But those prefixes can be explained. You are right, of course, that this happens all the time in linguistic history. It is called reanalysis. However, it seems unlikely in the specific case (an article is a good candidate for a prefix of this kind, a preposition less so: It marks changing syntactic functions so has a lot less stable recurrence). Also, unneeded.
Pre-Columbian knowledge confirmed: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas
- Thread starter Strategos' Risk
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Traditionally, Spanish uses articles for countries. El Reino Unido, los Estados Unidos, la Francia, la España, el Brasil, etc.
Regards,
Northstar
Well I remain unconvinced that it would be impossible for Markland to evolve into America from a linguistic standpoint.
Regards,
Northstar
Impossible, in principle? It is not completely impossible indeed. Only vanishingly unlikely and requiring ad hoc assumptions, and odd exceptions to known phenomena, let alone there being no proof at all. To be fair, in linguistics exceptions do actually happen.
It had been theorized, that Columbus had knowledge about the Greenland Markland route from second sources. Didrik Pinning theoretically also had been not far of NA during his Greenland voyage in 1470.
A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas
That was long before Christopher Columbus set sailwww.economist.com
Let a dozen early European re-discovery of America timelines bloom.
Ahhh OK, now I'm following you.
But still, I don't think it's particularly likely. The description in the Chronicle is so filtered that it seems just as probable to identify "Marckalada" with Labrador as it would be to identify it with Guiana. And in any case, even if Columbus is aware of this one particular name, absent it describing the Americas especially well I see no reason why it would rise above the other fabulous Atlantic islands.
Certainly interesting pieces both, but at this point not enough, IMO, to call it "likely," or at least not enough to bring it up half as often as it is brought up in these discussions. The first article is fascinating (if a little overstuffed with fluff), but notably the evidence that Ruddock claimed to have discovered that would provide any evidence for the relevant claim has not yet been reconstructed. Certainly an interesting avenue of research, and not only from a Precolumbian voyages perspective, but not evidence.There are tantalizing suggestions, from the work of historian Alwyn Ruddock and then from the work of the historians trying to reconstruct her work, of Bristol being a port that has very early if irregular contact with the Americas. Ruddock cited a pre-1470 date for an early discovery.
Rewriting History: Alwyn Ruddock and John Cabot
Alwyn Ruddock was a respected historian who had made what were widely believed to be breakthrough finds about the voyages of discovery to the New World by John Cabot in the late 15th century, and e…dwhauthor.wordpress.com
It might be worth noting that Ruddock did much of her research in Italy, looking into the archives of merchant houses and noble families interested in long-distance trade.
As for the possibility of fishers, well, where did the late medieval Basques get their cod from? The Grand Banks seems not implausible. Were there other possibilities?
The Salazar story, while interesting, is again not evidence in any meaningful way. It is an off-hand mention that falls well in to the genre of fabulous islands. We can euhumerize the fact that Bristol mariners were unable to rediscover it as reflecting a genuine discovery that could not be replicated due to underdeveloped maritime technology, and this may even be the case, but we have to take note of the fact that this sequence of events lines up perfectly with the mythological concept of Brasil, whose one trick is that it disappears. So it could just as easily be an "urban legend" of the time that used a preexisting mythological narrative.
Grand Banks is not impossible, but considering the lack of strong corroborating evidence, yes I would say it is implausible. Cod can be found all throughout the European North Atlantic.
I don't why this is such a big deal. Scandinavia had contact with Greenland for centuries. I'm sure the Greenlanders didn't forget that Vinland was there. So of course Scandinavian sailors were aware of it! I've always felt the contrary idea was the odd one. I'd be very surprised if it had been completely forgotten.
I've always felt that there is some weird historical perspective which falls over historians when talking about the New World. It just wasn't a big deal that there was land there that was a long way away and didn't really seem to have anything valuable that they couldn't get closer to home. It's like the proof that Vikings were in North America was accepted but never really fully digested in terms of it's implications.
I've always felt that there is some weird historical perspective which falls over historians when talking about the New World. It just wasn't a big deal that there was land there that was a long way away and didn't really seem to have anything valuable that they couldn't get closer to home. It's like the proof that Vikings were in North America was accepted but never really fully digested in terms of it's implications.
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We see the Americas as a continent separate from Europe, the New World as separate from the Old. We are liable to project this division, fundamental to our view of the world, backwards in time despite its ahistoricity. There seems to have been no sense in the medieval world that Helluland and Markland and Vinland were anything but remote territories, "outermost Europe" if you would, that they belonged to a continent separate from Europe never mind that they were the nearest fringes of continents comparable in size to the world that Europeans already knew.
I would argue, mind, that vestiges of this last to this day. Not just the Faroes but Iceland, that last a country literally built on top of the rift between the two continents, are commonly regarded as European. Even Greenland, with its Inuit supermajority population, only seceded from the now-EU just a couple of decades ago, only stopped being European in a political sense then; a Greenland that did have a Norse majority population would presumably never have split from Europe.