Explorer...

"PartyPooper2012" (PartyPooper2012) 08/06/2018 at 15:00 • Filed to: None

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No. Not that explorer.

The other day I was wondering... The explorers 500+ years ago set off to find a new route to india to get tea and spices.

Let’s say America was not there. How many miles would the direct new route be from say spain/england/portugal to india vs the old way?

I don’t know much in the way of navigating earth. I am sure one has to loop around shallow waters and reefs and resupply somewhere friendly so enemy don’t kill you.

If you go around south africa, it adds up to more than 11,000 miles.

If you go through mediterranean and red seas, it adds up a bit under 6000 miles.

If you go the new route, the longest trip through pacific leaves you no resupply stops. And of course, attlantic to pacific (no america in this query) also leaves you nothing. That’s 14000 miles without resupply or there about... if you don’t stumble into japan or some other island along the way.

All in over 17000 miles. That’s just crazy. 

Just Jeepin' > PartyPooper2012 08/06/2018 at 15:23

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Portugal and Spain both knew that Columbus was off his rocker about the distance, but Spain was desperate enough to give him a shot .

MM54 > PartyPooper2012 08/06/2018 at 15:24

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To be fair, people were concerned that if they sailed too far west, they’d fall off the earth - probably weren’t quite sure if it would be quicker that way or not but worth finding out.

LOREM IPSUM > PartyPooper2012 08/06/2018 at 15:29

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...and we need GPS and bottled water to venture out of our neighborhoods without getting lost and dying...

PartyPooper2012 > MM54 08/06/2018 at 15:35

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I don’t know... I’ve gone white water rafting... you see people disappear on horizon. You have time to pull over and go by land to see where the fuck people in front of you fell off to. By that reasoning, you would assume someone would come back and say yeah. there is the edge of the earth and bobby and johhny fell off. But no one ever said that. They only assumed. 

PartyPooper2012 > LOREM IPSUM 08/06/2018 at 15:36

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I got lost in my garage the other day. I really need to organize those reefs and friendly areas. 

TheBloody, Oppositelock lives on in our shitposts. > MM54 08/06/2018 at 15:51

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Nah, sailors knew that the earth wasn’t flat at that time. It’s only the uneducated and or morons who thought the earth was flat, much like today.

TheRealBicycleBuck > PartyPooper2012 08/06/2018 at 16:09

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That’s exactly why they thought the earth had an edge. Watch the sailboats move to the horizon and then watch them slowly sink over the edge on an ocean that was obviously flat.

Funny that this is one of the reasons that they finally realized the earth had to be round.

bwp240 > PartyPooper2012 08/06/2018 at 16:11

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Well I imagine they would get to about 30% of the way then freeze and crash.

Oh wait, not that explorer either...

Manwich - now Keto-Friendly > PartyPooper2012 08/06/2018 at 16:43

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Why organize your reefers when you can just smoke ‘em?

facw > PartyPooper2012 08/06/2018 at 16:47

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Yeah, India is going to be a long way. China, Japan, and even Southea st Asia would be more palatable.

The other thing you might be missing is that in 1492, Europeans had no way to get to Asia at all. Everything came via the Silk Road, or into ports in the Muslim world and were then moved overland to the Mediterranean, meaning trade was entirely controlled by Muslim nations, which led to the need for new trade routes. The first European expedition to reach India by sea was Vasco da Gama who arrived there in 1498.  That was followed by reaching China in 1513 and Japan in 1542. The new route to India Columbus was looking for wasn’t replacing existing sea routes (which didn’t exist), but rather the land trade routes which had existed since antiquity.

LongbowMkII > TheRealBicycleBuck 08/06/2018 at 17:32

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The earth was known to be round since ancient times. A Greek mathematician discovered that a same height pole in different cities  cast a different length shadow at noon. 

TheRealBicycleBuck > LongbowMkII 08/07/2018 at 00:01

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Exactly. And they were sailing long before Eratosthenes figured out the Earth was round. 

PartyPooper2012 > facw 08/07/2018 at 06:06

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You are probably right about all of the above. I was just over simplifying who went where and why... I was just fascinated by how many miles it is and how google maps struggles to measure straight line distance from portugal to mumbai 

PartyPooper2012 > Manwich - now Keto-Friendly 08/07/2018 at 06:08

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Never really understood that reefer reference ... reefer in trucking probably refers to refrigerated trucks... Maybe that the pot sorta looks like a reef? But that’s a long shot. 

PartyPooper2012 > LongbowMkII 08/07/2018 at 06:11

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Well yeah... you take a Pole and you get him drunk in different cities, he is going to be in different positions every time.