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You can 'discover' a place or thing that other people already know about or populate. For instance, people often say they 'discovered' a new band or restaurant,

by nickff 10y ago

You can 'discover' a place or thing that other people already know about or populate. For instance, people often say they 'discovered' a new band or restaurant, and you can 'discover' a shipwreck or hidden tribe.

astrodust 10y ago
Columbus was a hipster. Clearly. Shipwrecks are only considered discovered if nobody knows exactly where they were. That's why the "discovery" of the HMS Terror was controversial: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/terror-discovery-franklin-expedition-more-questions-1.3793820 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/terror-discovery-frankli... Indigenous people had carried, through oral tradition, stories of a ship stuck in ice in precisely that place but were dismissed out of hand by investigators. It turns out they were right. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/12/hms-terror-wreck-found-arctic-nearly-170-years-northwest-passage-attempt https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/12/hms-terror-wre... The place where they found that was, in the local tongue, a place called "Big Ship Here".
dgfgfdagasdfgfa 10y ago
People say a lot of stupid shit. This doesn't make it meaningful. Who cares if columbus wasn't aware of north america? Many others were, including people in Europe—the location, size, and extent of the continent was unknown, but people were certainly aware of Vinland. Columbus was more radical in the sense that we was willing to risk dying to find out.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> You can 'discover' a place or thing that other people already know about or populate. But you can't discover something without recognizing that it is new (someone else can discover it from your descriptions, however) and Columbus went to his grave insisting that he had reached the East Indies. Even by the standard by which one might "discover" a populated land, Columbus didn't, he merely encountered it. Other people recognized the value and significance and the opportunities itmade available given the technology of the day, which is why his voyages (unlike prior ones) led to prolonged contact between Europe and the New World. And his failure to recognize the novelty of what he had encountered is why Europeans ended up naming the continents of the New World after a map maker, and not Columbus.

by nickff 10y ago

astrodust 10y ago

Columbus was a hipster. Clearly. Shipwrecks are only considered discovered if nobody knows exactly where they were. That's why the "discovery" of the HMS Terror was controversial: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/terror-discovery-franklin-expedition-more-questions-1.3793820 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/terror-discovery-frankli... Indigenous people had carried, through oral tradition, stories of a ship stuck in ice in precisely that place but were dismissed out of hand by investigators. It turns out they were right. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/12/hms-terror-wreck-found-arctic-nearly-170-years-northwest-passage-attempt https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/12/hms-terror-wre... The place where they found that was, in the local tongue, a place called "Big Ship Here".

dgfgfdagasdfgfa 10y ago

People say a lot of stupid shit. This doesn't make it meaningful. Who cares if columbus wasn't aware of north america? Many others were, including people in Europe—the location, size, and extent of the continent was unknown, but people were certainly aware of Vinland. Columbus was more radical in the sense that we was willing to risk dying to find out.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> You can 'discover' a place or thing that other people already know about or populate. But you can't discover something without recognizing that it is new (someone else can discover it from your descriptions, however) and Columbus went to his grave insisting that he had reached the East Indies. Even by the standard by which one might "discover" a populated land, Columbus didn't, he merely encountered it. Other people recognized the value and significance and the opportunities itmade available given the technology of the day, which is why his voyages (unlike prior ones) led to prolonged contact between Europe and the New World. And his failure to recognize the novelty of what he had encountered is why Europeans ended up naming the continents of the New World after a map maker, and not Columbus.