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> Could a random village have a black resident, maybe a sailor or member of a trade expedition that happened to settle there? Absolutely. No, because they woul
by thrown_22 4y ago
> Could a random village have a black resident, maybe a sailor or member of a trade expedition that happened to settle there? Absolutely.
No, because they would have died from the novel diseases the village would have had. There's a reason why when Europeans went anywhere they died by the boat load and pretty much everyone they brought back to Europe also died.
It's always fun to remember that Pocahontas died in England after being there less than a year.
- simonh 4y agoThe Middle East and North Africa had frequent contact with Europe. When thousands of Europeans went on crusade to the Middle East they didn’t all drop dead. The Romans went everywhere. Berber pirates even raided for slaves as far north as Iceland. This is simply not an issue. The Americas was a different situation, they’d been isolated from Eurasia for tens of thousands of years. In Middle Earth the Numenorians had extensive colonies in the far south, and also had contact with the Elves and their ancestral homelands in the northern regions. Again, just not an issue.
- thrown_22 4y agoThe middle east is _not_ sub Saharan Africa.
- simonh 4y agoSo what? The same applies. Sub Saharan Africa had frequent contact with North Africa and the Middle East. The Romans sent expeditions, and Arab traders travelled across much of the continent. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romans_in_Sub-Saharan_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romans_in_Sub-Saharan_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu#History The Egyptians sponsored a Phoenician expedition that circumnavigated Africa. Finds at the ruins at Great Zimbabwe include items from as far away as China. Check out this mural of the Roman emperor Severus and his wife from the 2nd century, and tell me again how there were no black people in Europe as long ago as Medieval times. https://www.history.co.uk/article/severus-rome’s-first-african-emperor https://www.history.co.uk/article/severus-rome’s-first-afric... And again, we know for a fact from Tolkien that the Numenorians ranged from the north all the way to the far southern continent, and the oceans of the Far East.
- thrown_22 4y agoYes, and you keep ignoring the death rates for those expeditions.
- simonh 4y agoPlease point out the evidence for these death rates. Any way the death rates from disease don’t matter. What matters is the survivors. What we do know is this contact happened. That’s a fact. It was even common enough to be economically important. That’s all it takes for people from far populations or with distant ancestry to show up.
- thrown_22 4y agohttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/310799440_Mortality_among_European_settlers_in_pre-colonial_West_Africa_The_White_Man's_Grave_revisited https://www.researchgate.net/publication/310799440_Mortality... Somewhere between 10% to 30% of Europeans that moved to West Africa died each year. To put that in context the black death on average killed between 30% to 60% of the population _once a generation_.