A City On Mars

[mikegarrison]

On 4/24/2024 at 10:44 PM, kerbiloid said:

Afair, Columbus previously had spent some time in Iceland

Columbus never spent any time in Iceland.

He had no idea that the Americas were there at all, even when he found the islands that we now call Cuba and Hispaniola. He thought he had found islands off the coast of China.

[PakledHostage]

7 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Columbus never spent any time in Iceland.

Columbus didn't, and it's true that he died convinced he'd found Asia, but several Icelanders made pilgrimages to Rome in the 11th century, with knowledge of the existence of lands to the west.  Gudrid the Far-Traveled even became a nun in Rome after having given birth to the first European in Vinland (which was likely located in modern day Nova Sotia or New Brunswick). If the church was paying attention, they would have known of the existence of North America,  500 years before Columbus. (And they probably were paying attention, but were like "meh"...)

Edited April 27 by PakledHostage

[kerbiloid]

8 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

He thought he had found islands off the coast of China.

I believe that a person who crossed the ocean, was enough experienced in star navigation and thus aware of the Earth radius to understand that no China can be 30 000 km across.
Exactly like Drake and others unlikely could believe in West India and East India occupying similar territory together.

It's another question that they called every non-Bibleic land "China" or "India", and were keeping in secret everything possible to help their competitors with finding the lands they had found.
Nobody was declaring "All! Look, we have found Australia! But we won't tell you where it is!"

All of them got used to keep the tongue behind the teeth.

So, like in the USSR there were cities like Chelyabinsk and Chelyabinsk-70, Arzamas and Arzamas-16, Moscow and Moscow-400 and so on, separated with hundreds kilometers, read their "China" as "China-92", and "India" as "India-12" and "India-14", or "a china", "an india".

Edited April 27 by kerbiloid

[mikegarrison]

29 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

I believe that a person who crossed the ocean, was enough experienced in star navigation and thus aware of the Earth radius to understand that no China can be 30 000 km across.

Believe what you want, I guess, but Columbus was not aware of the correct radius of the Earth, even though it had been pretty accurately calculated more than 1000 years before him. That's why he had so much trouble finding backers who were willing to fund his expedition -- most everyone else was aware that China was much farther away than Columbus believed it to be.

[PakledHostage]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

I believe that a person who crossed the ocean, was enough experienced in star navigation and thus aware of the Earth radius to understand that no China can be 30 000 km across.

Please see my post earlier in this thread. Europeans believed the Earth to be about 26000 km in circumference until Magellan's expedition sailed across the Pacific 25 years after Columbus. Magellan himself expected the Pacific to be a small sea separating the Americas from Asia. It scared the *crap* out of them when they ended up sailing for 40 days across it to reach more familiar lands. (Magellan's slave could speak Malay and found that he could speak with some of the people where they first made landfall, near the modern day Phillipines,  so they knew they' d reached somewhere close to the Malaccas.)

Edited April 27 by PakledHostage

[kerbiloid]

9 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

That's why he had so much trouble finding backers who were willing to fund his expedition -- most everyone else was aware that China was much farther away than Columbus believed it to be.

Columbus could believe that he is going to cross a 30 000 or a 60 000 km wide ocean, but after he had arrived, he knew exactly, what distance separates him from the Europe.
And especially, several crossings later.

So, he could be telling everybody that he visited China, but he definitely was aware that it is "another China".

7 minutes ago, PakledHostage said:

Europeans believed the Earth to be about 26000 km in diameter up until Magellan's expedition sailed across the Pacific 25 years after Columbus.

It makes even more impossible for Columbus to believe in a 60 000 km wide China.

Edited April 27 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

I believe that a person who crossed the ocean, was enough experienced in star navigation and thus aware of the Earth radius to understand that no China can be 30 000 km across.

He bungled his calculations. This was a major criticism of the time, but he lucked out and found Hispaniola where he expected Nippon, instead of being eaten by his own starving crew.

[kerbiloid]

9 minutes ago, DDE said:

He bungled his calculations.

By almost two orders of magnitude.

Anyway, he did it four times.

[PakledHostage]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

It makes even more impossible for Columbus to believe in a 60 000 km wide China.

Sorry. I wrote 26000 km in diameter.  I meant 26000 km circumference. 

[kerbiloid]

Even if he was fooled first time, he knew exactly what distance does it take at the end of his life.

And it was many times shorter that any Earth circumference.

[DDE]

8 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

By almost two orders of magnitude.

Anyway, he did it four times.

He kept stepping on a rake, and it kept not hitting him SMH.

[kerbiloid]

15 minutes ago, DDE said:

He kept stepping on a rake, and it kept not hitting him SMH.

And as experienced trader, he didn't see any difference between the China/Nippon goods and what he is getting on Hispanola.

The famous Haitian pepper...

Oh, wait... The famous Virginian pepper. That's why they were calling it India.

Edited April 27 by kerbiloid

[darthgently]

I'm wondering if the myth of infallible royalty didn't play a role.  Once the Spanish royalty had announced a Western route to China perhaps Columbus was pressured into sticking with his original story so they could save face 

[DDE]

5 hours ago, darthgently said:

I'm wondering if the myth of infallible royalty didn't play a role.  Once the Spanish royalty had announced a Western route to China perhaps Columbus was pressured into sticking with his original story so they could save face 

To be fair, the eastern route was already taken - not sure if formally - by the Portuguese. Similarly, many years later the English would look for a northern route to India and China through the Siberian rivers.

Edited April 27 by DDE

[PakledHostage]

2 hours ago, DDE said:

To be fair, the eastern route was already taken - not sure if formally - by the Portuguese. Similarly, many years later the English would look for a northern route to India and China through the Siberian rivers.

We're totally off the topic of "A city on Mars", but the east/west demarcation was laid out by the Treaty of Tordesillas, shortly after Columbus' first voyage. That demarcation is the reason why Brazil is Portuguese speaking while the rest of Soutn America is Spanish speaking.  It's also why Magellan, who was Portuguese,  was considered to be a traitor by Portugal. He set out west to reach the Molaccas because, based on the European understanding of the size of the Earth, the Moluccas should have been in the Spanish "half". The Moluccas (Spice Islands) were known to be far enough east of Europe to be in the hemisphere west of the demarcation (if the world was 26000 km around), but the world turned out to be  40000 km around.

Later, the British tried to find a sea route around North America ("The Northwest Passage"). The disastrous Franklin Expedition (one of whose ships was recently found) is an example of how that effort didn't end well.

[Vanamonde]

Unless Columbus is planning on building a city on Mars, please return to the subject of this thread.