Do we know how Columbus rationalized to himself that he was in Asia after not finding anything that remotely resembled the quite large Civilizations of that continent?
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.
You’re probably thinking of The Vinland Map, which I’m not sure was thought to be in the possession of “descendants of the Vikings”, but it’s generally thought to be a fake.
No one doubted that there was land accessible across the Atlantic, they just thought it was too far to make the journey practical with the technology of the day.
There seems to be evidence that the first Europeans to visit the New World were Solutrean people from Southern France about 16,000 BC.
A lot’s been written but here’s just one reference;
A very fringe idea in the scientific community. Very fringe.
I read somewhere (no cite, alas) that he had convinced himself he was in the Spice Islands the whole time. Hence the name “pepper” for chillis.
He believed he was in outlying islands at the fringe of Asia. Japan was always just over the horizon. When he was in Hispaniola, he became convinced by what he heard from the locals that it was Cuba. Of course exploration proved that the Cubans were much like the Hispaniolans.
When he found Central America on his fourth voyage, he became convinced it was part of the Peninsula of the Golden Chersonese, or Malaya. He sailed south in hopes of finding the Straits of Malacca and rounding for India. (If he had sailed north he might have encountered the Aztecs. Lord knows what he would have made of them.) He eventually gave up on that after sailing far eastward without finding a break.
Columbus had a talent for two things: navigation and self-deception. He was a crackpot, and no amount of contrary information was going to convince him that his pet theory was wrong and he wasn’t in Asia.
When Magellan finally reached Asia by sailing west as Columbus had proposed, he first found cultures in the Philippines that were not too different a level from those found by Columbus. So Columbus’s idea that he was in an outlying region of Asia was not unreasonable at first. It became so after more extensive exploration began to demonstrate the true state of affairs.
You may have read it in mystaff report on chilis. However, that was a bit of PR. He knew chilis were different from real pepper, but wanted to show he had discovered a similar spice. But yes, he tried to interpret everything he saw with reference to what was known of the East.
This book doesn’t answer the OP’s questions specifically, but it has some great stories and I think it’s worth reading: A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World
To be fair, he had no other point of reference, and there wasn’t a whole lot known about the Far East. Heck, there wasn’t a lot of clear information about the Far East even in the Far East.
Thanks for these clarifications, Colibri. But some comments:
I am amazed that apparently both he and the Spanish made him the governor of a place thousands of miles away from where they thought he was. I guess their highnesses in Spain at this point really had nothing to go on but Columbus’s word.
Ignorance fought. I thought it was pretty much the insanely profitable spices.
Idle curiosity: Is there any reason to believe that Orson Scott Card’s hypothesis in Pastwatch is at all likely? The book supposes that Columbus was well aware of the real circumference of the earth, but that he shrank it considerably to make his voyages appear more likely to succeed. On the other hand, perhaps not, because then he would have known that wherever the hell he was was not Asia but somewhere a hell of a lot closer.
Another idle curiosity: How common was Columbus’s belief that he had found somewhere near Asia among the other sailors with him? There may not be any surviving records, but did they think he was wrong? nuts? kind of an idiot?
Finally, a self correction:
The goal of course was to go west. That way they would avoid going east.
True, but Columbus really went out of his way to make what he saw conform to what he wanted to see.
Talk about Franglish.
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.
At the start, no one had any reason to believe that Hispaniola wasn’t an island somewhere in the Indies. It was clearly not under the control of any known empire, so it was up for grabs. And Columbus’s contract with the Spanish crown called for him to be appointed Viceroy and Governor of any new lands he discovered. (The terms were generous since they did not really expect him to succeed.)
It was mainly the spices, along with silk and other trade items. But he was looking for anything of value, including gold.
Pretty much impossible. If Columbus would have tried to sail the entire distance to Asia, he and his men would have died of thirst and starvation, and he would have known that. (Of course, the men would have made him turn back before then, as they almost did on his actual voyage.) When Magellan actually did make the voyage across the Pacific, he lost many men to scurvy.
Columbus was well aware of the other estimates of the circumference of the Earth, since his initial proposal to the Spanish crown was rejected because the experts had pointed that it was too far to sail to Asia. He cherry picked the available data to come up with a shorter estimated distance, but there is no reason to think that he hadn’t convinced himself as well.
Some of the men probably thought he was wacky at first, and as mentioned they tried to make him turn around shortly before his first landfall. But once they found land right where he had calculated Asia to be, most of them would have figured he was right.
I wonder if Dopers are familiar with this PDF article based on a 1943 book claiming Columbus was a Greek nobleman ? Is it all crackpottery? I will not try to summarize but a few excerpts may be suggestive:
Shrug, I’ve heard claims of Columbus being Portuguese, Catalan, Neapolitan, Greek… the tradition is that he was Genoese, but it’s not as if people back then traveled with thumbprint-stamped, hologramed passports.
And I’ve heard theories that he was a Marrano, or converted Jew. I guess everyone wants a piece of him, for some reason.
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. The Vikings were overwhelmed and either forced, or chose, to go back east.
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.