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It took a long time to flesh out the map of the Earth. For most of human history travelling any distance has been slow, arduous and frequently dangerous. In California Spanish missions were spaced about 30 miles apart because that was a day's travel on horseback. In these days of airplanes, automobiles, and passports that is a hard fact to grasp. Our ancestors had a greatly diminished horizon.
Of course, there were always people who wandered far to see what was beyond their homeland's borders. The Romans and Chinese knew of each other, the Vikings pushed west to Newfoundland, The Polynesians opened up the South Pacific, the Chinese explored the Indian Ocean, and so forth.
However, when we think of explorers we tend to think of the Age of Exploration -- that period when Europeans spread out and explored the globe, leading to the colonization of the New World, the seizing India, scrambling for Africa, and imposing Concession areas in China.
Regardless of the outcome (and cultural admixtures are frequently very disruptive) the original explorers are quite fascinating. To leave one's home on a long and uncertain trip just so see what's there is a special sort of an ambition.
2 comments:
The Romans and Chinese mostly knew each other via the intermediary of India, although a few embassies were reported. You wanna get a good argument going, have a look at Roman coin finds in the Americas. Almost all frauds or modern coin losses, but a few are harder to dismiss.
Yes, a lot of information must have diffused through the Silk Road.
As for the coins, it is largely irrelevant either way (as are the established Viking landings). The reason is the Columbian Exchange (15th to 17th centuries) in which unique plants, animals and for that matter diseases were transferred between the two hemispheres.
Search 'old and new world crops' to see what was transferred. For example, wheat is an old-world crop and corn a new-world crop. Hard to imagine the mid-west without endless wheat fields.
As I say in my Columbus Day posts, it isn't him setting foot on a Caribbean island that matter, it is that landing leading to connecting the two hemispheres that is significant. While there may have been other landings throughout history none of them registered and so they, if they indeed happened, are mere curiosities.
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