Chris' failed voyage- America Undiscovered

About thirty seven seconds.

This is an age of ambition and confidence.

And how is that misunderstanding being fixed? Those maps aren't going to make themselves, they need knowledge that can only be obtained by going out and sailing.

At the time the assumption (actually closer to correct than not) was that there was a very big gulf distance wise between europe and asia, a massive ocean (no knowledge of the americas of course). It was columbus who insisted and miscalculated himself the gap was much shorter to get to asia.

The belief was that such a trip would be too time consuming and no crew or vessel would have the resources to mount such a voyage. Which is why it took columbus so long to finally convince someone to fund it. Had columbus not misculated and went with the general idea that the distance was huge such a voyage could have conceivably been held off for a number of decades?
 
At the time the assumption (actually closer to correct than not) was that there was a very big gulf distance wise between europe and asia, a massive ocean (no knowledge of the americas of course). It was columbus who insisted and miscalculated himself the gap was much shorter to get to asia.

And its a very short hop by the route the Portuguese took. Wait. . .

The belief was that such a trip would be too time consuming and no crew or vessel would have the resources to mount such a voyage. Which is why it took columbus so long to finally convince someone to fund it. Had columbus not misculated and went with the general idea that the distance was huge such a voyage could have conceivably been held off for a number of decades?

See above.

Obviously that has the merits of going down a coast, but still.
 

katchen

Banned
Geologically and tectonically, both the Portuguese and Columbus were right. North America IS geologicallly an extension of Asia. And South America geologically is connected to North America. Columbus had no way of knowing that the obstruction that 'Terranova" represented extended all the way south to 54 degrees South. :(
 
Geologically and tectonically, both the Portuguese and Columbus were right. North America IS geologicallly an extension of Asia. And South America geologically is connected to North America. Columbus had no way of knowing that the obstruction that 'Terranova" represented extended all the way south to 54 degrees South. :(
Geologically and tectonically North America is an extension of Asia!?!?!?
What?
 
Geologically and tectonically North America is an extension of Asia!?!?!?
What?

Perhaps he was misremembering that far-eastern Siberia is on the North American Plate rather than the Eurasian Plate. He was mistaken about North & South America being tectonicly connected as they are not. He also missed that Columbus did actually discover the mostly submerged Caribbean continent/plate.
 
Geologically and tectonically North America is an extension of Asia!?!?!?
What?

Well, North America had been connected to Asia during the last ice age, which is very very recent geologically. And in terms of human travel, North America is certainly an extension of Asia because it's very much possible to walk there by ice - as the proto-Inuit proved a few centuries before Columbus :)
And if we're getting into serious "geologically and tectonically" definitions, India isn't really in Asia either. ;)

Heck, even in historical geography, it was very much an open question whether Asia connected to North America by land, and the definite answer was unknown until at least the 1740s (when the Arctic coast of Asia was finally fully explored by the Great Northern Expedition).
 
Well, North America had been connected to Asia during the last ice age, which is very very recent geologically. And in terms of human travel, North America is certainly an extension of Asia because it's very much possible to walk there by ice - as the proto-Inuit proved a few centuries before Columbus :)
And if we're getting into serious "geologically and tectonically" definitions, India isn't really in Asia either. ;)

Heck, even in historical geography, it was very much an open question whether Asia connected to North America by land, and the definite answer was unknown until at least the 1740s (when the Arctic coast of Asia was finally fully explored by the Great Northern Expedition).


While definitely not an "extension of Asia", North America has indeed been and still is connected (though the connection has been below sea-level for the past 10-15,000 years) to far-eastern Asia (Siberia) as that part of Asia is on the North American Plate, not the Eurasian.
 
At the time the assumption (actually closer to correct than not) was that there was a very big gulf distance wise between europe and asia, a massive ocean (no knowledge of the americas of course). It was columbus who insisted and miscalculated himself the gap was much shorter to get to asia.
He seemed to be working with Martin Behaim's calculations, made worse because he thought Behaim was working with Genoan miles. Also, I suspect that at some point cartographers would take into account that all these maps are using different miles, research the size of the miles, and adjust the maps accordingly. They would then know that Asia isn't as big as they thought. On top of that, if someone either figured out the size of the miles Ptolemy was working with, or repeated his study, they could calculate the size of Earth.
 
It's beyond me to judge how long it would have taken for various squabbling European authorities to come to some consensus on the extent of Eurasia.

But the size of the globe isn't something that should have been so up in the air; better values than Columbus's were known in Classical times and anyone who was serious about fighting it out could do their own calculations based on their own known distances north-south. It seems evident there was some degree of wishful thinking involved in Columbus low-balling it.

That said, a major reason he'd go with a bad answer over a good one is the evidence he'd been gathering about contacts with other lands overseas to the west. Jumping to the conclusion these lands must be eastern Asia was an illogical leap, but I have to give Elfwine this much--surely someone would keep following up on rumors of some kind of land to the west. And meanwhile the Portuguese, in the course of sailing south around Africa and still more in the course of trying to find reasonably favorable winds and currents for the voyage back north from the Indies around Africa, would sooner or later stumble on the Americas. I gather there's some evidence they did so before 1492, but kept it classified.

Between fishermen keeping the secrets of their secret fishing waters and smoking grounds, and Portuguese keeping secrets about the southeastern route via Africa to the Indies, I suppose the realization of whole new continents in the west might have been delayed for decades. But probably not a half century. In the interim, Columbus's egregious claims of an Earth too small for most scholars to credit might count against any prompt follow through, but I don't think it would be so easy to discredit his notions of how far east Eurasia might reach, or even more exaggerated ideas might have gained currency. Not among the really knowledgeable like the Portuguese, but they wouldn't spill secrets they knew to contradict them. So Lisbon might shrug off new proposals of westward exploration, and Spain having been burned might have an aversion to being fooled again. But sooner or later some king--French (the overlords of the Basque fishermen) or English (close to the old Viking routes) or Scottish or Danish (even closer in every way) will give it another try, perhaps based on new news that leaks.
 
It's beyond me to judge how long it would have taken for various squabbling European authorities to come to some consensus on the extent of Eurasia.

But the size of the globe isn't something that should have been so up in the air; better values than Columbus's were known in Classical times and anyone who was serious about fighting it out could do their own calculations based on their own known distances north-south. It seems evident there was some degree of wishful thinking involved in Columbus low-balling it.

Regardless of the size of the earth, there's the problem of the size of Asia - popular opinion, not just Columbus's, inflates it.

So even if "the earth" is reckoned within a negligible margin of error, how far it is from here to Asia is not necessarily as clear.

And that's quite enough to make a Columbusean proposal sail.
 
I'm seeing a couple of problems.

First, it's not like Columbus was sailing in isolation. There were voyages of exploration & settlement going back to Eric the Bloody over 400yr before, & certainly the Portuguese were looking at what might be there.

Second, you've forgotten a major reason anybody was looking for a "western route": namely, the Arabs were screwing up transport through the Med, & thus screwing up the spice trade, which was an enormous moneymaker.:eek:
 
What is your opinion on the Portugal loss at the conquest of Cuerta and the death of Henry the Navigator?

And, since I have multiple timelines going on in my head right now, is there any justifiable reason (aside from "butterflies") the the successful execution of the Southampton Plot (e.g. death of the king of england) would impact the battle of Cuerta a month later?
 
Top