See, but monuments like this distort our view of human history to the point that people might think it reasonable to assume that no one in the past could possibly comprehend that torturing people, cutting off limbs, and selling little girls as sex slaves might be immoral. Columbus was condemned for his actions in his own time. This idea that we only recently became capable of understanding the moral implications of our actions is a deliberate distortion that excuses the atrocities of the past instead of placing them in their actual historic context. It does not actually teach us history; it purifies and excuses it.
A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand. - Christopher Columbus in a letter written to a friend in 1500.
