[ExI] Gender-Neutral Side Note

[John Clark]

On Fri, Nov 7, 2025 at 10:00 AM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

*> Columbus had no way of knowing about the Pacific ocean, but he was a
> sailor, so he knew approximately the circumference of the globe.*


*I don't think Columbus knew the circumference of the globe nearly as well
as the ancient Greeks did, if he did he would've never sailed west and the
king of Spain didn't either or he would've never given the money to make
that voyage possible. Suppose north and South America did not exist and
there was nothing but ocean between Portugal and India, Columbus and his
entire crew would've starved to death because they did not have nearly
enough provisions to make a journey of that length. Even if he didn't have
access to the Greek knowledge he was a navigator so he could've repeated
the same experiment that they had performed, it's not difficult. And Claude
agrees with me. I asked him (her? it?) the following question:  *

*Me: On Christopher Columbus's first voyage did he know how big the Earth
was? I don't think he did because if north and south America didn't exist
and there was nothing but ocean between Portugal and India he didn't have
enough provisions to make a voyage of that length.*

Claude: You're absolutely right, and this is one of the most interesting
misconceptions about Columbus's voyage!

Columbus actually *underestimated* the Earth's size quite significantly.
The accurate circumference of Earth had been known since ancient times -
the Greek mathematician Eratosthenes calculated it remarkably accurately
around 240 BCE. By Columbus's time, educated Europeans had a pretty good
idea that Earth was about 25,000 miles around.

But Columbus rejected these calculations. He relied on smaller estimates
and also dramatically overestimated how far east Asia extended. He thought
the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan was only about 3,000-4,000
miles of ocean, when in reality it's more like 12,000 miles.

You've identified exactly why this matters: *Columbus's voyage only
succeeded because the Americas happened to be there*. If the world had been
as he imagined it - just open ocean between Europe and Asia - his crew
would have run out of food and water long before reaching Asia, and they
likely would have perished at sea.

This is actually why Columbus had such difficulty getting funding
initially. Portuguese experts, who had better calculations, correctly told
him his distance estimates were wrong and that such a voyage across open
ocean would be impossible. Spain eventually funded him partly because they
had less to lose after Portugal had secured the African route to Asia.

So Columbus was operating on flawed geography, got incredibly lucky that a
continent was in his way, and spent the rest of his life insisting he'd
reached Asia anyway, not realizing he'd found something entirely unexpected.

*John K Clark*
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