He ventured where no other man of his age dared to go.

He saw things no other man of his age had ever seen.

He discovered a new world.

For centuries he was universally admired as a hero.

Now he's widely considered to be a dispoiler of paradise,

and in slaver, and a genocidal maniac.

I'm talking, of course, about Christopher Columbus.

So which is true?

Is he a hero or a villain?

The truth is complicated, as the truth often is,

especially when you have to go back 500 years to find it.

But let's try to get as close as we can.

Columbus was born in 1451 in the port city of Genoa, Italy.

At a time when birth often determined destiny,

his origins were entirely unremarkable.

His father was a middle-class woolweaver

who expected his son to follow the same path,

but Columbus had different plans.

The age of discovery was dawning.

The future belonged to the bold, and the bold went to sea.

By the time he turned 30, Columbus had sailed to Iceland, Ireland, and Africa.

Somewhere on his many voyages, he became obsessed with the idea

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