How Great is Christopher Columbus Really??? And How Can Your Environment Effect Your Future?

In history class a few days ago, we discussed Christopher Columbus and the discovery of the Americas. We talked about Christopher Columbus himself and how he managed to come across America and how it is way more of a coincidence then most people think.

Christopher Columbus grew up in Italy, and when he was a young boy he was given several opportunities to sail ships and deliver things around the Mediterranean. These opportunities were given to him only because he lived in Italy and he lived on the shore. He became a really good boat sailor but he only had experience in the Mediterranean Sea, not in oceans with currents and tides. He thought that he could easily just sail to India because he was so good at sailing the Mediterranean. What he didn't know was that there were currents that would take him to a completely different place, the Americas. That is why the Native Americans were called Indians because Christopher Columbus thought that he was in India.  So is it really Christopher Columbus who gets the credit for "discovering" America? Or does the credit go to fate? Or the currents in the ocean? And also, Christopher Columbus would not have been the one to discover America if he hadn't lived where he did, because he got an opportunity to sail at a young age when most people didn't get that opportunity. Someone else would have discovered America, or it wouldn't have been discovered at all. 

That leads into the other part of my question, how can environment affect your future? I think that environment for sure effects your future a lot. Like, would Christopher Columbus have found America if he wasn't born in Italy? It is possible but very, VERY unlikely because he would not have been given the opportunities that he got. He might have done something else that made him famous but it would have most likely been something totally different. But location and environment doesn't create a brilliant mind, people are just born that way. Like if Steve Jobs wasn't born where he was and gotten adopted, would there be Apple? Maybe not but maybe it is fate because no matter what, Steve Jobs was born with the mind that he had and even location couldn't have changed that. So it all comes down to fate I guess, I think I talked about this in a previous blog but it still has relevance to this one. There is no way to know if it fate or not but I think that no matter where you are born, it is till possible to do anything if you were born to do it.