Did Columbus discover the “New World”?
Below are some of my reflections after reading The New York Times piece!
Are crustaceans “bees of the sea” or are bees “crustaceans of the land”? Such was my first reaction after reading Roth’s article.
I am surprised by the fact that it took until 2016 for scientists to discover the first case of a crustacean pollinating algae, which seems to me, an admirer of the ocean, an obvious testament to the sea being the origin of life. I am further astonished by the title’s inversion of the causal relationship between the pollinating activities of the bees and crustaceans. Even when we humans have long been aware that the ocean is the ultimate life force, we still use language that corroborates the primacy of the land, our habitat.
This is not the first time I noticed signs of human arrogance in our use of language. When studying Columbus’ discovery of the Americas, I realized that his characterization of the continent as a “New World” is inaccurate, as Native Americans had lived there for centuries. His coinage reflects the European colonizers’ belief that only they, the civilized servants of God, had the right to “discover” the land.
Just as the shapes in Plato’s Cave are mere shadows of reality, we humans cannot see the world in its entirety as long as we remain narrow-minded about reality outside our immediate surroundings, our “cave.” The crustaceans that existed for millennia and natives that inhabited the “New World” are realities that we must acknowledge, starting with mindful language.
