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Columbus, imbroglio et al

The European discovery of the America nevertheless challenged the scriptural explanation of how the Earth had been peopled. As evidence accumulated that the lands Columbus described and explored after 1492 were not, as he claimed, parts of Asia but new worlds entirely, it became difficult to explain how these places had acquired human inhabitants. Which of Noah’s lineages had ventured that far, and why had God not explained them to the Christian faithful, as He had done for all parts of the “old” world? The idea of a separate creation of human beings, ‘polygenism,’ was technically heretical. Another part of Scripture made that clear: God “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation.” Native Americans had to come from the same stock as Europeans -- but how? In some ways, that the primordial breeding pair had dispersed progeny so far away compounded the wonder of human procreation, but the Americas also confounded Christian faith in the idea of a unified human lineage and destiny. ~ Page 19

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