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This find is not as surprising as the Economist article would have you believe. First, what was written about areas beyond Europe's periphery tended to lag beh

This find is not as surprising as the Economist article would have you believe. First, what was written about areas beyond Europe's periphery tended to lag behind actual common knowledge of those areas by hundreds of years. An example would be the concept of "the torrid zone," part of an ancient Greek climatic theory that divided the world into two habitable temperate zones, two uninhabitable frigid zones (at the poles), and one uninhabitable torrid zone (basically the equatorial region). You had European textbooks being printed well into the seventeenth century describing the torrid zone's literal uninhabitability. Like, literally describing areas colonized by Europeans and integrated into European economies as unable to sustain any human life. Second, there are many mentions in medieval European literature of pre-Columbian and, in the case of Africa, pre-Henrician explorers going beyond Europe's periphery, directly contradicting the easy school narratives most of us learned about European "discovery". E.g., the voyage of the Zeno brothers [1]. Most of these mentions are just that, mentions. The Marckalada/Markland manuscript seems notable in that it has a bit more evidentiary heft behind it, but my point is that it's not an entirely unique document. I should add that generally speaking, there's a rich tradition in history of mercantile contact going well beyond the surviving documentary record. The ancient Romans were almost certainly in regular contact with the Indian subcontinent and possibly China through trade, even though the written record is sketchy. Archaeology has helped in this regard. Michael McCormick is the authority in this area when it comes to the early medieval period or so-called "dark ages" [2]. Edit: In history, be wary of any narrative that presupposes isolation. If you dig deep enough, you'll find that it's often written by someone long dead with an agenda. Hence medievalists' disdain for the "dark ages," which are basically an Italian Renaissance construct that got blown up by nationalist Germans in the nineteenth century. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_of_the_Zeno_brothers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_of_the_Zeno_brothers [2]: https://www.amazon.com/Origins-European-Economy-Communications-Commerce/dp/0521661021 https://www.amazon.com/Origins-European-Economy-Communicatio...

oh_sigh 5y ago
From [1]: Modern historians and geographers have disputed the veracity of the map and the described voyages, with some accusing the younger Zeno of forgery.
- ummwhat 5y ago
  I heard that first he went half way to the new world, then half of that distance, then half of that distance...and never made it in the end.
  - zeven7 5y ago
    Quite the paradox
ummwhat 5y ago
The informal Chinese word for white people is "Lao Wai" which literally translates as "old foreign" (the formal word for foreigners is Wai gou Ren (foreign country person)). The explanation I was given for the informal word is that it means "the old foreigners, as in the ones we've known about since antiquity."
- earksiinni 5y ago
  Fascinating. Is there a "new" foreign...?
  - eloisius 5y ago
    No, GP heard some folsky etymology. Lǎowài does not mean ancient foreigner. One of 老 lǎo's meanings is an honorific like "old / venerable." 老伯 lǎobó uncle, 老闆 lǎobǎn boss, 老師 lǎoshī teacher, are all honorifics that don't mean really mean "old" (except for uncle, which you can use to address a man older than yourself, but doesn't mean he's from ancient times). 老人 lǎorén does mean "old people" but just regular old, not ancient old. 老外 lǎowài just means outsider. 古 gǔ means ancient, like 古人 gǔrén is ancient people. You could construct phrases to mean ancient foreigners, modern immigrants, modern foreign people, etc. but I don't know of any that would carry more special meaning than equivalent phrases in English.
- kinghtown 5y ago
  My experience living in Taiwan is that those terms may literally mean foreigner but their practical usage means white/western people. A native or black american would not be called that. Also, lao wai is the one they go for when they are angry or postering xenophobia amongst each other. I find it to be a needlessly othering term but I try to accept it as not said with explicitly bad intent.
  - ummwhat 5y ago
    The best summary of the word that I've seen is that its a lot like "gringo". Its status as pejorative or descriptive or even endearing depends on how it's said and the context in which it is said and on the person saying it. World of difference between "ey gringo, since when you drink tecate" and "what you doing in our neighborhood gringo".
cafard 5y ago
Herodotus dismisses a story of Phoenicians (acting for the Persian king) sailing around Africa. He says it must be a lie, because they claim that the sun was in the wrong direction--just what for a modern reader strengthens heir claim. But the notion of trans-Atlantic voyages, the Vikings apart, seems shaky to me. You are correct that the notion of isolation tends to be carried much too far.
- simorley 5y ago
  > But the notion of trans-Atlantic voyages, the Vikings apart, seems shaky to me. Why? The distance between western europe and greenland/north america is rather small. When compared to the vast distances that polynesians have been sailing in the pacific, it's nothing. We know that the inuit/siberians/asians have been traveling between alaska and beyond and back to siberia/asia for thousands of years. And it's almost a certainty that some northern asians knew of "north america". But it was mostly tundra/ice so people simply didn't care. Who really cares if there is more ice beyond the ice that they already knew. What was revolutionary wasn't that columbus sailed to americas. It's something people ( asians/siberians/inuit ) have been doing for thousands of years and it's something europeans have been capable of for thousands of years. The importance of Columbus's expedition was that he showed it can be profitable or at the very least convinced the european elites of it. That's what separated columbus from the vikings, asians/inuits/siberians, vikings and other europeans who sailed to the americas. He showed there is profit in it. Of course columbus's "profit" came at the price of genocide of the natives he came across in the caribbean, but that's another topic.
dr_dshiv 5y ago
From the article: "...one of the students, Giulia Greco, found a passage in which Galvano, after describing Iceland and Greenland, writes: “Farther westwards there is another land, named Marckalada, where giants live; in this land, there are buildings with such huge slabs of stone that nobody could build them, except huge giants. There are also green trees, animals and a great quantity of birds.” Where are there megalithic cultures in Northern America? Or is this evidence of a visit to Mexico?
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  The point is that this is evidence that scholar(s) on the other side of Europe, centuries after the Norse voyages, had heard of the lands they had discovered (Markland).
- cardiffspaceman 5y ago
  I visited Chichen Itza in a guided tour. The guide was a local Mayan man. He led us to a structure which had reliefs of people. One of the people had trimmings around his face. The guide stated that this was a man's curly beard, and that in the past this relief had been polychromed, and the color used on these trimmings was red. And as if we couldn't make the required extrapolations on our own, he said that the relief indicated that Mayans had known/may have known of Eric the Red. I don't know of other evidence that Mayans of old had direct or indirect pre-Columbian contact with curly-haired explorers from Europe. It's just that your query triggers this reminiscence.
stkdump 5y ago
> Hence medievalists' disdain for the "dark ages," which are basically an Italian Renaissance construct that got blown up by nationalist Germans in the nineteenth century. Any more info on the last part? I am asking because in contemporary German the term 'dark ages' is almost unheard of, whereas in English it seems to be a fairly common term.
dash2 5y ago
It might also be fair to say that a lot of “global history” of the past 30 years has been written by living people with an agenda. And the rigour of their work has not always been that high. From an English perspective it is hard to understand the disdain for the “dark ages” label. After the Romans left, people in Britain got several inches shorter and became illiterate.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
peoplefromibiza 5y ago
> the "dark ages," which are basically an Italian Renaissance construct they really were to their eyes. We know more about ancient history today than people from the VII century about a 100 years before them The invasions of the former roman empire in today's Italian territory destroyed most of the historical knowledge and gave birth to dark folk legends that are still well alive today, even though historians have debunked the myth of the middle-ages as dark times.

oh_sigh 5y ago

From [1]: Modern historians and geographers have disputed the veracity of the map and the described voyages, with some accusing the younger Zeno of forgery.

ummwhat 5y ago
I heard that first he went half way to the new world, then half of that distance, then half of that distance...and never made it in the end.
- zeven7 5y ago
  Quite the paradox

ummwhat 5y ago

The informal Chinese word for white people is "Lao Wai" which literally translates as "old foreign" (the formal word for foreigners is Wai gou Ren (foreign country person)). The explanation I was given for the informal word is that it means "the old foreigners, as in the ones we've known about since antiquity."

earksiinni 5y ago
Fascinating. Is there a "new" foreign...?
- eloisius 5y ago
  No, GP heard some folsky etymology. Lǎowài does not mean ancient foreigner. One of 老 lǎo's meanings is an honorific like "old / venerable." 老伯 lǎobó uncle, 老闆 lǎobǎn boss, 老師 lǎoshī teacher, are all honorifics that don't mean really mean "old" (except for uncle, which you can use to address a man older than yourself, but doesn't mean he's from ancient times). 老人 lǎorén does mean "old people" but just regular old, not ancient old. 老外 lǎowài just means outsider. 古 gǔ means ancient, like 古人 gǔrén is ancient people. You could construct phrases to mean ancient foreigners, modern immigrants, modern foreign people, etc. but I don't know of any that would carry more special meaning than equivalent phrases in English.
kinghtown 5y ago
My experience living in Taiwan is that those terms may literally mean foreigner but their practical usage means white/western people. A native or black american would not be called that. Also, lao wai is the one they go for when they are angry or postering xenophobia amongst each other. I find it to be a needlessly othering term but I try to accept it as not said with explicitly bad intent.
- ummwhat 5y ago
  The best summary of the word that I've seen is that its a lot like "gringo". Its status as pejorative or descriptive or even endearing depends on how it's said and the context in which it is said and on the person saying it. World of difference between "ey gringo, since when you drink tecate" and "what you doing in our neighborhood gringo".

cafard 5y ago

Herodotus dismisses a story of Phoenicians (acting for the Persian king) sailing around Africa. He says it must be a lie, because they claim that the sun was in the wrong direction--just what for a modern reader strengthens heir claim. But the notion of trans-Atlantic voyages, the Vikings apart, seems shaky to me. You are correct that the notion of isolation tends to be carried much too far.

simorley 5y ago
> But the notion of trans-Atlantic voyages, the Vikings apart, seems shaky to me. Why? The distance between western europe and greenland/north america is rather small. When compared to the vast distances that polynesians have been sailing in the pacific, it's nothing. We know that the inuit/siberians/asians have been traveling between alaska and beyond and back to siberia/asia for thousands of years. And it's almost a certainty that some northern asians knew of "north america". But it was mostly tundra/ice so people simply didn't care. Who really cares if there is more ice beyond the ice that they already knew. What was revolutionary wasn't that columbus sailed to americas. It's something people ( asians/siberians/inuit ) have been doing for thousands of years and it's something europeans have been capable of for thousands of years. The importance of Columbus's expedition was that he showed it can be profitable or at the very least convinced the european elites of it. That's what separated columbus from the vikings, asians/inuits/siberians, vikings and other europeans who sailed to the americas. He showed there is profit in it. Of course columbus's "profit" came at the price of genocide of the natives he came across in the caribbean, but that's another topic.

dr_dshiv 5y ago

From the article: "...one of the students, Giulia Greco, found a passage in which Galvano, after describing Iceland and Greenland, writes: “Farther westwards there is another land, named Marckalada, where giants live; in this land, there are buildings with such huge slabs of stone that nobody could build them, except huge giants. There are also green trees, animals and a great quantity of birds.” Where are there megalithic cultures in Northern America? Or is this evidence of a visit to Mexico?

Apocryphon 5y ago
The point is that this is evidence that scholar(s) on the other side of Europe, centuries after the Norse voyages, had heard of the lands they had discovered (Markland).
cardiffspaceman 5y ago
I visited Chichen Itza in a guided tour. The guide was a local Mayan man. He led us to a structure which had reliefs of people. One of the people had trimmings around his face. The guide stated that this was a man's curly beard, and that in the past this relief had been polychromed, and the color used on these trimmings was red. And as if we couldn't make the required extrapolations on our own, he said that the relief indicated that Mayans had known/may have known of Eric the Red. I don't know of other evidence that Mayans of old had direct or indirect pre-Columbian contact with curly-haired explorers from Europe. It's just that your query triggers this reminiscence.

stkdump 5y ago

> Hence medievalists' disdain for the "dark ages," which are basically an Italian Renaissance construct that got blown up by nationalist Germans in the nineteenth century. Any more info on the last part? I am asking because in contemporary German the term 'dark ages' is almost unheard of, whereas in English it seems to be a fairly common term.

dash2 5y ago

It might also be fair to say that a lot of “global history” of the past 30 years has been written by living people with an agenda. And the rigour of their work has not always been that high. From an English perspective it is hard to understand the disdain for the “dark ages” label. After the Romans left, people in Britain got several inches shorter and became illiterate.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

peoplefromibiza 5y ago

> the "dark ages," which are basically an Italian Renaissance construct they really were to their eyes. We know more about ancient history today than people from the VII century about a 100 years before them The invasions of the former roman empire in today's Italian territory destroyed most of the historical knowledge and gave birth to dark folk legends that are still well alive today, even though historians have debunked the myth of the middle-ages as dark times.