Even Columbus and later explorers couldn’t store enough food on board to last for more than a few months.
Presumably they deliberately avoided the complications of dealing with locals, or finding locals who had surplus supplies of food to sell. Don’t assume that there were inhabitants all along the coast. There would have been very long uninhabited stretches.
Gathering wild fruit etc. - no. Not that plentiful, and local skills would be needed. European explorers were certainly not able to live on local natural resources on the coasts of Central and South America.
Plus, the voyage as described is coastal. It’s not like they were setting out to cross an ocean, like Columbus did. Mediterranean sailors were skilled coastal sailors, and just following the coast and keeping it on your right all the time, often within sight of land, would seem to me to be well within their technical capabilities.
Cicero wrote of wondrous mechanical devices made by Archimedes which modeled and predicted the motions of the sun, moon, and 5 planets. This description of what would amount to a clockwork orrery predating (and far exceeding in complexity) the earliest known clockworks by centuries was considered fantastical until the discovery that the Antikythera Mechanism was just such a clockwork device.
Survivor bias. We don’t know how many failed voyages there were. Later voyagers may have relied on information brought back by failed attempts; others may just never have returned.
The sailing skills of the Phoenicians were universally attested to in the ancient world. But ultimately, it’s a curiosity, not a vital historical fact: what explorations they went on (and came back from), it doesn’t seem to have had much of an impact on the cultures they discovered.
It’s a rather startling claim for people with no experience of the Southern Hemisphere, but not all that amazing – anyone who knew that the Earth was round (e.g. any educated person in ancient Greece) and guessed that Africa was big enough to extend past the Equator could have predicted it.
Yep, that was considered to be pseudoscience , slightly better than aliens built the pyramids. And it was one of the reasons why the Kensington Runestone was considered a fraud. (The stone is still problematic and unsure status).
Yep, and there were Commies in the State dept. McCarthy was wrong of course, he had no list, but our Govt and especially the UK govt had plenty of Soviet spies.
Yes, although he was probably like 90% Legend and 10% history. Still, a real person. Most of the OT before King Omri or even Hezekiah is like that. But then look at how many legends have sprung up about George Washington in less than 3 centuries.
The Athenian Thucydides was on the losing side but wrote the History of the Peloponnesian War, how the Civil War was taught and how it was thought of was dominated by Confederate apologist for decades, and plenty of American scholars have written about the Vietnam War. History is written by all sorts of people.
It was a draw, we lost no territory and the Brits stopped taking our seamen, even though that was a unwritten handshake deal.
No, not after the war was over, after the treaty was signed. In those days of non-instant communication, it was understood that everyone wouldn’t know about a treaty instantly, so “the war was over” when the news had a chance to get out.
No, we did not lose the war. We did not win it either. Undefeated.
The Brits also gained a huge respect for our navy, which stood us well. Not to mention Jackson clobbering the Brits. We gained respect.
Yeah, there never was a Atlantis, except maybe Athens- the story was a parable.
I’ve heard that argued as well. I lack the any expertise on the lives of Jefferson, his siblings, or Sally Hemings to determine the how likely it is that Jefferson isn’t the father.
I appreciate all the responses about my post in the Thera Eruption and Atlantis. A few points I would like to make:
My understanding about the Thera eruption is that there were legends and stories about for centuries but it was not absolutely confirmed about it happening until modern times.
And as far the Atlantis-Minoan civilization connections I know Plato’s work on subject was basically a fictional allegory/parable to promote his philosophical views. I said the eruption of Thera and subsequent collapse of the Minoan civilization is believed to inspired Plato when he described the destruction of Atlantis–I did not say that Plato’s work created a one to one description of the Minoan civilization with Atlantis.
Hence the George Washington Principle - “It’s easy to tell the truth when you’re the one holding the axe.”
Sally (Sarah) was 3/4 white apparently - her mother was the child of an African slave and a white sea captain. He father was Jefferson’s father-in-law. (So she was Tom’s wife’s half-sister). Apparently many men of that era were not “refined” or “sensitive”.
I learned the War of 1812 was a futile draw. You blew up Toronto, we burned down Washington. On the plus side, that gave you the “White House” (Story goes the scorch marks were simply whitewashed over after that) But the USA didn’t get Canada, and the Brits didn’t retrieve their lost colonies, and Britain stopped treating US ships as sources for manpower.
No, the Kensington Runestone is 100% a fraud. There’s nothing problematic or unsure about its status. The weathering patterns make no sense for a millennia-old inscription. The runic forms and even the grammar are consistent with 19th Century knowledge of runes, not c. 1000 AD Norse. No other similar “runestones” have ever been found, in Scandinavia or elsewhere. There is known to have been a copy of a book on runes in a nearby library that had all the information needed to create the inscription. Not too mention the extremely convenient “coincidence” that the one and only such “runestone” ever found just happened to turn up in an area with a large population of 19th Century Scandinavian immigrants, by a farmer with recent Scandinavian ancestry, just in time for the Columbian Exposition.
The role of the farmer who claimed to have found it is still unsure. He might have been in on it, or a convenient dupe. The motives of the hoaxers aren’t entirely certain, but it sure looks a lot like a “pious fraud.” Either way, the Kensington Runestone is bullshit history.
Sally was also apparently a dead ringer for Jefferson’s dead wife. People commented on it at the time. She would have been a lot younger than his wife.
As I stated upthread, that’s not my understanding, but I am definitely not a subject matter expert, and I could very easily be completely wrong. Do you have any sources for this? I’m not trying to be contentious, I’m genuinely curious about learning more about this.
Thera erupted c. 1600 BCE. Plato live 1200 years later. It’s certainly not impossible that there was some lingering folk-historical memory of Thera’s eruption that served as an inspiration for Plato’s account of the destruction of Atlantis. But there doesn’t actually seem to be any particular reason to think that the Thera eruption specifically was any particular inspiration for Plato. There were any numbers of volcanos, subsidences, catastrophic floods, and other disasters in the region over the previous millennium that could have inspired Plato.
Again, though, I’m not a subject matter expert, and I could be wrong. What reason is there to think that Thera inspired elements of the “Timaeus” and “Critias” dialogues?
But by the same token declassification of the Venona also makes the death sentence seem unwarranted, as they weren’t “THE atomic spies” that gave the Russians the A-bomb, they were a small cog in a much larger machine and were only peripherally involved in the process of the soviets getting details of the Manhattan Project (though that doesn’t make them innocent).
OK regarding the Thera eruption it probably does not qualify for this thread because I don’t think anyone ever thought it did not happen. It is more along the lines of a historical event that was believed happened that wasn’t 100% confirmed until modern times when scientists were able to confirm it from ice cores, tree ring dating and ash deposits around the world.
If I recall what I read - she was 15 or 16 when she was supposed to be “nanny” for Jefferson’s slightly younger daughter on their trip to Europe. Other household complained she was too ditsy to actually do that job. But, Jefferson kept her around and so he got it on with her in France when she was about 16. I suspect the resemblance and her youth did not impede the relationship.