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> I had always thought that Columbus made the trip because he miscalculated the distance around the globe, while everyone else was saying they'd starve before r

> I had always thought that Columbus made the trip because he miscalculated the distance around the globe, while everyone else was saying they'd starve before reaching Asia. In the late 1400s people thought the Asian continent was larger than it is in reality. So when Columbus et co saw islands they thought they had hit Japan†… roughly where all the best maps of the day said it would be. See Toscanelli's 1474 map, which is what Columbus was going by: * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Atlantic_Ocean,_Toscanelli,_1474.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Atlantic_Ocean,_Tosc... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_dal_Pozzo_Toscanelli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_dal_Pozzo_Toscanelli † Cipangu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Japan#Jipangu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Japan#Jipangu

santiagobasulto 5y ago
It's interesting that in Toscanelli's map it also appears the "Antillia"[0] island mentioned in another comment. There was definitively some knowledge of land in between, maybe they just didn't know it was a huge continent. [0] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Antillia https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Antillia
- arp242 5y ago
  If you look to the west from Europe you see a vast sea. It doesn't take a great deal of effort to imagine some form of land beyond or in that sea. You would be quite a boring and unimaginative person to not wonder about this. Edgar Allen Poe's novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket details a fictional account of what might be in the Antarctic, an unexplored area in his time. We now know that Poe's imagined account is a far cry from the reality of the Antarctic continent, but he could have been "right" in that there are people living there. That doesn't really imply any knowledge of such lands though. If Poe had lived several hundreds years earlier he might have written a similar story with s/Antarctic/across the Atlantic/. Add a few hundreds years with confusion between "fiction" (or "myth" or "legend", if you will) and "science" (a concept which didn't really exist in the first place, at least not in the same form) and things get very murky fast. I don't think that the mere existence of the concept of "Antillia" really proves any actual knowledge; there needs to be some additional evidence; reading that Wikipedia page there doesn't seem to be any. We'll likely never know for certain if the roots of Antillia were based in reality or entirely fictional.
  - mmmmmbop 5y ago
    > We now know that Poe's imagined account is a far cry from the reality of the Antarctic continent, but he could have been "right" in that there are people living there. Which people do you mean?
    - arp242 5y ago
      The natives Poe imagined to be living in the Antarctic in his novel.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  Phantom island have been around for a while: > Sandy Island (sometimes labelled in French Île de Sable, and in Spanish Isla Arenosa) is a non-existent island that was charted for over a century as being located near the French territory of New Caledonia between the Chesterfield Islands and Nereus Reef in the eastern Coral Sea.[1] The island was included on many maps and nautical charts from as early as the late 19th century. It was removed from French hydrographic charts in 1974. The island gained wide media and public attention in November 2012 when the R/V Southern Surveyor, an Australian research ship,[2] passed through the area and "undiscovered" it. The island was quickly removed from many maps and data sets, including those of the National Geographic Society and Google Maps.[3] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Island,_New_Caledonia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Island,_New_Caledonia
hirako2000 5y ago
It's interesting how deeply wrong we were at that time, while we precedently knew all the dimensions and distance of most parts of the globe with pretty high accuracy.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  We "did." [0] What we did not know was an accurate way to determine longitude, specifically on a ship, until 1761. [1] [2] Consequently, any voyage before 1761 knew its latitude exactly, but dead-reckoned its longitude. 33 days of speed-estimated dead reckoning in 1492, plus having no idea of the speed or orientation of the underlying current you're in, leaves a lot of room for error. [0] For values of "did" that include "the correct answer had been derived and was documented (Eratosthenes, within ~2.5% in ~240 BC, working at the Library of Alexandria), but it wasn't broadly accepted as the correct answer." Thus leading to Columbus believing an incorrect value instead https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_circumference#Columbus's_error https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_circumference#Colu... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison#H4 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison#H4 [2] Except via some very complicated planetary transits that were pre-calculated and could only be used as they occured. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_longitude#Satellites_of_Jupiter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_longitude#Satelli...
  - hirako2000 5y ago
    So we knew the right answer but we didn't accept it as correct so most people followed suit. It's fascinating. We are on the same track today. We know the truth but most of us jump on the same entirely wrong band wagons. One could argue that ignoring the truth is worse than pure ignorance.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      I guess my perspective (from watching struggles with public health & vaccine development information during early COVID-19) is that modern intellects aren't well exercised with respect to uncertainty. Our predecessors lived in a culture suffused with unreliable information. There weren't even "alternate" facts, because there were few accepted ones to have alternatives to. On the one hand, we know more than they did (stronger & longer mandatory education + post-primary + informal access). On the other hand, we've forgotten how to responsibly handle uncertainty. Or, as I sum it all up: science should be a verb (aka process), not a noun (result).
phil_folrida 5y ago
It is highly speculative to say Japan, even today we reference Native American as Indians. He was thinking they reached India. Same mistake today people do with Miles and Kilometer, when you are raised in one or another it is difficult to switch. Erastothene was speaking in stadium, Columbus in Nautic miles. The Spanish crown was motivated by greed.
- mannykannot 5y ago
  At the time, the term "indies" was widely used for eastern Asia and eastern lands generally. https://www.etymonline.com/word/Indies https://www.etymonline.com/word/Indies
Chris2048 5y ago
Ireland looks pretty big there compared to the British mainland, and Scotland pretty diminished. Funny how those parts are also disproportioned.

santiagobasulto 5y ago

It's interesting that in Toscanelli's map it also appears the "Antillia"[0] island mentioned in another comment. There was definitively some knowledge of land in between, maybe they just didn't know it was a huge continent. [0] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Antillia https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Antillia

arp242 5y ago
If you look to the west from Europe you see a vast sea. It doesn't take a great deal of effort to imagine some form of land beyond or in that sea. You would be quite a boring and unimaginative person to not wonder about this. Edgar Allen Poe's novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket details a fictional account of what might be in the Antarctic, an unexplored area in his time. We now know that Poe's imagined account is a far cry from the reality of the Antarctic continent, but he could have been "right" in that there are people living there. That doesn't really imply any knowledge of such lands though. If Poe had lived several hundreds years earlier he might have written a similar story with s/Antarctic/across the Atlantic/. Add a few hundreds years with confusion between "fiction" (or "myth" or "legend", if you will) and "science" (a concept which didn't really exist in the first place, at least not in the same form) and things get very murky fast. I don't think that the mere existence of the concept of "Antillia" really proves any actual knowledge; there needs to be some additional evidence; reading that Wikipedia page there doesn't seem to be any. We'll likely never know for certain if the roots of Antillia were based in reality or entirely fictional.
- mmmmmbop 5y ago
  > We now know that Poe's imagined account is a far cry from the reality of the Antarctic continent, but he could have been "right" in that there are people living there. Which people do you mean?
  - arp242 5y ago
    The natives Poe imagined to be living in the Antarctic in his novel.
throw0101a 5y ago
Phantom island have been around for a while: > Sandy Island (sometimes labelled in French Île de Sable, and in Spanish Isla Arenosa) is a non-existent island that was charted for over a century as being located near the French territory of New Caledonia between the Chesterfield Islands and Nereus Reef in the eastern Coral Sea.[1] The island was included on many maps and nautical charts from as early as the late 19th century. It was removed from French hydrographic charts in 1974. The island gained wide media and public attention in November 2012 when the R/V Southern Surveyor, an Australian research ship,[2] passed through the area and "undiscovered" it. The island was quickly removed from many maps and data sets, including those of the National Geographic Society and Google Maps.[3] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Island,_New_Caledonia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Island,_New_Caledonia

hirako2000 5y ago

It's interesting how deeply wrong we were at that time, while we precedently knew all the dimensions and distance of most parts of the globe with pretty high accuracy.

ethbr0 5y ago
We "did." [0] What we did not know was an accurate way to determine longitude, specifically on a ship, until 1761. [1] [2] Consequently, any voyage before 1761 knew its latitude exactly, but dead-reckoned its longitude. 33 days of speed-estimated dead reckoning in 1492, plus having no idea of the speed or orientation of the underlying current you're in, leaves a lot of room for error. [0] For values of "did" that include "the correct answer had been derived and was documented (Eratosthenes, within ~2.5% in ~240 BC, working at the Library of Alexandria), but it wasn't broadly accepted as the correct answer." Thus leading to Columbus believing an incorrect value instead https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_circumference#Columbus's_error https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_circumference#Colu... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison#H4 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison#H4 [2] Except via some very complicated planetary transits that were pre-calculated and could only be used as they occured. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_longitude#Satellites_of_Jupiter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_longitude#Satelli...
- hirako2000 5y ago
  So we knew the right answer but we didn't accept it as correct so most people followed suit. It's fascinating. We are on the same track today. We know the truth but most of us jump on the same entirely wrong band wagons. One could argue that ignoring the truth is worse than pure ignorance.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    I guess my perspective (from watching struggles with public health & vaccine development information during early COVID-19) is that modern intellects aren't well exercised with respect to uncertainty. Our predecessors lived in a culture suffused with unreliable information. There weren't even "alternate" facts, because there were few accepted ones to have alternatives to. On the one hand, we know more than they did (stronger & longer mandatory education + post-primary + informal access). On the other hand, we've forgotten how to responsibly handle uncertainty. Or, as I sum it all up: science should be a verb (aka process), not a noun (result).

phil_folrida 5y ago

It is highly speculative to say Japan, even today we reference Native American as Indians. He was thinking they reached India. Same mistake today people do with Miles and Kilometer, when you are raised in one or another it is difficult to switch. Erastothene was speaking in stadium, Columbus in Nautic miles. The Spanish crown was motivated by greed.

mannykannot 5y ago
At the time, the term "indies" was widely used for eastern Asia and eastern lands generally. https://www.etymonline.com/word/Indies https://www.etymonline.com/word/Indies

Chris2048 5y ago

Ireland looks pretty big there compared to the British mainland, and Scotland pretty diminished. Funny how those parts are also disproportioned.