Comment by Jonathanks | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Jonathanks | Hacker News Reader

I'm not very knowledgeable in history but I find this interesting: In his book, "We Are Not The First (Riddles of Ancient Science)", Andrew Tomas argued for a possible knowledge of the existence of other continents, particularly North America, by the ancients. He writes: "Plato must have been cognizant of the great size of our globe, and of other continents, because he said in Phaedo that the Mediterranean people occupied 'only a small portion of the earth'. 'Besides the world we inhabit, there may be one or more other worlds peopled by beings different from ourselves,' wrote Strabo (1st century BC). He even mentioned that if the parallel of Athens were extended westward---across the Atlantic, these other races might live there in the temperate zone, clearly alluding to North America. ... Did the scholars of antiquity know about America? Seneca (1st century), the tragedian, confirms this supposition by his famous verse in the Medea: There shall come a time When the bands of Ocean Shall be loosened, And the vast Earth shall be laid open, Another Tiphys shall disclose new worlds, And lands shall be seen beyond Thules.

New lands 'beyond Thules', or Iceland, could be nothing but Greenland and North America."

That's inspiring. So, before the Vikings, the New World wasn't an impossibility. It was in fact as old as any other point on Earth.

Well, in the 3rd century BCE, Eratothenes calculated a fairly accurate circumference of the earth. I don't know how widely accepted this measurement was, but, given that measurement, and the general distribution of land vs ocean observed by the ancients, it's not a huge stretch to assume that there must be something out there on the other side of the world. Some of the early world maps were remarkably accurate, at least for the areas that were well-known to the geographers, even given the very limited tools at their disposal[1].

There's also the curious case of the apparent Roman-era shipwreck that was discovered off the coast of Brazil[2]. It's a little tinfoil-hatty, and possibly a hoax, but it is interesting.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps

[2] http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1042040/pg1

There are similar accounts in that book and it all seemed not-so-extraordinary until I got to the accounts of maps that described features of Antarctica. Whether it's true or a hoax, the human mind is amazing. The book contains accounts of evidence of tides of human civilization: planned cities in Pakistan, well-developed waste management systems, advanced ship building and navigation (for the time they lived), possible advances in weapons and warfare, including nuclear weapons (evidence in an Indian desert and writings describing a nuclear explosion), writings describing space travel and some other marvels of the ancient world.

> planned cities in Pakistan, well-developed waste management systems, advanced ship building, [...] nuclear weapons

One of these is not like the other...

> the general distribution of land vs ocean observed by the ancients

Nobody had crossed the Ocean Sea before. So if they were reasonable enough, they'd understand that the general distribution of land vs ocean they were seeing relied on them standing on the land part (vs in the middle of a potentially empty Ocean).

"Plato must have been cognizant of the great size of our globe, and of other continents, because he said in Phaedo that the Mediterranean people occupied 'only a small portion of the earth'"

I think it is more likely he drew that conclusion because he knew you could go quite a bit north in Europe, south in Africa and east in Asia. Those are all things you probably could learn from talks to merchants.

Eratosthenes is credited with accurately predicting the circumference of the earth, but he was about a century after Plato.

But any coastal population must have known the curvature of the earth by basic empirical analysis of maritime traffic. In other words, watching the fishing boats disappear over the horizon.

Any sailor knew that, because they navigated lattitudonally by looking at the altitude of various stars above the horizon.

> Plato must have been cognizant of the great size of our globe, and of other continents, because he said in Phaedo that the Mediterranean people occupied 'only a small portion of the earth.'

> That's inspiring. So, before the Vikings, the New World wasn't an impossibility. It was in fact as old as any other point on Earth.

Very well said. If nothing else this also shows the deep origins of the development of the scientific method: propose a theory based on (in this case) extrapolation, then prove it later on with evidence. In many ways, human civilization, and especially human knowledge can be thought of as a manifestation of this simple formula.

The existence of a kind of extrapolation-based forethought prior to the actual process of exploration undertaken by humankind evidenced here would fall neatly into this progression.

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