[ExI] Gender-Neutral Side Note

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
Cc: Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ExI] Gender-Neutral Side Note



>>... Columbus made a reasonable assumption when he reached land in the Caribbean to assume it was India, and that India was a really big hunk of land.

>...No, it was known since at least Roman times (Ptolemy, 2nd century AD) that there was an ocean to the east of China.

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Ja, but no one knew for sure what ocean that was, or that China wasn't part of India.  How could they know?  They didn't know the longitude of China in the late 1400s.  Someone eventually just had to try sailing west from Europe, then solving a still more difficult problem: restocking the ships in India or China or whatever was over there to the west, sufficiently to sail back home to Europe.

spike