# Discovering the 'New World' **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 10, 2011, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discovering-the-new-world/599227 "2011-10-10T21:56:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discovering-the-new-world/599227/41 "2011-10-11T15:15:00Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > And I’ve heard theories that he was a _Marrano_, or converted Jew. I guess everyone wants a piece of him, for some reason. No doubt, but he was born in Genoa according to his own account. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discovering-the-new-world/599227/42 "2011-10-11T15:16:15Z")
Jews are capable of being born in Genoa too, or so I hear. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discovering-the-new-world/599227/43 "2011-10-11T15:19:14Z")
Maybe he was a coverted Jew of Moorish parenthood and Greek motherhood, who was born in Genoa when his family was moving from Porto to Barcelona via Constantinople… (Mom couldn’t read the Latin alphabet, and Dad refused to stop and ask for directions) ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discovering-the-new-world/599227/44 "2011-10-11T15:25:39Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Bear in mind that the Vikings were crossing the sea in longboats from Greenland, which itself was barely inhabitable and almost impossible to reach. There’s no way they could have brought over more than a couple dozen people each year even if they wanted to. Ah, but would have made for a tasty treat! Mmmm. Viking! ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discovering-the-new-world/599227/45 "2011-10-11T15:43:12Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I would take that story with a grain of salt. Ouch! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discovering-the-new-world/599227/46 "2011-10-11T16:07:19Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > I wonder if Dopers are familiar with [this PDF article based on a 1943 book claiming Columbus was a Greek nobleman](http://www.prometheas.org/Events_flyers/Christopher_Columbus.pdf) ? Is it all crackpottery? I will not try to summarize but a few excerpts may be suggestive: > [@](#): > > … it is generally conceded that Columbus did not know Italian… But nobody spoke or wrote “Italian” at that time. At the time the region consisted of many independent countries and city-states, each of which had their own distinctive dialect (and some of which were virtually mutually unintelligible). If Columbus spoke any of them, it would have been better called Genoese, not Italian. It is interesting, however, that Columbus never wrote in any Italian dialect (except for a few scattered phrases), even when he corresponded with family in Genoa. Some consider this evidence that Columbus didn’t learn to read an write until he settled in Portugal; he didn’t write in Genoese because he didn’t know how to. Even after he moved to Spain, when he wrote in Spanish (Castilian) he tended to use Portuguese spellings. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discovering-the-new-world/599227/47 "2011-10-11T16:18:30Z")
> [@dolphinboy](#): > > 1. At what point, if ever, did Columbus realize that he had discovered a new world that wasn’t part of Asia? Columbus - more properly “Colombo” - went to his gravce insisting he’d gotten to the Far East. Now, whether or not he actually believed it we’ll never know, but he was pretty insistent on it. As Colibri points out, Colombo was a hopeless crackpot - quite a lot of the early explorers were. So we don’t really know what the hell he truly believed. > [@](#): > > 1. Was Columbus expecting/hoping to find gold or silver in his first voyage to the ‘Far East’? He was certainly expecting to find riches, but at the time the riches you might expect to find in Asia would be things like spices. It is difficult in today’s world to understand just how valuable spices were in Europe; by weight some were substantially more expensive than gold, and many of them grow only in the East, often in very specific locations. To find the place where cinnamon was grown would have been a far more valuable find than to find a pile of unguarded gold bricks. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discovering-the-new-world/599227/48 "2011-10-11T16:46:22Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > It is difficult in today’s world to understand just how valuable spices were in Europe; by weight some were substantially more expensive than gold, and many of them grow only in the East, often in very specific locations. To find the place where cinnamon was grown would have been a far more valuable find than to find a pile of unguarded gold bricks. In fact, the cargo Magellan’s ship brought back from the Indies consisted of 26 tons of cloves and cinnamon from the Spice Islands. But it was at great cost: only one ship, with 18 men, returned of the five ships and 270 men who had set out three years earlier. (Magellan himself was a casualty, being killed in a skirmish in the Philippines.) Vasco da Gama’s cargo of spices from India from the first voyage there around Africa is supposed to have netted sixty times the cost of the expedition. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discovering-the-new-world/599227/49 "2011-10-11T19:38:44Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > No doubt, but he was born in Genoa according to his own account. But not Marranos. Marranos were converted _Iberians_; Columbus came from Liguria. Even if he was a Jew, he was not in any way Marrano. Alright, I suppose you could claim his parents left from Spain, and then converted when he was a kid. But there’s no real evidence for that. > **[Marrano](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marrano)** > > Marranos is a term for Spanish and Portuguese Jews, as well as Navarrese Jews, who converted to Christianity, either voluntarily or by Spanish or Portuguese royal coercion, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but who continued to practice Judaism in secrecy or were suspected of it. They are also called crypto-Jews, the term increasingly preferred in scholarly works over Marranos. > The term specifically refers to the charge of crypto-Judaism, whereas the term converso was used for the ... ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discovering-the-new-world/599227/50 "2011-10-11T21:54:35Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > That’s what I was taught in the Seventies, too. The tech gap wasn’t big enough between the Vikings and the Indians, and there were a lot more of the Indians. I also recall reading some years ago that the archaeological evidence was that they refused to adapt to their new home. The locals were wearing the right clothes for the climate, going after the best available food sources, using the right tools and weapons for the job while the Vikings refused to learn anything from the locals and were apparently trying to create a duplicate of their home and all its practices. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discovering-the-new-world/599227/51 "2011-10-11T22:12:45Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > I also recall reading some years ago that the archaeological evidence… That would at a minimum be a case of wild speculation. There’s not enough evidence to support any notions of what the Viking visit to the Americas was like. ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2011, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discovering-the-new-world/599227/52 "2011-10-11T22:53:10Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > That would at a minimum be a case of wild speculation. There’s not enough evidence to support any notions of what the Viking visit to the Americas was like. It was certainly true of the Greenland colony. For example, there are no fish bones in Greenland Viking middens. Part of the reason both the North American and Greenland colonies failed is because they were too far from Iceland to keep supplies regularly coming, and they wouldn’t cut the umbilical cord. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discovering-the-new-world/599227/53 "2011-10-12T00:02:21Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > I also recall reading some years ago that the archaeological evidence was that they refused to adapt to their new home. The locals were wearing the right clothes for the climate, going after the best available food sources, using the right tools and weapons for the job while the Vikings refused to learn anything from the locals and were apparently trying to create a duplicate of their home and all its practices. Yes, the apparently tried to make Greenland into Norway. And when the weather got a little colder, and they had cut down all the trees (something REALLY hard to do in Norway), the old Norsk lifestyle didn’t work. The so-called Scraelings did just find, having already adapted to an arctic lifestyle. ---
**Author:** ![sco3tt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@sco3tt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sco3tt)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discovering-the-new-world/599227/54 "2011-10-12T04:05:58Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > Portugal had spent decades sending one expedition after another down the west coast of Africa trying to find a sea route that would break the Arab monopoly on the overland spice caravans. Columbus’s pitch was that by sailing west he could leapfrog past the Portuguese, opening up the spice trade for Spain instead. In his book _[The Discoverers](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0394726251/ref=rdr_ext_tmb)_ (p. 173 in the paperback if you’re following along at home), Daniel J. Boorstin relates a story that I’ve always found intriguing. According to Boorstin, Columbus was presenting his plan at the court of King John II of Portugal the very day that Bartholomeu Dias returned from his voyage around the southern tip of Africa to reveal his newly- (and accidentally-)found eastward route to the Orient. The king opted to go east and sent Columbus packing. Columbus then took his plan to Spain, and you’ve heard how that turned out. Once Spain gained a foothold in the New World, Portugal cried foul with the pope, resulting in a papal decree granting Portugal rights to all lands east of a division 1,200 nautical miles west of the Cape Verde Islands (basically what is now Brazil) and Spain everything to the west. So if Dias had been just one day late coming home from his travels, we might have all learned Portuguese in high school instead of Spanish. It’s amazing how history works sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![appleciders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discovering-the-new-world/599227/55 "2011-10-12T06:03:23Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I’ve heard speculation was that part of the reason why Columbus thought that the globe was smaller and Asia larger than they actually are, was that he had heard reliable rumors, possibly from the descendants of the Vikings, that there was land an accessible distance across the Atlantic. Which, of course, there was. Columbus’ mistake was just in not knowing which land it was. > [@dtilque](#): > > No, the idea is that during an earlier trip to Iceland he supposedly had heard about the Saga of the Greenlanders or something like that. The problem with such thinking is that he didn’t follow these stories up. If he did think the lands discovered by Eric the Red et al were connected to Asia, then he would have started his voyages by sailing to Iceland and then west from there. Instead he sailed to the Canaries first. The Vinland Sagas weren’t exactly well known in Southern Europe at the time. It’s not impossible, of course, for Columbus to have heard of them, but it seems quite unlikely to me. We know that Columbus had read Marco Polo’s _Travels_, and that he read and was strongly influenced by _The Travels of Sir John Mandeville_ (and had copies of both books in his library) but I’ve never heard it suggested before that he might have heard of the Vinland Sagas. In any case, even if he had heard of the Vinland Sagas and believed them, he probably wouldn’t have gone north to Iceland and sailed west from there because he wouldn’t have wanted to go to Vinland, which really has very little to recommend it in the Sagas. I suppose it might have encouraged his notion that land really wasn’t that far away to the west, but if so, it’s a little strange that we know so much about his reading material with no mention of the Vinland Sagas. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discovering-the-new-world/599227/56 "2011-10-12T13:33:06Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > I also recall reading some years ago that the archaeological evidence was that they refused to adapt to their new home. The locals were wearing the right clothes for the climate, going after the best available food sources, using the right tools and weapons for the job while the Vikings refused to learn anything from the locals and were apparently trying to create a duplicate of their home and all its practices. Sounds like the Greenland chapter in Jared Diamonds Collapse. (And he does point out that the Vikings managed to survive for several centuries despite the climate getting more and more hostile - in fact, a lot of his collapsed societies managed to hang on for a remarkable time, something we haven’t yet shown out societies would be able to.) ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discovering-the-new-world/599227/57 "2011-10-12T14:37:16Z")
> [@sco3tt](#): > > So if Dias had been just one day late coming home from his travels, we might have all learned Portuguese in high school instead of Spanish. It’s amazing how history works sometimes. While it’s an interesting coincidence, I’m skeptical that John would have supported Columbus except for the timing of Dias’s return. He had already rejected Columbus once, based on the recommendation of his panel of experts, and the Portuguese had already invested decades in exploring the African route. While he might have been more likely to support Columbus if Dias hadn’t returned when he did, it was probably still a long shot. > [@](#): > > Once Spain gained a foothold in the New World, Portugal cried foul with the pope, resulting in a papal decree granting Portugal rights to all lands east of a division 1,200 nautical miles west of the Cape Verde Islands (basically what is now Brazil) and Spain everything to the west. Just to clarify, at the time of the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 Brazil had not yet been discovered. It was fortuitous that Cabral found land there in 1500 within the sector allocated to Portugal. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discovering-the-new-world/599227/58 "2011-10-12T15:06:02Z")
One description I read said there were two different calculations of the size of the earth by the ancient Greeks. One was about 8,000 miles diameter, pretty accurate, and the other was about 4,000 miles. Columbus took the latter, and used Marco Polo’s account to determine how far away China was to the east, and determine it was only about 3,000 miles to the west of Spain. As mentioned above, those who believed the (correct) size of the earth to be the right number, pointed out the distance was impossible with the ships of the day; Instead of 3,000 miles it was 15000 miles. Columbus must have had the gift of gab to get some investment, but the Portugese were winning the race eastward, so it was a Spanish gamble and in the end turned out to be a good one. IIRC Columbus first tried the Portugese court who turned him down. Presumably he went to his death bed refusing to actually admit his error even if he had doubts. Daniel Boorstin in _ **Discoverers** _ (IIRC) discusses Marco Polo and the Mongol empire. The middle eastern empires imposed a massive markup on riches from the far east caravan trade, and made sure that foreigners were unwelcome. After the Genghis Kahn empire upset the whole balance of power for about 100 years, there were very few restrictions on foreigners across Asia and Marco Polo could travel east. Probably part of his observation was how incredibly cheap spices were in bulk in the far east, while they markup imposed by intermediaries meant they were worth more than gold in Europe. Hence the fantastic incentive to find a way to cut out the middleman. I assume Columbus felt there was a profit to be made in trading spices. Obviously, if he encountered an advanced civilization like China, gold would not be a case of “help yourself”. Similarly, slaves were never a major profit motive (in fact, the slave trade INTO Europe was not very big and did not grow). IIRC he conned a few locals into getting aboard the ship to show off to the court, but did not go heavily into the trade at first. As for the vikings, they had stories and legends about palces to the west, but by the 1400’s they could not overcome the growing ice packs from gloabl cooling to visit even their colonies in Greenland. SImilarly, current archaeology suggests that Basque fishermen and others knew about and exploited Grand Banks fishing, put ashore to cure the fish, well before Columbus. Like most good fishermen, they kept their favourite fishing spots secret. One suggestion is that John Cabot learned about this and so knew where to find Newfoundland. (Read “Sea of Slaughter” by Farley Mowat for an account of the incredible wealth of wildlife in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the early days.) The Vikings or the Basque may have been first there, but COlumbus was first to publish, so to speak; he gets the credit. ---
**Author:** ![treis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc79bd/32.png) [@treis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/treis)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discovering-the-new-world/599227/59 "2011-10-12T15:23:21Z")
What did Colombus bring along to trade? ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2011, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discovering-the-new-world/599227/60 "2011-10-12T15:37:01Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Just to clarify, at the time of the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 Brazil had not yet been discovered. It was fortuitous that Cabral found land there in 1500 within the sector allocated to Portugal. This has always made me wonder if it wasn’t the Pope’s way of telling them to shut up. Since nobody knew there was land there ahead of time, and all parties knew the world was round, (and hence west WAS the east) it may have been intended as a minor sop to Portugal’s pride not intended to have any significance… which then turned out a bit differently than expected. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discovering-the-new-world/599227.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/discovering-the-new-world/599227.md?page=4)