What is the current consensus on Columbus calculating the Earth's size to such a smaller degree than the ancient Greeks?
It´s no wonder nobody wanted to finance his travels. He would surely die (along with all the crew and very valuable boats) if he did not find the Americas by chance.
Is it consensus that he found the Americas by chance alone?
How he came up to his fumbled math showing the world to be (wrongly) smaller.
I keep having this idea that Columbus went full creationist method:
1 - heard/read about lands to the west of Europe, a few weeks travel. Maybe legends, maybe stories told (did 15th century nordics still remember they had reached lands to the west, or tales about it?)
2 - never assumed those lands from tales were new. Instead assumed they were Asia
3 - since the East distance to Asia was known, he calculated a smaller world than everyone else SO the facts would fit his conclusion
Just like creationists have their conclusion (6000 yr old) and try to find facts to match that conclusion, Columbus had his conclusion (Asia was just a few weeks to the west of Europe) and would have then re-calculated the size of the world to match that conclusion.
Apparently he calculated the distance from Spain to Japan in 3100 miles. That's quite close as the distance from Spain to Northeast USA.
So, anyone with more knowledge of history know why Columbus was so stubborn the world was smaller?
this website
http://ift.tt/29QHgNJ
Norseman were not as isolated from the rest of Europe at this time as they were in Viking Age times.
Is there any possibility that reports from Norse travels to "weird lands with weird people in the west" reached southern Europe and thus made Columbus believe those reports were about Japan or India, influencing Columbus on his incredibly wrong estimates about the size of the Earth?
the same website above also mentions reports of Arab sailors who reached unknown land masses to the west of Africa. Are these debunked or are them of interest to historians? If they were true, anyone who would fancy some "tales" would end up hearing someday that both Norse and Arabs had been to lands to the west.
Are there any transcripts of any conversation Columbus had on the court or elsewhere, trying to convince people about his travel, despite every scholar correctly insisting the Earth was much bigger?
Do you think this hypothesis is plausible or was Columbus just an incredibly bad mathematician but lucky person?
It´s no wonder nobody wanted to finance his travels. He would surely die (along with all the crew and very valuable boats) if he did not find the Americas by chance.
Is it consensus that he found the Americas by chance alone?
How he came up to his fumbled math showing the world to be (wrongly) smaller.
I keep having this idea that Columbus went full creationist method:
1 - heard/read about lands to the west of Europe, a few weeks travel. Maybe legends, maybe stories told (did 15th century nordics still remember they had reached lands to the west, or tales about it?)
2 - never assumed those lands from tales were new. Instead assumed they were Asia
3 - since the East distance to Asia was known, he calculated a smaller world than everyone else SO the facts would fit his conclusion
Just like creationists have their conclusion (6000 yr old) and try to find facts to match that conclusion, Columbus had his conclusion (Asia was just a few weeks to the west of Europe) and would have then re-calculated the size of the world to match that conclusion.
Apparently he calculated the distance from Spain to Japan in 3100 miles. That's quite close as the distance from Spain to Northeast USA.
So, anyone with more knowledge of history know why Columbus was so stubborn the world was smaller?
this website
http://ift.tt/29QHgNJ
Quote:
|
Another common myth surrounding Columbus’ voyage was that he was the first to discover the “New World”. In fact, there is no question that North America was visited by Northern Europeans in the 10th or 11th centuries. Specifically, Norse settlements, one of which has since been excavated, were established in continental North America in the 10th century. The settlements were a failure in part, it appears, due to problems with the Native Americans, who the Norse called Skrælings. However, according to recent scholarship, the Norsemen continued to meet and trade with indigenous Americans, at least sporadically, even after the failure of the two colonies they setup. Not the dull oafs of legend and Capital One commercials, the Vikings apparently made a map of their North American conquests. The Vineland map is believed by some to have been made circa 1440, and demonstrates that at least some Europeans were aware of the existence of continental North America, well before Columbus set sail. |
Is there any possibility that reports from Norse travels to "weird lands with weird people in the west" reached southern Europe and thus made Columbus believe those reports were about Japan or India, influencing Columbus on his incredibly wrong estimates about the size of the Earth?
the same website above also mentions reports of Arab sailors who reached unknown land masses to the west of Africa. Are these debunked or are them of interest to historians? If they were true, anyone who would fancy some "tales" would end up hearing someday that both Norse and Arabs had been to lands to the west.
Are there any transcripts of any conversation Columbus had on the court or elsewhere, trying to convince people about his travel, despite every scholar correctly insisting the Earth was much bigger?
Do you think this hypothesis is plausible or was Columbus just an incredibly bad mathematician but lucky person?
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/2a36M5o
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