Imagine thinking you're gonna reach India faster but instead you bring chili peppers, tomatoes and potatoes back, thus revolutionizing global cuisine forever.
this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
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Was he even trying for "faster?"
It is my youtube-based understanding that either the Arabs or Ottomans had stopped the overland spice trade into western Europe, Portugal laid exclusive claim to the route around Africa, and Columbus' whole idea was that, given the earth is a globe, you can get there by going the other way and not have to war with Portugal over it.
That’s why you hire Portuguese navigators.
Also you are about 30% sure the world is a sphere, probably, maybe
Nobody at that time thought the world was flat. It wouldn't even make sense to try to reach India by going the other way if it wasn't a globe. The whole "Columbus thought the world is flat" thing is completely bunk.
It is my youtube-based understanding that, at the time, any literate person understood the world was round, and even had a reasonable idea of its size, but Europeans weren't aware that the Americas existed, and sailing out into open ocean months away from land was preposterously dangerous.
Calm down, just saying it wasnt 'confirmed' until then https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth that was the time we finally managed to circumnavigate the earth for the first time
I believe they knew it was round long before the voyage because the curve of the shadow of the earth on the moon(during lunar eclipse) proved it.
Yeah, and Erastothenes was measuring light angles and stuff way back in 200 BC to get an approximate size of the Earth's circumference. The old folks were pretty dang smart.
He was a pretty smart dude. Came up with the sieve technique for finding primes as well. Or is credited with it anyways....
I know, but that was the time they first proved it by circumnavigating (and not the other means), that why I wrote 'confirmed'.
Seeing a curved shadow on the moon was 100% confirmation as it would be impossible with a flat earth.
Tell that to your average sailor in the 1400s
Didn’t we know this since the time of the ancient Greeks?
I believe the church made sure we forgot it and I think we had never 'tested' if the world is truly a sphere until trying to circumnavigate the world (though there are other ways to test it). Could be wrong, been a while, lets see if someone more informed can help
Pretty sure ancient Greeks also calculated the size of it as well. I can see the church wanting to spin their own narrative. But I suspect the educated knew better. (Though that would be an extremely small percentage of the population.) though I would imagine someone like Columbus would know. Or at least talked with people who would know. Maybe his sailors not so much?
Oh they knew, but the church monopolized knowledge for a while, preached geocentrism and stuff. The great navigations were a culmination of science progress and trade pushing for new routes to be found
Pliny has some interesting observations in his writings, things about how the shadows cast on sundials get longer the farther North you go, that there was a village in central Africa with a well that, on midday in late June, is perfectly lit straight to the bottom, because around the solstice in the tropics the sun is DIRECTLY overhead.