title: Ben Stokes

text: In the first Test against India, Stokes made 128 in England's first innings to help them reach 537. He took one wicket in India's first innings, before making an unbeaten 29. The match ended in a draw. In the second Test he finished with figures of 1–73 in India's first innings, before making 70 with the bat. He was out for six in England's second innings as they lost by 246 runs. In the third Test he made 29 in England's first innings, and then took 5–73 in India's first innings. After making five in the second innings, Stokes failed to pick up another wicket as England suffered another defeat. In the fourth Test he made 31 in England's first innings score of 400, but failed to pick up a wicket or make an impression in England's second innings as they lost by an innings and 36 runs. In the final match of the series, Stokes picked up just one wicket and scored 29 runs in the match as England lost by an innings and 75 runs. For his performances in 2016, he was named in the World Test XI by the ICC and Cricinfo. He was also named in the ODI XI of the year 2016 by Cricinfo.


title: Ben Stokes

text: Stokes scored his second ODI century against South Africa in the lead-up to the Champions Trophy, and in the tournament itself his third, against Australia. He was also named as part of the 'Team of the Tournament' at the 2017 Champions Trophy by the ICC.


title: Ben Stokes

text: He scored 299 runs, including a century at The Oval, and took 7 wickets in a four Test series against South Africa. In a three Test series against West Indies, he scored 228 runs and took 9 wickets. At Headingley, in the second Test, he scored his fourth Test century, and at Lord's in the third, he took a career best 6–22 with the ball.


title: Ben Stokes

text: In the opening match of the tournament against South Africa, he made a score of 89 runs from 79 balls, claimed two wickets, ran out Dwaine Pretorius and took two catches to be declared "Man of the Match" in a comprehensive 104-run win for England. His catch to dismiss Andile Phehlukwayo has been described as "one of the greatest catches of all time".


title: Ben Stokes

text: Stokes produced multiple standout performances with the bat later in the group stage. Stokes was left stranded on 82*, as England were bowled out for 212 in a surprise 20-run defeat to Sri Lanka. He again proved to be the only resistance to Australia's bowling attack in their following match, by scoring 89 runs in a chase of 286. England ultimately fell short by 64 runs as they were bowled out for 221. In a must-win match against India in the following group match, Stokes played a very important innings, scoring a quick-fire 79 runs in 54 balls, as England won by 31 runs.


title: Ben Stokes

text: In the final against New Zealand, he scored 84*, including 2 sixes in the final over (one traditional and one due to overthrows after a ball bounced off Stokes' bat to the boundary), to tie the game. He then batted in the super over with Jos Buttler, which again was a tie, but England won the match on the boundary countback rule then in place. For this performance, he was named man of the match for the second time in the tournament.


title: Ben Stokes

text: Faced with an incisive Australian bowling attack and Bradmanesque batting contribution from Steve Smith, Stokes played a pivotal role in enabling England ultimately to draw the 2019 Ashes series 2–2 (although Australia thereby retained the urn). In the third test at Headingley, England appeared to be heading for certain defeat after they were bowled out for 67 in their first innings. Stokes managed to overturn an overnight Australian lead, hitting 11 fours and 8 sixes to win with an unbeaten 135* in a record pursuit of 359. His innings has been described as "one of the greatest innings of all time" and the "greatest ever played by an Englishman". Stokes's innings was rated by Wisden as the Greatest hundred of the decade (2010's).


title: Ben Stokes

text: He was named as England's player of the series as he ended the series as England's top run-scorer with 441 runs with 2 hundreds and 2 fifties, while also taking 8 wickets.


title: Ben Stokes

text: "It's the same with success and failure. There's always the momentum thing, but you just have to put whatever happened in the past behind you."


title: Ben Stokes

text: Stokes continued on his good form into the tour of New Zealand. He made scores of 91 and 28 as England slumped to an innings defeat in the first test match of the series. He then made 26 runs in his only innings in the next test, as England drew the match to lose the series.


title: Ben Stokes

text: He was named as the 2019 BBC Sports Personality of the Year, ICC Player of the Year at the 2019 ICC Awards.


title: Ben Stokes

text: Stokes' form continued into 4-test match tour of South Africa, as he was named player of the series after scoring 318 runs and taking 10 wickets. Following defeat in the first test, Stokes put in a "man of the match" performance in the 2nd test. He made scores of 47 and 72, with the latter from only 47 balls, to set South Africa a target of 437. Stokes then managed to break the host's resistance, as they fought to draw the game, by taking the final 3 wickets to bowl them out for 248 runs to level the series. In the following match, his first innings score of 120 was crucial in setting up an innings win for England, which meant they took a 2–1 lead in the series going into the final test match. Stokes only made 2 and 28 runs in the final test, but he did take 4 wickets in the match, as England won by 191 runs to secure a second consecutive away series win against South Africa.


title: Ben Stokes

text: On 17 June 2020, Stokes was included in England's 30-man squad to start training behind closed doors for the Test series against the West Indies. Stokes was named as captain for one of the teams in the official inter-squad warm-up match. In the absence of regular captain Joe Root (due to the birth of his child), it was announced that as vice-captain, Stokes would therefore captain England for the first time. Prior to being named captain, Stokes had never led a side in a first-class, List A or Twenty20 cricket match. In the first Test, Stokes took his 150th wicket, to become the sixth cricketer to score 4,000 runs and take 150 wickets in Tests, and in the first innings of the second Test, Stokes scored 176 runs, to record his tenth century in Test cricket.


title: Ben Stokes

text: During the 2021 season, the England limited-over squad suffered a COVID outbreak at the end of a limited overs series against Sri Lanka. The whole squad, including the captain Eoin Morgan, had to self-isolate just before a home series against Pakistan. Stokes had not played against Sri Lanka due to injury, leaving him as the most senior player for the Pakistan ODI matches, for which he was named captain. He led the inexperienced team, in which he had almost four times as many ODI appearances as the rest of the team combined, to a nine-wicket victory in the first match. In the next game of the series against Pakistan, Stokes played in his 100th ODI match.


title: Ben Stokes

text: On 30 July 2021, it was announced that Stokes would take an "indefinite break" from cricket. In October 2021, Stokes was added to England's squad for the 2021–22 Ashes series in Australia.


title: Ben Stokes

text: In June 2022, Stokes started his captaincy with the 3–0 clean sweep of New Zealand cricket team in England in 2022, He scored 194 runs in 5 innings at an average of 48.50


title: Ben Stokes

text: In July 2022, England defeated the South African team 2–1 in Test series, Stokes named Player of the Series, he scored 149 runs in 4 innings at an average of 37.25 and picked up 10 wickets at a bowling average of 15.70


title: Ben Stokes

text: On 18 July 2022, Stokes announced that he would retire from ODI cricket following the first match of the series against South Africa, citing the physical and mental demands of playing all three formats.


title: Ben Stokes

text: In 2022 ICC Men's T20 World Cup Final, Stokes scored an unbeaten 52* runs which helped England to win the World Cup by defeating Pakistan.


title: Ben Stokes

text: Following the 2022 Pakistan floods, Stokes confirmed that he would donate his match fees from the Pakistan test series to the flood appeal. Stokes added that "hopefully this donation can go towards the rebuilding of areas of Pakistan most affected by the flooding".


title: Ben Stokes

text: Stokes became engaged to Clare Ratcliffe in 2013. They married in East Brent, Somerset in October 2017. They have two children. Stokes has a tattoo of a family of lions, symbolising his own family, covering his entire back. Stokes has Maori Ngāpuhi heritage, which is also shown in one of his tattoos.


title: Ben Stokes

text: Stokes and his mother received damages in 2021 from "The Sun", who in 2019 had run a front-page story about a family tragedy which was argued to not be in the public interest.


title: Ben Stokes

text: Following the third ODI against West Indies at Bristol in September 2017, Stokes was arrested after becoming involved in a street brawl near a nightclub with two men, at which teammate Alex Hales was also present. This incident led to both players missing the fourth game of the series, and a hand injury sustained in the brawl also ruled Stokes out of the final game. He also missed the 2017–18 Ashes and the second Test match against India due to the incident and the subsequent trial. He lost his apparel sponsorship with New Balance over these incidents.


title: Ben Stokes

text: Stokes was charged on 15 January 2018 with affray along with the two other men, and appeared before Bristol Magistrates' Court on 13 February 2018. During the trial, which started on 6 August 2018, Stokes said he was defending a gay couple from homophobic abuse from the other two men. He was acquitted on 14 August. The couple thanked Stokes afterwards for defending them, saying that he "didn't deserve being put through a trial".


title: Ben Stokes

text: In September 2018, Stokes was charged with bringing the game into disrepute by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) over the incident in Bristol and social media posts. Stokes pleaded guilty to the charges, and in December 2018 was fined £30,000 and banned for eight matches, an exclusion which he had already served by that time.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Between 1492 and 1504, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus led four Spanish transatlantic maritime expeditions of discovery to the Americas. These voyages led to the widespread knowledge of the New World. This breakthrough inaugurated the period known as the Age of Discovery, which saw the colonization of the Americas, a related biological exchange, and trans-Atlantic trade. These events, the effects and consequences of which persist to the present, are often cited as the beginning of the modern era.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Born in the Republic of Genoa, Columbus was a navigator who sailed for the Crown of Castile (a predecessor to the modern Kingdom of Spain) in search of a westward route to the Indies, thought to be the East Asian source of spices and other precious oriental goods obtainable only through arduous overland routes. Columbus was partly inspired by 13th-century Italian explorer Marco Polo in his ambition to explore Asia and never admitted his failure in this, incessantly claiming and pointing to supposed evidence that he had reached the East Indies. Ever since, the Bahamas as well as the islands of the Caribbean have been referred to as the West Indies.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: At the time of Columbus's voyages, the Americas were inhabited by Indigenous Americans. Soon after first contact, Eurasian diseases such as smallpox began to devastate the indigenous populations. Columbus participated in the beginning of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, which involved brutally treating and enslaving the natives in the range of thousands.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Columbus died in 1506, and the next year, the New World was named "America" after Amerigo Vespucci, who realized that it was a unique landmass. The search for a westward route to Asia was completed in 1521, when another Spanish voyage, the Magellan-Elcano expedition sailed across the Pacific Ocean and reached Southeast Asia, before returning to Europe and completing the first circumnavigation of the world.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Many Europeans of Columbus's day assumed that a single, uninterrupted ocean surrounded Europe and Asia, although Norse explorers had colonized areas of North America beginning with Greenland . The Norse maintained a presence in North America for hundreds of years, but contacts between their North American settlements and Europe had all but ceased by the early 15th century.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Until the mid-15th century, Europe enjoyed a safe land passage to China and India—sources of valued goods such as silk, spices, and opiates—under the hegemony of the Mongol Empire (the "Pax Mongolica", or Mongol Peace). With the Fall of Constantinople to the Turkish Ottoman Empire in 1453, the land route to Asia (the Silk Road) became more difficult as Christian traders were prohibited.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Portugal was the main European power interested in pursuing trade routes overseas, with the neighboring kingdom of Castile—predecessor to Spain—having been somewhat slower to begin exploring the Atlantic because of the land area it had to reconquer from the Moors during the "Reconquista". This remained unchanged until the late 15th century, following the dynastic union by marriage of Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon (together known as the Catholic Monarchs of Spain) in 1469, and the completion of the "Reconquista" in 1492, when the joint rulers conquered the Moorish kingdom of Granada, which had been providing Castile with African goods through tribute. The fledgling Spanish Empire decided to fund Columbus's expedition in hopes of finding new trade routes and circumventing the lock Portugal had secured on Africa and the Indian Ocean with the 1481 papal bull "Aeterni regis".


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: In response to the need for a new route to Asia, by the 1480s, Christopher and his brother Bartholomew had developed a plan to travel to the Indies (then construed roughly as all of southern and eastern Asia) by sailing directly west across what was believed to be the singular "Ocean Sea," the Atlantic Ocean. By about 1481, Florentine cosmographer Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli sent Columbus a map depicting such a route, with no intermediary landmass other than the mythical island of Antillia. In 1484 on the island of La Gomera in the Canaries, then undergoing conquest by Castile, Columbus heard from some inhabitants of El Hierro that there was supposed to be a group of islands to the west.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: A popular misconception that Columbus had difficulty obtaining support for his plan because Europeans thought the Earth was flat can be traced back to a 17th-century campaign of Protestants against Catholicism, and was popularized in works such as Washington Irving's 1828 biography of Columbus. In fact, the knowledge that the Earth is spherical was widespread, having been the general opinion of Ancient Greek science, and gaining support throughout the Middle Ages (for example, Bede mentions it in "The Reckoning of Time"). The primitive maritime navigation of Columbus's time relied on both the stars and the curvature of the Earth.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Eratosthenes had measured the diameter of the Earth with good precision in the 2nd century BC, and the means of calculating its diameter using an astrolabe was known to both scholars and navigators. Where Columbus differed from the generally accepted view of his time was in his incorrect assumption of a significantly smaller diameter for the Earth, claiming that Asia could be easily reached by sailing west across the Atlantic. Most scholars accepted Ptolemy's correct assessment that the terrestrial landmass (for Europeans of the time, comprising Eurasia and Africa) occupied 180 degrees of the terrestrial sphere, and dismissed Columbus's claim that the Earth was much smaller, and that Asia was only a few thousand nautical miles to the west of Europe.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Columbus believed the incorrect calculations of Marinus of Tyre, putting the landmass at 225 degrees, leaving only 135 degrees of water. Moreover, Columbus underestimated Alfraganus's calculation of the length of a degree, reading the Arabic astronomer's writings as if, rather than using the Arabic mile (about 1,830 m), he had used the Italian mile (about 1,480 meters). Alfraganus had calculated the length of a degree to be 56⅔ Arabic miles (66.2 nautical miles). Columbus therefore estimated the size of the Earth to be about 75% of Eratosthenes's calculation, and the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan as 2,400 nautical miles (about 23% of the real figure).


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: There was a further element of key importance in the voyages of Columbus, the trade winds. He planned to first sail to the Canary Islands before continuing west by utilizing the northeast trade wind. Part of the return to Spain would require traveling against the wind using an arduous sailing technique called beating, during which almost no progress can be made. To effectively make the return voyage, Columbus would need to follow the curving trade winds northeastward to the middle latitudes of the North Atlantic, where he would be able to catch the "westerlies" that blow eastward to the coast of Western Europe.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: The navigational technique for travel in the Atlantic appears to have been exploited first by the Portuguese, who referred to it as the "volta do mar" ('turn of the sea'). Columbus's knowledge of the Atlantic wind patterns was, however, imperfect at the time of his first voyage. By sailing directly due west from the Canary Islands during hurricane season, skirting the so-called horse latitudes of the mid-Atlantic, Columbus risked either being becalmed or running into a tropical cyclone, both of which, by chance, he avoided.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Around 1484, King John II of Portugal submitted Columbus's proposal to his experts, who rejected it on the basis that Columbus's estimation of a travel distance of 2,400 nautical miles was about four times too low (which was accurate).


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: In 1486, Columbus was granted an audience with the Catholic Monarchs, and he presented his plans to Isabella. She referred these to a committee, which determined that Columbus had grossly underestimated the distance to Asia. Pronouncing the idea impractical, they advised the monarchs not to support the proposed venture. To keep Columbus from taking his ideas elsewhere, and perhaps to keep their options open, the Catholic Monarchs gave him an allowance, totaling about 14,000 "maravedís" for the year, or about the annual salary of a sailor.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: In 1488 Columbus again appealed to the court of Portugal, receiving a new invitation for an audience with John II. This again proved unsuccessful, in part because not long afterwards Bartolomeu Dias returned to Portugal following a successful rounding of the southern tip of Africa. With an eastern sea route now under its control, Portugal was no longer interested in trailblazing a western trade route to Asia crossing unknown seas.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: In May 1489, Isabella sent Columbus another 10,000 "maravedis", and the same year the Catholic Monarchs furnished him with a letter ordering all cities and towns under their domain to provide him food and lodging at no cost.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: As Queen Isabella's forces neared victory over the Moorish Emirate of Granada for Castile, Columbus was summoned to the Spanish court for renewed discussions. He waited at King Ferdinand's camp until January 1492, when the monarchs conquered Granada. A council led by Isabella's confessor, Hernando de Talavera, found Columbus's proposal to reach the Indies implausible. Columbus had left for France when Ferdinand intervened, first sending Talavera and Bishop Diego Deza to appeal to the queen. Isabella was finally convinced by the king's clerk Luis de Santángel, who argued that Columbus would bring his ideas elsewhere, and offered to help arrange the funding. Isabella then sent a royal guard to fetch Columbus, who had travelled several kilometers toward Córdoba.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: In the April 1492 "Capitulations of Santa Fe", Columbus was promised he would be given the title "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" and appointed viceroy and governor of the newly claimed and colonized for the Crown; he would also receive ten percent of all the revenues from the new lands in perpetuity if he was successful. He had the right to nominate three people, from whom the sovereigns would choose one, for any office in the new lands. The terms were unusually generous but, as his son later wrote, the monarchs were not confident of his return.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: For his westward voyage to find a shorter route to the Orient, Columbus and his crew took three medium-sized ships, the largest of which was a carrack (Spanish: "nao"), the "Santa María", which was owned and captained by Juan de la Cosa, and under Columbus's direct command. The other two were smaller caravels; the name of one is lost, but it is known by the Castilian nickname "Pinta" ("painted one"). The other, the "Santa Clara", was nicknamed the "Niña" ("girl"), perhaps in reference to her owner, Juan Niño of Moguer. The "Pinta" and the "Niña" were piloted by the Pinzón brothers (Martín Alonso and Vicente Yáñez, respectively). On the morning of 3 August 1492, Columbus departed from Palos de la Frontera, going down the Rio Tinto and into the Atlantic.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Three days into the journey, on 6 August 1492, the rudder of the "Pinta" broke. Martín Alonso Pinzón suspected the owners of the ship of sabotage, as they were afraid to go on the journey. The crew was able to secure the rudder with ropes until they could reach the Canary Islands, where they arrived on 9 August. The "Pinta" had its rudder replaced on the island of Gran Canaria, and by September 2 the ships rendezvoused at La Gomera, where the "Niña"s lateen sails were re-rigged to standard square sails. Final provisions were secured, and on 6 September the ships departed San Sebastián de La Gomera for what turned out to be a five-week-long westward voyage across the Atlantic.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: As described in the abstract of his journal made by Bartolomé de las Casas, on the outward bound voyage Columbus recorded two sets of distances: one was in measurements he normally used, the other in the Portuguese maritime leagues used by his crew. Las Casas originally interpreted that he reported the shorter distances to his crew so they would not worry about sailing too far from Spain, but Oliver Dunn and James Kelley state that this was a misunderstanding.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: On 13 September 1492, Columbus observed that the needle of his compass no longer pointed to the North Star. It was once believed that Columbus had discovered magnetic declination, but it was later shown that the phenomenon was already known, both in Europe and in China.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: After 29 days out of sight of land, on 7 October 1492, the crew spotted "[i]mmense flocks of birds", some of which his sailors trapped and determined to be "field" birds (probably Eskimo curlews and American golden plovers). Columbus changed course to follow their flight.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: On 11 October, Columbus changed the fleet's course to due west, and sailed through the night, believing land was soon to be found. At around 10:00 in the evening, Columbus thought he saw a light "like a little wax candle rising and falling". Four hours later, land was sighted by a sailor named Rodrigo de Triana (also known as Juan Rodríguez Bermejo) aboard the "Pinta". Triana immediately alerted the rest of the crew with a shout, and the ship's captain, Martín Alonso Pinzón, verified the land sighting and alerted Columbus by firing a lombard. Columbus would later assert that he had first seen land, thus earning the promised annual reward of 10,000 "maravedís".


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Columbus called this island San Salvador, in the present-day Bahamas; the indigenous name was Guanahani. According to Samuel Eliot Morison, San Salvador Island is the only island fitting the position indicated by Columbus's journal. Columbus wrote of the natives he first encountered in his journal entry of 12 October 1492:Many of the men I have seen have scars on their bodies, and when I made signs to them to find out how this happened, they indicated that people from other nearby islands come to San Salvador to capture them; they defend themselves the best they can. I believe that people from the mainland come here to take them as slaves. They ought to make good and skilled servants, for they repeat very quickly whatever we say to them. I think they can very easily be made Christians, for they seem to have no religion. If it pleases our Lord, I will take six of them to Your Highnesses when I depart, in order that they may learn our language.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Columbus called the indigenous Americans "indios" () in the mistaken belief that he had reached the East Indies; the islands of the Caribbean are termed the West Indies because of this error.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Columbus initially encountered the Lucayan, Taíno, and Arawak peoples. Noting their gold ear ornaments, Columbus took some of the Arawaks prisoner and insisted that they guide him to the source of the gold. Columbus noted that their primitive weapons and military tactics made the natives susceptible to easy conquest.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Columbus observed the people and their cultural lifestyle. He also explored the northeast coast of Cuba, landing on 28 October 1492, and the north-western coast of Hispaniola, present day Haiti, by 5 December 1492. Here, the "Santa Maria" ran aground on Christmas Day, 25 December 1492, and had to be abandoned. Columbus was received by the native cacique (chieftain) Guacanagari, who gave him permission to leave some of his men behind. Columbus left 39 men, including the interpreter Luis de Torres, and founded the settlement of La Navidad. He kept sailing along the northern coast of Hispaniola with a single ship, until he encountered Pinzón and the "Pinta" on 6 January.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: On 13 January 1493, Columbus made his last stop of this voyage in the Americas, in the Bay of Rincón at the eastern end of the Samaná Peninsula in northeast Hispaniola. There he encountered the Ciguayos, the only natives who offered violent resistance during this first voyage. The Ciguayos refused to trade the amount of bows and arrows that Columbus desired; in the ensuing clash one Ciguayo was stabbed in the buttocks and another wounded with an arrow in his chest. Because of the Ciguayos' use of arrows, Columbus named the inlet the Bay of Arrows (or Gulf of Arrows).


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Four natives who boarded the "Niña" at Samaná Peninsula told Columbus of what was possibly the Isla de Carib (probably Puerto Rico), which was supposed to be populated by cannibalistic Caribs, as well as Matinino, an island populated only by women, which Columbus associated with an island in the Indian Ocean described by Marco Polo.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: While returning to Spain, the "Niña" and "Pinta" encountered the roughest storm of their journey, and on the night of 13 February, lost contact with each other. All hands on the "Niña" vowed, if they were spared, to make a pilgrimage to the nearest church of Our Lady wherever they first made land.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: On the morning of 15 February, land was spotted. Columbus believed they were approaching the Portugese Azores Islands, but others felt that they were considerably north of the islands. Columbus turned out to be right. On the night of 17 February, the "Niña" laid anchor at Santa Maria Island, but the cable broke on sharp rocks, forcing Columbus to stay offshore until morning, when a safer location was found nearby. A few sailors took a boat to the island, where they were told by several islanders of a still safer place to land, so the "Niña" moved once again. At this spot, Columbus took aboard several islanders with food. When told of the vow to Our Lady, the islanders directed the crew to a small shrine nearby.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Columbus sent half of the crew to the island to fulfill their vow, but he and the rest stayed on the "Niña", planning to send the other half later. While the shore party were in prayer, they were taken prisoner by order of the island's captain, João de Castanheira, ostensibly out of fear that they were pirates. Castanheira commandeered their shore boat, which he took with several armed men to the "Niña", planning to arrest Columbus. When Columbus defied him, Castanheira said he did not believe or care about Columbus' story, denounced Spaniards, and went back to the island. After another two days, Castanheira released the prisoners, having been unable to get confessions from them or to capture his real target, Columbus. Some claimed that Columbus was captured, but this is contradicted by Columbus's log book.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Leaving the island of Santa Maria in the Azores on 23 February, Columbus headed for Castilian Spain, but another storm forced him into Lisbon. He anchored next to a king's harbor patrol ship on 4 March 1493, where he was told a fleet of 100 caravels had been lost in the storm. Astoundingly, both the "Niña" and the "Pinta" had been spared. Not finding King John II of Portugal in Lisbon, Columbus wrote to him and waited for a reply. The king agreed to meet Columbus at Vale do Paraíso, despite the poor relations between Portugal and Castile at the time. Upon learning of Columbus's discoveries, the Portuguese king informed him that he believed the voyage to be in violation of the 1479 Treaty of Alcáçovas.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: After spending more than a week in Portugal, Columbus set sail for Spain. He arrived back in Palos on 15 March 1493 and later met with Ferdinand and Isabella in Barcelona to report his findings.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Columbus showed off what he had brought back from his voyage to the monarchs, including a few small samples of gold, pearls, gold jewelry from the natives, a few Taíno he had kidnapped, flowers, and a hammock. He also brought the previously unknown tobacco plant, the pineapple fruit, and the turkey. He did not bring any of the precious East Indies spices such as black pepper, ginger or cloves. In his log, he wrote "there is also plenty of 'ají', which is their pepper, which is more valuable than black pepper, and all the people eat nothing else, it being very wholesome".


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Columbus brought captured Taínos to present to the sovereigns, never having met the infamous Caribs. In Columbus's letter on the first voyage, addressed to the Spanish court, he insisted he had reached Asia, describing the island of Hispaniola as being off the coast of China. He emphasized the potential riches of the land, exaggerating the abundance of gold, and that the natives seemed ready to convert to Christianity. The letter was translated into multiple languages and widely distributed, creating a sensation:


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Hispaniola is a miracle. Mountains and hills, plains and pastures, are both fertile and beautiful ... the harbors are unbelievably good and there are many wide rivers of which the majority contain gold. ... There are many spices, and great mines of gold and other metals...


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Upon Columbus's return, most people initially accepted that he had reached the East Indies, including the sovereigns and Pope Alexander VI, though in a letter to the Vatican dated 1 November 1493, the historian Peter Martyr described Columbus as the discoverer of a "Novi Orbis" ("New Globe"). The pope issued four bulls (the first three of which are collectively known as the Bulls of Donation), to determine how Spain and Portugal would colonize and divide the spoils of the new lands. "Inter caetera", issued 4 May 1493, divided the world outside Europe between Spain and Portugal along a north–south meridian 100 leagues west of either the Azores or Cape Verde Islands in the mid-Atlantic, thus granting Spain all the land discovered by Columbus. The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, ratified in the next decade by Pope Julius II, moved the dividing line to 370 leagues west of the Azores or Cape Verde.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: The stated purpose of the second voyage was to convert the indigenous Americans to Christianity. Before Columbus left Spain, he was directed by Ferdinand and Isabella to maintain friendly, even loving, relations with the natives. He set sail from Cádiz, Spain, on 25 September 1493.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: The fleet for the second voyage was much larger: two "naos" and 15 caravels. The two "naos" were the flagship "Marigalante" ("Gallant Mary") and the "Gallega"; the caravels were the "Fraila" ('the nun'), "San Juan", "Colina" ('the hill'), "Gallarda" ('the gallant'), "Gutierre", "Bonial", "Rodriga", "Triana", "Vieja" ('the old'), "Prieta" ('the brown'), "Gorda" ('the fat'), "Cardera", and "Quintera". The "Niña" returned for this expedition, which also included a ship named "Pinta" probably identical to that from the first expedition. In addition, the expedition saw the construction of the first ship in the Americas, the "Santa Cruz" or "India".


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: On 3 November 1493, Christopher Columbus landed on a rugged shore on an island that he named Dominica. On the same day, he landed at Marie-Galante, which he named Santa María la Galante. After sailing past Les Saintes (Todos los Santos), he arrived at Guadeloupe (Santa María de Guadalupe), which he explored between 4 November and 10 November 1493. The exact course of his voyage through the Lesser Antilles is debated, but it seems likely that he turned north, sighting and naming many islands including Santa María de Montserrat (Montserrat), Santa María la Antigua (Antigua), Santa María la Redonda (Saint Martin), and Santa Cruz (Saint Croix, on 14 November). He also sighted and named the island chain of the Santa Úrsula y las Once Mil Vírgenes (the Virgin Islands), and named the islands of Virgen Gorda.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: On Santa Cruz, the Europeans saw a canoe with a few Carib men and two women. They had two male captives, and had recently castrated them. The Europeans pursued them, and were met with arrows from both the men and women, fatally wounding at least one man, who perished about a week later. The Europeans either killed or captured all aboard the canoe, thereafter beheading them. Another was thrown overboard, and when he was spotted crawling away holding his entrails, the Arawaks recommended he be recaptured so he would not alert his tribe; he was thrown overboard again, and then had to be shot down with arrows. Columbus's childhood friend Michele da Cuneo—according to his own account—took one of the women in the skirmish, whom Columbus let him keep as a slave; Cuneo subsequently beat and raped her.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: The fleet continued to the Greater Antilles, and landed on the island of San Juan Bautista, present-day Puerto Rico, on 19 November 1493. Diego Álvarez Chanca recounts that on this island, the Europeans rescued some women from a group of at least 20 that the local Caribs had been keeping as sex slaves. The women explained that any male captives were eaten, and that their own male offspring were castrated and made to serve the Caribs until they were old enough to be considered good to eat. The Europeans rescued three of these boys.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: On 22 November, Columbus sailed from San Juan Bautista to Hispaniola. The next morning, a native taken during the first voyage was returned to Samaná Bay. The fleet sailed about 170 miles over two days and discovered, at Monte Cristi, decomposing bodies of four men; one had a beard implying he had been a Spaniard. On the night of 27 November, cannons and flares were ignited in an attempt to signal La Navidad, but there was no response. A canoe party led by a cousin of Guacanagari presented Columbus with two golden masks and told him that Guacanagari had been injured by another chief, Caonabo, and that except for some Spanish casualties resulting from sickness and quarrel, the rest of his men were well. The next day, the Spanish fleet discovered the burnt remains of the Navidad fortress, and Guacanagari's cousin admitted that the Europeans had been wiped out by Caonabo. Other natives showed the Spaniards some of the bodies, and said that they had "taken three or four women apiece". While some suspicion was placed on Guacanagari, it gradually emerged that two of the Spaniards had formed a murderous gang in search of gold and women, prompting Caonabo's wrath. The fleet then fought the winds, traveling only 32 miles over 25 days, and arriving at a plain on the north coast of Hispaniola on 2 January 1494. There, they established the settlement of La Isabela. Columbus spent some time exploring the interior of the island for gold. Finding some, he established a small fort in the interior.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Columbus left Hispaniola on 24 April 1494, and arrived at the island of Cuba (which he had named Juana during his first voyage) on 30 April and Discovery Bay, Jamaica, on 5 May. He explored the south coast of Cuba, which he believed to be a peninsula of China rather than an island, and several nearby islands including La Evangelista (the Isle of Youth), before returning to Hispaniola on 20 August.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Columbus had planned for Queen Isabella to set up trading posts with the cities of the Far East made famous by Marco Polo, but whose Silk Road and eastern maritime routes had been blockaded to her crown's trade. However, Columbus would never find Cathay (China) or Zipangu (Japan), and there was no longer any Great Khan for trade treaties.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: In 1494, Columbus sent Alonso de Ojeda (whom a contemporary described as "always the first to draw blood wherever there was a war or quarrel") to Cibao (where gold was being mined), which resulted in Ojeda's capturing several natives on an accusation of theft. Ojeda cut the ears off of one native, and sent the others to La Isabela in chains, where Columbus ordered them to be decapitated. During his brief reign, Columbus executed Spanish colonists for minor crimes, and used dismemberment as another form of punishment. By the end of 1494, disease and famine had claimed two-thirds of the Spanish settlers. A native Nahuatl account depicts the social breakdown that accompanied the pandemic: "A great many died from this plague, and many others died of hunger. They could not get up to search for food, and everyone else was too sick to care for them, so they starved to death in their beds."


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: By 1494, Columbus had shared his viceroyship with one of his military officers named Margarit, ordering him to prioritize Christianizing the natives, but that part of their noses and ears should be cut off for stealing. Margarit's men exploited the natives by beating, raping and enslaving them, with none on Hispaniola being baptized for another two years. Columbus's brother Diego warned Margarit to follow the admiral's orders, which provoked him to take three caravels back to Spain. Fray Buil, who was supposed to perform baptisms, accompanied Margarit. After arriving in Spain in late 1494, Buil complained to the Spanish court of the Columbus brothers and that there was no gold. Groups of Margarit's soldiers who remained in the west continued brutalizing the natives. Instead of forbidding this, Columbus participated in enslaving the indigenous people. In February 1495, he took over 1,500 Arawaks, some of whom had rebelled against the oppression of the colonists, and many of whom were subsequently released or taken by the Caribs. That month, Columbus shipped approximately 500 of these Americans to Spain to be sold as slaves; about 40% died en route, and half of the rest were sick upon arrival. In June of that year, the Spanish crown sent ships and supplies to the colony on Hispaniola, which Florentine merchant Gianotto Berardi had helped procure. In October, Berardi received almost 40,000 "maravedís" worth of slaves, who were alleged to be either cannibals or prisoners.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Columbus's tribute system was described by his son Ferdinand: "In the Cibao, where the gold mines were, every person of fourteen years of age or upward was to pay a large hawk's bell of gold dust; all others were each to pay 25 pounds of cotton. Whenever an Indian delivered his tribute, he was to receive a brass or copper token which he must wear about his neck as proof that he had made his payment; any Indian found without such a token was to be punished." The monarchs, who suggested the tokens, called for a light punishment, but any Indian found without a copper token had their hands cut off, which was a likely death sentence. Since there was no abundance of gold on the island, the natives had no chance of meeting Columbus's quota and thousands are reported to have committed suicide. By 1497, the tribute system had all but collapsed.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Columbus became ill in 1495, and during this time, his troops acted out of order, enacting cruelties on the natives, including torturing them to learn where the supposed gold was. When he recovered, he led men and dogs to hunt down natives who fled their forced duties, killing them or cutting off their hands as a warning to others. Brutalities and murders were carried out even against natives who were sick and unarmed. In addition, Spanish colonists under Columbus's rule began to buy and sell natives as slaves, including children.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: The Spanish fleet departed La Isabela on 10 March 1496. Again set back by unfavorable trade winds, supplies began to run low; on 10 April, Columbus requested food from the natives of Guadeloupe. Upon going ashore, the Spaniards were ambushed by arrows; in response, they destroyed some huts. They then held a group of 13 native women and children hostage to force a sale of cassava. The "Niña" and "India" left Guadeloupe on 20 April. On 8 June, the fleeted landed at Portugal, near Odemira, and returned to Spain via the Bay of Cádiz on 11 June.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: According to the abstract of Columbus's journal made by Bartolomé de Las Casas, the objective of the third voyage was to verify the existence of a continent that King John II of Portugal suggested was located to the southwest of the Cape Verde Islands. King John reportedly knew of the existence of such a mainland because "canoes had been found which set out from the coast of Guinea [West Africa] and sailed to the west with merchandise." Italian explorer John Cabot probably reached the mainland of the American continent in June 1497, although his landing site is disputed.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: On 30 May 1498, Columbus left with six ships from Sanlúcar, Spain, for his third trip to the Americas. Three of the ships headed directly for Hispaniola with much-needed supplies, while Columbus took the other three in an exploration of what might lie to the south of the Caribbean islands he had already visited, including a hoped-for passage to continental Asia. Columbus led his fleet to the Portuguese island of Porto Santo, his wife's native land. He then sailed to Madeira and spent some time there with the Portuguese captain João Gonçalves da Camara, before sailing to the Canary Islands and Cape Verde.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: On 13 July, Columbus's fleet entered the doldrums of the mid-Atlantic, where they were becalmed for several days, the heat doing damage to their ships, food, and water supply. An easterly wind finally propelled them westwards, which was maintained until 22 July, when birds flying from southwest to northeast were sighted, and the fleet turned north in the direction of Dominica. The men sighted the land of Trinidad on 31 July, approaching from the southeast. The fleet sailed along the southern coast and entered Dragon's Mouth, anchoring near Soldado Rock (west of Icacos Point, Trinidad's southwesternmost point) where they made contact with a group of Amerindians in canoes. On 1 August, Columbus and his men arrived at a landmass near the mouth of South America's Orinoco river, in the region of modern-day Venezuela. Columbus recognized from the topography that it must be the continent's mainland, but while describing it as an "otro mundo" ('other world'), retained the belief that it was Asia—and perhaps an Earthly Paradise. On 2 August, they landed at Icacos Point (which Columbus named Punta de Arenal) in modern Trinidad, narrowly avoiding a violent encounter with the natives. Early on 4 August, a tsunami nearly capsized Columbus's ship. The men sailed across the Gulf of Paria, and on 5 August, landed on the mainland of South America at the Paria Peninsula. Columbus, suffering from a monthlong bout of insomnia and impaired vision from his bloodshot eyes, authorized the other fleet captains to go ashore first: one planted a cross, and the other recorded that Columbus subsequently landed to formally take the province for Spain. They sailed further west, where the sight of pearls compelled Columbus to send men to obtain some, if not gold. The natives provided nourishment including a maize wine, new to Columbus. Compelled to reach Hispaniola before the food aboard his ship spoiled, Columbus was disappointed to discover that they had sailed into a gulf, and while they had obtained fresh water, they had to go back east to reach open waters again.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Making observations with a quadrant at sea, Columbus inaccurately measured the polar radius of the North Star's diurnal motion to be five degrees, double the value of another erroneous reading he had made from further north. This led him to describe the figure of the Earth as pear-shaped, with the "stalk" portion ascending towards Heaven. (In fact, the Earth ever so slightly is pear-shaped, with its "stalk" pointing north.) He then sailed to the islands of Chacachacare and Margarita (reaching the latter on 14 August), and sighted Tobago (which he named Bella Forma) and Grenada (which he named Concepción).


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: In poor health, Columbus returned to Hispaniola on 19 August, only to find that many of the Spanish settlers of the new colony were in rebellion against his rule, claiming that Columbus had misled them about the supposedly bountiful riches they expected to find. A number of returning settlers and sailors lobbied against Columbus at the Spanish court, accusing him and his brothers of gross mismanagement. Columbus had some of his crew hanged for disobedience. He had an economic interest in the enslavement of the Hispaniola natives and for that reason was not eager to baptize them, which attracted criticism from some churchmen. An entry in his journal from September 1498 reads: "From here one might send, in the name of the Holy Trinity, as many slaves as could be sold ..."


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Columbus was eventually forced to make peace with the rebellious colonists on humiliating terms. In 1500, the Crown had him removed as governor, arrested, and transported in chains to Spain. He was eventually freed and allowed to return to the Americas, but not as governor. As an added insult, in 1499, the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama returned from his first voyage to India, having sailed east around the southern tip of Africa—unlocking a sea route to Asia.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: After his second journey, Columbus had requested that 330 people be sent to stay permanently (though voluntarily) on Hispaniola, all on the king's pay. Specifically, he asked for 100 men to work as wood men soldiers and laborers, 50 farmers, 40 squires, 30 sailors, 30 cabin boys, 20 goldsmiths, 10 gardeners, 20 handymen, and 30 women. In addition to this, plans were made to maintain friars and clergymen, a physician, a pharmacist, an herbalist, and musicians for entertaining the colonists. Fearing that the king was going to restrict money allotted for wages, Columbus suggested that Spanish criminals be pardoned in exchange for a few years unpaid service in Hispaniola, and the king agreed to this. A pardon for the death penalty would require two years of service, and one year of service was required for lesser crimes. They also instructed that those who had been sentenced to exile would also be redirected to be exiled in Hispaniola.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: These new colonists were sent directly to Hispaniola in three ships with supplies, while Columbus was taking an alternate route with the other three ships to explore. As these new Colonists arrived on Hispaniola, a rebellion was brewing under Francisco Roldán (a man Columbus had left as chief mayor, under his brothers Diego and Bartolomew). By the time Columbus arrived on Hispaniola, Roldán held the territory of Xaraguá, and some of the new colonists had joined his rebellion. Over months, Columbus tried negotiating with the rebels. At his behest, Roldán tried the other rebels, ordering his former partner, Adrián de Mújica, to be hanged.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Columbus was physically and mentally exhausted; his body was wracked by arthritis and his eyes by ophthalmia. In October 1499, he sent two ships to Spain, asking the Court of Castile to appoint a royal commissioner to help him govern. On 3 February 1500, he returned to Santo Domingo with plans to sail back to Spain to defend himself from the accounts of the rebels.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: The sovereigns gave Francisco de Bobadilla, a member of the Order of Calatrava, complete control as governor in the Americas. Bobadilla arrived in Santo Domingo in August 1500, where Diego was overseeing the execution of rebels, while Columbus was suppressing a revolt at Grenada. Bobadilla immediately received many serious complaints about all three Columbus brothers, including that "seven Spanish men had been hanged that week," with another five awaiting execution. Bobadilla had orders to find out "which persons were the ones who rose up against the admiral and our justice and for what cause and reason, and what ... damage they have done," then "detain those whom you find guilty ... and confiscate their goods." The crown's command regarding Columbus dictated that the admiral must relinquish all control of the colonies, keeping only his personal wealth.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Bobadilla used force to prevent the execution of several prisoners, and subsequently took charge of Columbus's possessions, including papers that he would have used to defend himself in Spain. Bobadilla suspended the tribute system for a twenty-year period, then summoned the admiral. In early October 1500, Columbus and Diego presented themselves to Bobadilla, and were put in chains aboard "La Gorda", Columbus's own ship. Only the ship's cook was willing to put the shamed admiral in chains. Bobadilla took much of Columbus's gold and other treasures. Ferdinand Columbus recorded that the governor took "testimony from their open enemies, the rebels, and even showing open favor," and auctioned off some of his father's possessions "for one third of their value."


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Bobadilla's inquiry produced testimony that Columbus forced priests not to baptize natives without his express permission, so he could first decide whether or not they should be sold into slavery. He allegedly captured a tribe of 300 under Roldán's protection to be sold into slavery, and informed other Christians that half of the indigenous servants should be yielded to him. Further, he allegedly ordered at least 12 Spaniards to be whipped and tied by the neck and feet for trading gold for something to eat without his permission. Other allegations include that he: ordered a woman to be whipped naked on the back of a donkey for lying that she was pregnant, had a woman's tongue cut out for seeming to insult him and his brothers, cut a Spaniard's throat for being homosexual, ordered Christians to be hanged for stealing bread, ordered a cabin boy's hand cut off and posted publicly for using a trap to catch a fish, and ordered for a man to have his nose and ears cut off, as well as to be whipped, shackled, and banished. Multiple culprits were given a potentially fatal 100 lashes, sometimes while naked. Some fifty men starved to death on La Isabela because of tight control over the ship's rations, despite there being an abundance.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: A number of returned settlers and friars lobbied against Columbus at the Spanish court, accusing him of mismanagement. By his own request, Columbus remained in chains during the entire voyage home. Once in Cádiz, a grieving Columbus wrote to a friend at court:


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: It is now seventeen years since I came to serve these princes with the Enterprise of the Indies. They made me pass eight of them in discussion, and at the end rejected it as a thing of jest. Nevertheless I persisted therein... Over there I have placed under their sovereignty more land than there is in Africa and Europe, and more than 1,700 islands... In seven years I, by the divine will, made that conquest. At a time when I was entitled to expect rewards and retirement, I was incontinently arrested and sent home loaded with chains... The accusation was brought out of malice on the basis of charges made by civilians who had revolted and wished to take possession on the land...


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: I beg your graces, with the zeal of faithful Christians in whom their Highnesses have confidence, to read all my papers, and to consider how I, who came from so far to serve these princes... now at the end of my days have been despoiled of my honor and my property without cause, wherein is neither justice nor mercy.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Columbus and his brothers were jailed for six weeks before the busy King Ferdinand ordered them released. On 12 December 1500, the king and queen summoned the Columbus brothers to their presence at the Alhambra palace in Granada. With his chains at last removed, Columbus wore shortened sleeves so the marks on his skin would be visible. At the palace, the royal couple heard the brothers' pleas; Columbus was brought to tears as he admitted his faults and begged for forgiveness. Their freedom was restored. On 3 September 1501, the door was firmly shut on Columbus's role as governor. From that point forward, Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres was to be the new governor of the Indies, although Columbus retained the titles of admiral and viceroy. A royal mandate dated 27 September ordered Bobadilla to return Columbus's possessions.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: After much persuasion, the sovereigns agreed to fund Columbus's fourth voyage. It would be his final chance to prove himself and become the first man ever to circumnavigate the world. Columbus's goal was to find the Strait of Malacca to the Indian Ocean. On 14 March 1502, Columbus started his fourth voyage with 147 men and with strict orders from the king and queen not to stop at Hispaniola, but only to search for a westward passage to the Indian Ocean mainland. Before he left, Columbus wrote a letter to the Governors of the Bank of Saint George, Genoa, dated at Seville, 2 April 1502. He wrote "Although my body is here my heart is always near you." Accompanied by his stepbrother Bartolomeo, Diego Mendez, and his 13-year-old son Ferdinand, he left Cádiz on 9 May 1502, with his flagship, "Capitana", as well as the "Gallega", "Vizcaína," and "Santiago de Palos". They first sailed to Arzila on the Moroccan coast to rescue the Portuguese soldiers who he heard were under siege by the Moors.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: After using the trade winds to cross the Atlantic in a brisk twenty days, on 15 June, they landed at Carbet on the island of Martinique (Martinica). Columbus anticipated that a hurricane was brewing and had a ship that needed to be replaced, so he headed to Hispaniola, despite being forbidden to land there. He arrived at Santo Domingo on June 29, but was denied port, and the new governor refused to listen to his warning of a storm. While Columbus's ships sheltered at the mouth of the Haina River, Governor Bobadilla departed, with Roldán and Columbus's gold aboard his ship, accompanied by a convoy of 30 other vessels. Columbus's personal gold and other belongings were put on the fragile "Aguya", considered the fleet's least seaworthy vessel. The onset of a hurricane drove some ships ashore, with some sinking in the harbor of Santo Domingo; Bobadilla's ship is thought to have reached the eastern end of Hispaniola before sinking. About 20 other vessels sank in the Atlantic, with a total of some 500 people drowning. Three damaged ships made it back to Santo Domingo; one of these had Juan de la Cosa and Rodrigo de Bastidas on board. Only the "Aguya" made it to Spain, causing some of Columbus's enemies to accuse him of conjuring the storm.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: After the hurricane, Columbus regrouped with his men, and after a brief stop at Jamaica and off the coast of Cuba to replenish, he sailed to modern Central America, arriving at Guanaja (Isla de los Pinos) in the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras on 30 July 1502. Here Bartolomeo found native merchants—possibly (but not conclusively) Mayans—and a large canoe, which was described as "long as a galley" and was filled with cargo. The natives introduced Columbus and his entourage to cacao. Columbus spoke with an elder, and thought he described having seen people with swords and horses (possibly the Spaniards), and that they were "only ten days' journey to the river Ganges". On 14 August, Columbus landed on the mainland of the Americas at Puerto Castilla, near Trujillo, Honduras. He spent two months exploring the coasts of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica looking for the passage, before arriving in Almirante Bay, Panama, on 16 October.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: In mid-November, Columbus was told by some of the natives that a province called Ciguare "lie just nine days' journey by land to the west", or some 200 miles from his location in Veragua. Here was supposed to be found "gold without limit", "people who wear coral on their heads" who "know of pepper", "do business in fairs and markets", and who were "accustomed to warfare". Columbus would later write to the sovereigns that, according to the natives, "the sea encompasses Ciguare and ... it is a journey of ten days to the Ganges River." This could suggest that Columbus knew he had found a unknown continent distinct from Asia.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: On 5 December 1502, Columbus and his crew found themselves in a storm unlike any they had ever experienced. In his journal Columbus writes,For nine days I was as one lost, without hope of life. Eyes never beheld the sea so angry, so high, so covered with foam. The wind not only prevented our progress, but offered no opportunity to run behind any headland for shelter; hence we were forced to keep out in this bloody ocean, seething like a pot on a hot fire. Never did the sky look more terrible; for one whole day and night it blazed like a furnace, and the lightning broke with such violence that each time I wondered if it had carried off my spars and sails; the flashes came with such fury and frightfulness that we all thought that the ship would be blasted. All this time the water never ceased to fall from the sky; I do not say it rained, for it was like another deluge. The men were so worn out that they longed for death to end their dreadful suffering.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: In Panamá, he learned from the Ngobe of gold and a strait to another ocean. After some exploration, he established a garrison at the mouth of Belén River in January 1503. By 6 April, the garrison he had established captured the local tribe leader El Quibían, who had demanded they not go down the Belén River. El Quibían escaped, and returned with an army to attack and repel the Spanish, damaging some of the ships so that one vessel had to be abandoned. Columbus left for Hispaniola on 16 April; on 10 May, he sighted the Cayman Islands, naming them Las Tortugas after the numerous sea turtles there. His ships next sustained more damage in a storm off the coast of Cuba. Unable to travel any farther, the ships were beached in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, on 25 June.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: For a year Columbus and his men remained stranded on Jamaica. A Spaniard, Diego Mendez, and some natives paddled a canoe to get help from Hispaniola. The island's governor, Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres, detested Columbus and obstructed all efforts to rescue him and his men. In the meantime, Columbus had to mesmerize the natives in order to prevent being attacked by them and gain their goodwill. He did so by correctly predicting a lunar eclipse for 29 February 1504, using the "Ephemeris" of the German astronomer Regiomontanus.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: In May 1504 a battle took place between men loyal to Columbus and those loyal to the Porras brothers, in which there was a sword fight between Bartholomew Columbus and Francisco de Porras. Bartholomew won against Francisco but he spared his life. In this way, the mutiny ended. Help finally arrived from the governor Ovando, on 29 June, when a caravel sent by Diego Méndez finally appeared on the island. At this time there were 110 members of the expedition alive out of the 147 who sailed from Spain with Columbus. Due to the strong winds, it took the caravel 45 days to reach La Hispaniola. This was a trip that Diego Méndez had previously made in four days in a canoe.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: About 38 of the 110 men who survived decided not to board again and stayed in Hispaniola instead of returning to Spain. On 11 September 1504, Christopher Columbus and his son Fernando embarked in a caravel to travel from Hispaniola to Spain, paying their corresponding tickets. They arrived in Sanlúcar de Barrameda on 7 November and from there they traveled to Seville.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: The news of Columbus's first voyage set off many other westward explorations by European states, which aimed to profit from trade and colonization. This would instigate a related biological exchange, and trans-Atlantic trade. These events, the effects and consequences of which persist to the present, are sometimes cited as the beginning of the modern era.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: Upon first landing in the West, Columbus pondered enslaving the natives, and upon his return broadcast the perceived willingness of the natives to convert to Christianity. Columbus's second voyage saw the first major skirmish between Europeans and Native Americans for five centuries, when the Vikings had come to the Americas. One of the women was captured in the battle by a friend of Columbus, who let him keep her as a slave; this man subsequently beat and raped her. In 1503, the Spanish monarchs established the Indian reductions, settlements intended to relocate and exploit the natives.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: With the Age of Discovery starting in the 15th century, Europeans explored the world by ocean, searching for particular trade goods, humans to enslave, and trading locations and ports. The most desired trading goods were gold, silver and spices. For the Catholic monarchies of Spain and Portugal, a division of influence of the land discovered by Columbus became necessary to avoid conflict. This was resolved by papal intervention in 1494 when the Treaty of Tordesillas purported to divide the world between the two powers. The Portuguese were to receive everything outside of Europe east of a line that ran 270 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. The Spanish received everything west of this line, territory that was still almost completely unknown, and proved to be primarily the vast majority of the continents of the Americas and the Islands of the Pacific Ocean. In 1500, the Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral arrived at a point on the eastern coast of South America on the Portuguese side of the dividing line. This would lead to the Portuguese colonization of what is now Brazil.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: In 1499, Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci participated in a voyage to the western world with Columbus's associates Alonso de Ojeda and Juan de la Cosa. Columbus referred to the West Indies as the "Indias Occidentales" ('West Indies') in his 1502 "Book of Privileges", calling them "unknown to all the world". He gathered information later that year from the natives of Central America which seem to further indicate that he realized he had found a new land. Vespucci, who had initially followed Columbus in the belief that he had reached Asia, suggested in a 1503 letter to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco that he had known for two years that these lands composed a new continent. A letter to Piero Soderini, published c. 1505 and purportedly by Vespucci, claims that he first voyaged to the American mainland in 1497, a year before Columbus. In 1507, a year after Columbus's death, the New World was named "America" on a map by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller. Waldseemüller retracted this naming in 1513, seemingly after Sebastian Cabot, Las Casas, and many historians convincingly argued that the Soderini letter had been a falsification. On his new map, Waldseemüller labelled the continent discovered by Columbus "Terra Incognita" ('unknown land').


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: On 25 September 1513, the Spanish conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa, exploring overland, became the first European to encounter the Pacific Ocean from the shores of the Americas, calling it the "South Sea". Later, on 29 October 1520, Magellan's circumnavigation expedition discovered the first maritime passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, at the southern end of what is now Chile (Strait of Magellan), and his fleet ended up sailing around the whole Earth. Almost a century later, another, wider passage to the Pacific would be discovered farther to the south, bordering Cape Horn.


title: Voyages of Christopher Columbus

text: In the Americas the Spanish found a number of empires that were as large and populous as those in Europe. Small bodies of Spanish conquistadors, with large armies of indigenous groups, managed to conquer these states. The most notable amongst them were the Aztec Empire in modern Mexico (conquered in 1521) and the Inca Empire in modern Peru (conquered in 1532). During this time, pandemics of European diseases such as smallpox devastated the indigenous populations. Once Spanish sovereignty was established, the Spanish focused on the extraction and export of gold and silver.


title: Coital alignment technique

text: The coital alignment technique (CAT) sex position, known colloquially as grinding the corn, is used primarily as a variant of the missionary position and is designed to maximize clitoral stimulation during sexual intercourse. This is achieved by combining the "riding high" variation of the missionary position with pressure-counterpressure movements performed by each partner in rhythm with coitus.


title: Coital alignment technique

text: When used as a variant of the missionary position, the male lies above the female but moves upward along the woman's body, until his erection, which would otherwise point "up," is pointing "down", the dorsal side of the penis now pressing against the clitoris. As opposed to the missionary position, the male’s body moves downward (relative to the female's) during the inward stroke, and upward for the outward stroke. She may also wrap her legs around his. Sexual movement is focused in the pelvises, without leverage from the arms or legs. The rocking upward stroke (where the female leads) and downward stroke (where the male leads) of sexual movement builds arousal that partners let develop and peak naturally.


title: Coital alignment technique

text: The technique for coital alignment was first defined by American psychotherapist Edward Eichel, and the original study was published by Eichel, De Simone Eichel, and Kule in 1988 in the "Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy." Since then, the topic has been studied several times in the same journal.


title: Coital alignment technique

text: A 1992 report by Kaplan and her sex therapist trainees described the team's cursory trial of the CAT, acknowledging that they may have resorted to old routines after only a few attempts out of fear of disappointing their partners. Their call for other sex therapists to give the technique more rigorous testing instigated a series of controlled studies by Hurlbert and colleagues reporting statistically significant results in the treatment of female hypoactive sexual desire.


title: Martin Braithwaite

text: Martin Christensen Braithwaite (; born 5 June 1991) is a Danish professional footballer who plays for La Liga club Espanyol and the Denmark national team. He plays mainly as a forward, but he can also play as a winger.


title: Martin Braithwaite

text: Having begun his career at Esbjerg fB, he went on to play for Toulouse and Bordeaux in Ligue 1, and Leganés and Barcelona of La Liga. He also spent two years in England with Middlesbrough.


title: Martin Braithwaite

text: Braithwaite made his senior international debut for Denmark in 2013 and has earned 60 caps. He was part of their squads at the 2018 FIFA World Cup, UEFA Euro 2020 and 2022 FIFA World Cup, reaching the semi-finals of the 2020 tournament.


title: Martin Braithwaite

text: Braithwaite started out in the academy at Sædding-Guldager Idrætsforening (SGI), after which he joined the biggest club in his city, Esbjerg fB. He then spent a short time at FC Midtjylland's sports academy, before moving back to Esbjerg, signing a three-year youth contract in 2007. During his second stint at the Esbjerg academy, Braithwaite went on trials with both Reggina and Newcastle United. He eventually made his Esbjerg debut in 2009, making 63 Superliga appearances for the club and scoring 12 goals, including nine in the 2012–13 season during which he appeared in every league game for the club. He won the Danish Cup with the club in 2012–13, scoring two goals in the semi-final second leg win over Brøndby IF.


title: Martin Braithwaite

text: Following his impressive displays for Esbjerg in the 2013 Superliga spring season and the Danish Cup he was called up to the Danish national squad in the summer of 2013. At the same time he was being rumoured to be attracting the interest of a number of European clubs including Auxerre, Rennes, Celtic and Hull City.


title: Martin Braithwaite

text: On 14 August 2013, while away on national duty for a friendly international against Poland, Danish public broadcaster "DR" reported that Braithwaite had been sold to French club Toulouse for an estimated DKK 15 million (roughly €2 million).


title: Martin Braithwaite

text: Braithwaite scored a career-best 11 league goals in both 2015–16 and 2016–17. His tally for the latter campaign included two goals in a 4–1 home win over rivals Bordeaux in the "Derby de la Garonne" on 20 August 2016, and another two on 14 October in a 3–1 win over eventual champions Monaco, also at the Stadium de Toulouse.


title: Martin Braithwaite

text: On 13 July 2017, Braithwaite signed a four-year contract with EFL Championship club Middlesbrough for an undisclosed fee, reported to be around £9 million. Under the initial management of Garry Monk, he became the club's third signing of the season, after Jonny Howson and Cyrus Christie. Braithwaite made his league debut for the club on 5 August 2017 at the Molineux Stadium, where Middlesbrough were defeated 1–0 by Wolverhampton Wanderers. He scored his first goal for the club on 30 September 2017, in a 2–2 draw against Brentford at the Riverside Stadium.


title: Martin Braithwaite

text: Braithwaite was loaned out to his former club Toulouse's rivals Bordeaux on 31 January 2018 for the rest of the season. He scored four goals during his time there, including two in a 4–2 home derby win over his previous employer on 12 May. He returned to Middlesbrough for the 2018–19 season, but quickly expressed his desire to leave the club and go to Spain to play instead. This was much to the dismay of "Boro" manager, Tony Pulis. After his unsuccessful attempt to leave the club in the 2018 summer transfer window, Braithwaite played the first half of the season for Middlesbrough, scoring three goals in 18 appearances.


title: Martin Braithwaite

text: Braithwaite joined La Liga side CD Leganés at the beginning of the 2019 January transfer window on a loan deal until the end of season. He made his league debut for the club on 12 January, in a 1–0 victory against SD Huesca, coming on as a substitute for Guido Carrillo for the last 26 minutes, and scored his first goal four days later in a 1–0 Copa del Rey home win against Real Madrid.


title: Martin Braithwaite

text: Braithwaite scored his first league goal in a 1–3 loss at FC Barcelona on 20 January 2019, and finished the campaign with four goals in 19 league appearances. On 24 July, he agreed to a permanent four-year deal with the "Pepineros" for a rumoured fee of €5 million, hence becoming the second most expensive player in the club's history.


title: Martin Braithwaite

text: On 20 February 2020, Barcelona triggered Braithwaite's release clause of €18 million and signed him on a four-and-a-half-year contract. His release clause was set to €300 million. Barcelona were granted an emergency exception to sign Braithwaite outside of a transfer window because of the long-term injury to Ousmane Dembélé. Two days after signing, Braithwaite made his debut in a home match against Eibar, coming on as a substitute in the 72nd minute. He assisted the fourth and fifth goals in the 5–0 win, both off deflections. On 13 June 2020, Braithwaite scored his first goal for Barcelona following an assist by Lionel Messi in a 4–0 victory against RCD Mallorca.


title: Martin Braithwaite

text: On 24 November 2020, Braithwaite scored his first two Champions League goals in a 4–0 away win over Dynamo Kyiv, a match in which he also had an assist, in the 2020–21 season. On 2 December, he scored his third goal in the competition in the first half of the match against Ferencváros. On 3 March 2021, he scored the winning goal in a 3–0 win over Sevilla after extra time to secure Barcelona's place in the 2021 Copa del Rey Final.


title: Martin Braithwaite

text: On 15 August 2021, Braithwaite scored a brace and assisted teammate Sergi Roberto's goal in Barcelona's opening-day match of the 2021–22 season; a 4–2 home win against Real Sociedad. The following month, he was ruled out for three to four months with a knee cartilage injury against Getafe CF; fellow attackers Dembélé, Ansu Fati and Sergio Agüero were already injured, while Messi had left and Antoine Griezmann was out on loan.


title: Martin Braithwaite

text: On 1 September 2022, Braithwaite signed a three-year contract with Espanyol as a free agent. On 4 September, he scored a goal on his debut in a 1–0 away victory over Athletic Bilbao.


title: Martin Braithwaite

text: Having already represented several Danish national youth teams, in the summer of 2012, Braithwaite was offered the chance to represent Guyana, being eligible through his Guyanese father. He declined the offer and went on to make his senior debut for the Danish national team in June 2013 in a friendly against Georgia, starting the game and playing the first half. He remained in the squad for the 2014 World Cup qualification match against Armenia. Braithwaite scored his first international goal in his second match in a friendly in August 2013 against Poland.


title: Martin Braithwaite

text: In May 2018, he was named in Denmark’s final 23-man squad for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia. On 16 October that year, he scored in a 2–0 friendly win over Austria, ending a five-year goal drought.


title: Martin Braithwaite

text: Braithwaite was part of the Danish squad that reached the semi-finals of UEFA Euro 2020, held in 2021. He scored the last goal of their 4–0 last-16 win over Wales in Amsterdam.


title: Martin Braithwaite

text: Braithwaite has a Guyanese father and his younger sister Mathilde (born 2002) plays football for KoldingQ and for Denmark's U-16 national women's football team. His father Keith's birth surname was "Brathwaite", the more common spelling in the Caribbean, but it was changed by US authorities to "Braithwaite" when Keith arrived in the country.


title: Martin Braithwaite

text: Braithwaite is the nephew and business partner of the Danish-born, American-based, real estate developer Gareth Roger James Smith. They co-own real estate in the New York Market and are building a high-rise in Jersey City, New Jersey.


title: Martin Braithwaite

text: Braithwaite is married to French entrepreneur, journalist and television personality Anne-Laure Louis Braithwaite. They have two sons together. He is also the stepfather of his wife's two children from a previous relationship.


title: Dravidian peoples

text: The Dravidian peoples, or Dravidians, are an ethnolinguistic and cultural group living in South Asia who predominantly speak any of the Dravidian languages. There are around 250 million native speakers of Dravidian languages. Dravidian speakers form the majority of the population of South India and are natively found in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. Dravidian peoples are also present in Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa, Myanmar, East Africa, the Caribbean, and the United Arab Emirates through recent migration.


title: Dravidian peoples

text: Proto-Dravidian may have been spoken in the Indus civilization, suggesting a "tentative date of Proto-Dravidian around the early part of the third millennium", after which it branched into various Dravidian languages. South Dravidian I (including pre-Tamil) and South Dravidian II (including pre-Telugu) split around the eleventh century BCE, with the other major branches splitting off at around the same time.


title: Dravidian peoples

text: The origins of the Dravidians are a "very complex subject of research and debate". They may have been indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, but origins in, or influence from, Western Asia have also been proposed. Their origins are often viewed as being connected with the Indus Valley civilisation, hence people and language spread east and southwards after the demise of the Indus Valley Civilisation in the early second millennium BCE, some propose not long before the arrival of Indo-Aryan speakers, with whom they intensively interacted. Genetically, the ancient Indus Valley people were composed of an Iranian hunter gatherers-related and an Ancient Ancestral South Indian (AASI) component, while present-day Dravidian speakers also carry a small portion of steppe pastoralist and additional AASI ancestry.


title: Dravidian peoples

text: The third century BCE onwards saw the development of many great empires in South India like Pandya, Chola, Pallava, Satavahana, Chalukya, Kakatiya and Rashtrakuta. Medieval South Indian guilds and trading organisations like the "Ayyavole of Karnataka and Manigramam" played an important role in the Southeast Asia trade, and the cultural Indianisation of the region.


title: Dravidian peoples

text: Dravidian visual art is dominated by stylised temple architecture in major centres, and the production of images on stone and bronze sculptures. The sculpture dating from the Chola period has become notable as a symbol of Hinduism. The Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple located in Indian state of Tamil Nadu is often considered as the largest functioning Hindu temple in the world. The temple is built in Dravidian style and occupies an area of 156 acres (631,000 m).


title: Dravidian peoples

text: The origin of the Sanskrit word ' is Tamil. In Prakrit, words such as "Damela", "Dameda", "Dhamila" and "Damila", which later evolved from "Tamila", could have been used to denote an ethnic identity. In the Sanskrit tradition the word ' was also used to denote the geographical region of South India. Epigraphic evidence of an ethnic group termed as such is found in ancient India where a number of inscriptions have come to light datable from the 6th to the 5th century BCE mentioning "Damela" or "Dameda" persons. The Hathigumpha inscription of the Kalinga ruler Kharavela refers to a "T(ra)mira samghata" (Confederacy of Tamil rulers) dated to 150 BCE. It also mentions that the league of Tamil kingdoms had been in existence for 113 years by that time. In Amaravati in present-day Andhra Pradesh there is an inscription referring to a "Dhamila-vaniya" (Tamil trader) datable to the 3rd century CE. Another inscription of about the same time in Nagarjunakonda seems to refer to a "Damila". A third inscription in Kanheri Caves refers to a "Dhamila-gharini" (Tamil house-holder). In the Buddhist Jataka story known as "Akiti Jataka" there is a mention to "Damila-rattha" (Tamil dynasty).


title: Dravidian peoples

text: While the English word "Dravidian" was first employed by Robert Caldwell in his book of comparative Dravidian grammar based on the usage of the Sanskrit word ' in the work "Tantravārttika" by , the word ' in Sanskrit has been historically used to denote geographical regions of southern India as whole. Some theories concern the direction of derivation between ' and '; such linguists as Zvelebil assert that the direction is from ' to '.


title: Dravidian peoples

text: The largest Dravidian ethnic groups are the Telugus from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, the Tamils from Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore, the Kannadigas from Karnataka, the Malayalis from Kerala, and the Tulu people from Karnataka.


title: Dravidian peoples

text: The Dravidian language family is one of the oldest in the world. Six languages are currently recognized by India as Classical languages and four of them are Dravidian languages Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.


title: Dravidian peoples

text: The most commonly spoken Dravidian languages are Telugu (తెలుగు), Tamil (தமிழ்), Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ), Malayalam (മലയാളം), Brahui (براہوئی), Tulu (തᤲളᤲ), Gondi and Coorg. There are three subgroups within the Dravidian language family: North Dravidian, Central Dravidian, and South Dravidian, matching for the most part the corresponding regions in the Indian subcontinent.


title: Dravidian peoples

text: Dravidian grammatical impact on the structure and syntax of Indo-Aryan languages is considered far greater than the Indo-Aryan grammatical impact on Dravidian. Some linguists explain this anomaly by arguing that Middle Indo-Aryan and New Indo-Aryan were built on a Dravidian substratum. There are also hundreds of Dravidian loanwords in Indo-Aryan languages, and vice versa.


title: Dravidian peoples

text: According to David McAlpin and his Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis, the Dravidian languages were brought to India by immigration into India from Elam (not to be confused with Eelam), located in present-day southwestern Iran. In the 1990s, Renfrew and Cavalli-Sforza have also argued that Proto-Dravidian was brought to India by farmers from the Iranian part of the Fertile Crescent, but more recently Heggerty and Renfrew noted that "McAlpin's analysis of the language data, and thus his claims, remain far from orthodoxy", adding that Fuller finds no relation of Dravidian language with other languages, and thus assumes it to be native to India. Renfrew and Bahn conclude that several scenarios are compatible with the data, and that "the linguistic jury is still very much out."


title: Dravidian peoples

text: As a proto-language, the Proto-Dravidian language is not itself attested in the historical record. Its modern conception is based solely on reconstruction. It is suggested that the language was spoken in the 4th millennium BCE, and started disintegrating into various branches around 3rd millennium BCE. According to Krishnamurti, Proto-Dravidian may have been spoken in the Indus civilisation, suggesting a "tentative date of Proto-Dravidian around the early part of the third millennium." Krishnamurti further states that South Dravidian I (including pre-Tamil) and South Dravidian II (including pre-Telugu) split around the eleventh century BCE, with the other major branches splitting off at around the same time.


title: Dravidian peoples

text: The origins of the Dravidians are a "very complex subject of research and debate." They may have been indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, but origins in, or influence from, western Asia have also been proposed. According to Narasimhan et al. (2019), early Dravidians formed as a mixture of Ancient Ancestral South Indians ("AASI" indigenous South Asian hunter-gatherers distantly related to the Andamanese and other East Eurasians), and Neolithic west Asian farmers from Iran. He notes that there are two scenarios for the origin and spread of Dravidians. Either an origin from the Indus Valley region which is based on genetic data as well as archaeological and linguistic evidence, in which proto-Dravidian was spread by peoples of the IVC, or from the pre-Indus groups of eastern peninsular India, which would be consistent with vocabulary about flora and fauna of peninsular India. The present people of the Indian subcontinent, including the Dravidians, are of a mixed genetic origin and have ancestry from indigenous South Asian Hunter Gatherers, Neolithic west Asian farmers from Iran and Steppe Yamnaya pastoralists.


title: Dravidian peoples

text: Although in modern times speakers of various Dravidian languages have mainly occupied the southern portion of India, Dravidian speakers must have been widespread throughout the Indian subcontinent before the Indo-Aryan migration into the subcontinent. According to Horen Tudu, "many academic researchers have attempted to connect the Dravidians with the remnants of the great Indus Valley civilisation, located in Northwestern India... but [i]t is mere speculation that the Dravidians are the ensuing post–Indus Valley settlement of refugees into South and Central India." The most noteworthy scholar making such claims is Asko Parpola, who did extensive research on the IVC-scripts. The Brahui population of Balochistan in Pakistan has been taken by some as the linguistic equivalent of a relict population, perhaps indicating that Dravidian languages were formerly much more widespread and were supplanted by the incoming Indo-Aryan languages. Nowadays, Tamils, Malayalis, Telugus and Kannadigas make up around 20% of India's population.


title: Dravidian peoples

text: Several studies have shown that the Indian subcontinent harbours two major ancestral components, namely the "Ancestral North Indians" (ANI) which is broadly related to West Eurasians and the "Ancestral South Indians" (ASI) which is clearly distinct from ANI. Later, a component termed "AASI", found to be the predominant element in ASI, was distinguished in subsequent studies. As no "ASI" or "AASI" ancient DNA is available, the indigenous Andamanese (exemplified by the Onge, a possibly distantly related population native to the Andaman Islands) is used as an imperfect proxy. The two groups (ANI and ASI) extensively mixed in India between 4,200 and 1,900 years ago (2200 BCE – 100 CE). In fact, Dr. David Reich states that sometime between 1,900 and 4,200 years ago, "profound, pervasive convulsive mixture [between the ANI and ASI] occurred, affecting every Indo-European and Dravidian group in India without exception." Because of this mixing, according to Reich et al., both ANI and ASI ancestry are found all over the subcontinent (in both northern and southern India) in varying proportions, and that "ANI ancestry ranges from 39–71% in India, and is higher in traditionally upper caste and Indo-European speakers".


title: Dravidian peoples

text: According to a large craniometric study (Raghavan and Bulbeck et al. 2013) the native populations of India and Sri Lanka have distinct craniometric and anthropologic ancestry. Both southern and northern groups are most similar to each other, but also show deep relations to populations of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. The study further showed that the native South Asians, north and south, form a unique group distinct from "Australo-Melanesians". However Raghavan and Bulbeck et al., while noting the distinct differences of South Asian from Andamanese and Australoid crania, explain that this is not in conflict with genetic evidence showing a partial common ancestry and genetic affinity between South Asians and the native Andamanese, stating that "the differences may be in part due the greater craniometric specialisation of South Asians compared to Andamanese".


title: Dravidian peoples

text: Recent studies have shown that the proto-Dravidians were descendants of neolithic farmers, who are suggested to have migrated from the Zagros Mountains in modern-day Iran to northern South Asia some 10,000 years ago. According to another study, the neolithic farmers ancestry component forms the main ancestry of modern South Asians. These neolithic farmers migrated from the Fertile Crescent, most likely from a region near the Zagros Mountains in modern-day Iran, to South Asia some 10,000 years ago. On the other hand, there is also evidence that Dravidians originated from the ASI-related populations.


title: Dravidian peoples

text: According to Gallego Romero et al. (2011), their research on lactose tolerance in India suggests that "the west Eurasian genetic contribution identified by Reich et al. (2009) principally reflects gene flow from Iran and the Middle East". Gallego Romero notes that Indians who are lactose-tolerant show a genetic pattern regarding this tolerance which is "characteristic of the common European mutation". According to Romero, this suggests that "the most common lactose tolerance mutation made a two-way migration out of the Middle East less than 10,000 years ago. While the mutation spread across Europe, another explorer must have brought the mutation eastward to India – likely traveling along the coast of the Persian Gulf where other pockets of the same mutation have been found."


title: Dravidian peoples

text: Asko Parpola, who regards the Harappans to have been Dravidian, notes that Mehrgarh (7000 BCE to c. 2500 BCE), to the west of the Indus River valley, is a precursor of the Indus Valley Civilisation, whose inhabitants migrated into the Indus Valley and became the Indus Valley Civilisation. It is one of the earliest sites with evidence of farming and herding in South Asia. According to Lukacs and Hemphill, while there is a strong continuity between the neolithic and chalcolithic (Copper Age) cultures of Mehrgarh, dental evidence shows that the chalcolithic population did not descend from the neolithic population of Mehrgarh, which "suggests moderate levels of gene flow". They further noted that "the direct lineal descendants of the Neolithic inhabitants of Mehrgarh are to be found to the south and the east of Mehrgarh, in northwestern India and the western edge of the Deccan plateau", with neolithic Mehrgarh showing greater affinity with chalocolithic Inamgaon, south of Mehrgarh, than with chalcolithic Mehrgarh.


title: Dravidian peoples

text: According to Mondal et al. 2017, based on paternal DNA analysis, Indians are most closely related to southern Europeans and people in the Levant and that this relation existed already before Steppe migration:


title: Dravidian peoples

text: Yelmen et al. (2019) shows that the native South Asian genetic component is distinct from the Andamanese and thus that the Andamanese (Onge) are an imperfect and imprecise proxy for "ASI" ancestry in South Asians (there is difficulty detecting ASI ancestry in the North Indian Gujarati when the Andamanese Onge are used). Yemen et al. suggest that the South Indian tribal Paniya people would serve as a better proxy than the Andamanese (Onge) for the "native South Asian" component in modern South Asians.


title: Dravidian peoples

text: Shinde et al. (2019) found that their analysed sample had little to none of the "Steppe ancestry" component associated with Indo-European migrations into India, which occurred after the decline of the IVC.


title: Dravidian peoples

text: The Indus Valley civilisation (2,600–1,900 BCE) located in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent is sometimes identified as having been Dravidian. Already in 1924, when announcing the discovery of the IVC, John Marshall stated that (one of) the language(s) may have been Dravidic. Cultural and linguistic similarities have been cited by researchers Henry Heras, Kamil Zvelebil, Asko Parpola and Iravatham Mahadevan as being strong evidence for a proto-Dravidian origin of the ancient Indus Valley civilisation. The discovery in Tamil Nadu of a late Neolithic (early 2nd millennium BCE, i.e. post-dating Harappan decline) stone celt allegedly marked with Indus signs has been considered by some to be significant for the Dravidian identification.


title: Dravidian peoples

text: Yuri Knorozov surmised that the symbols represent a logosyllabic script and suggested, based on computer analysis, an agglutinative Dravidian language as the most likely candidate for the underlying language. Knorozov's suggestion was preceded by the work of Henry Heras, who suggested several readings of signs based on a proto-Dravidian assumption.


title: Dravidian peoples

text: Linguist Asko Parpola writes that the Indus script and Harappan language are "most likely to have belonged to the Dravidian family". Parpola led a Finnish team in investigating the inscriptions using computer analysis. Based on a proto-Dravidian assumption, they proposed readings of many signs, some agreeing with the suggested readings of Heras and Knorozov (such as equating the "fish" sign with the Dravidian word for fish, "min") but disagreeing on several other readings. A comprehensive description of Parpola's work until 1994 is given in his book "Deciphering the Indus Script".


title: Dravidian peoples

text: Paleoclimatologists believe the fall of the Indus Valley Civilisation and eastward migration during the late Harappan period was due to climate change in the region, with a 200-year long drought being the major factor. The Indus Valley Civilisation seemed to slowly lose their urban cohesion, and their cities were gradually abandoned during the late Harappan period, followed by eastward migrations before the Indo-Aryan migration into the Indian subcontinent.


title: Dravidian peoples

text: The process of post-Harappan/Dravidian influences on southern India has tentatively been called "Dravidianization", and is reflected in the post-Harappan mixture of IVC and Ancient Ancestral South Indian people. Yet, according to Krishnamurti, Dravidian languages may have reached south India before Indo-Aryan migrations.


title: Dravidian peoples

text: The Dravidian language influenced the Indo-Aryan languages. Dravidian languages show extensive lexical (vocabulary) borrowing, but only a few traits of structural (either phonological or grammatical) borrowing from Indo-Aryan, whereas Indo-Aryan shows more structural than lexical borrowings from the Dravidian languages. Many of these features are already present in the oldest known Indo-Aryan language, the language of the "Rigveda" (c. 1500 BCE), which also includes over a dozen words borrowed from Dravidian. The linguistic evidence for Dravidian impact grows increasingly strong as we move from the Samhitas down through the later Vedic works and into the classical post-Vedic literature. This represents an early religious and cultural fusion or synthesis between ancient Dravidians and Indo-Aryans.


title: Dravidian peoples

text: According to Mallory there are an estimated thirty to forty Dravidian loanwords in Rig Veda. Some of those for which Dravidian etymologies are certain include "kulāya" "nest", "kulpha" "ankle", "" "stick", "kūla" "slope", "bila" "hollow", "khala" "threshing floor". While J. Bloch and M. Witzel believe that the Indo-Aryans moved into an already Dravidian-speaking area after the oldest parts of the Rig Veda were already composed.