.

I have always felt this way in my bones. e Even in elementary school, I did not understand how Pilgrims and Indians had anything to do with Columbus and I refused to participate in the "holiday". Thanks for standing up for this very near and dear to my being subject.

Re: Invention of sign language The most recent naturally developed language Nicaraguan Sign Language, which was spontaneously born in the 1980s among deaf children who were grouped together. I think that any time or place where deaf people were grouped together, there was a sign language. But the Americas might possibly have been the first place of a widespread sign language.

I don't feel any guilt for benefitting from the current system, because I was involuntarily born here, raised here, and taught only how to barely survive in this system. I can wholeheartedly acknowledge the pain and suffering that was endured to forge it, but I won't apologize for surviving nor will I feel guilty for it. Plus, I'm more than 60% Native American anyways. I have living relatives that live on reserves. Lol. Lord knows any time I talk to them, they try to shame me for the crime of not being born and raised on the reserve and treat me as an outsider instead of family.

I am begging for you "armoured skeptik" to talk about the overlap between blood meridian and the road and all those books that tell us why we're garbage and why we'll always be garbage. I know I can trust you to put out an honest and accurate account of those books. I think you'll enjoy reading them and I think you'd love looking into the past as much as I do

This comment section will definitely be completely civil.

Maybe you have changed, but "benefiting from privelage" ...... wtf?!

Im interested in knowing how you even found the unlisted video! Up until a couple months ago, most of my "watch later" playlist was unlisted videos that RU-vid took down, or were privated. Also, thanks for covering that squatting man stuff

Always enjoy the longform content, though tbf I'm also pretty sure I could listen to this man read the phone book.

Dude is putting words in this guy's mouth like crazy. He said this guy was advocating for genocide like, alot.