Thank you for your comments.
You are very welcome-I’ve always been fascinated by the curiosity and ingenuity of our ancestors, especially those who had the skills (and the balls) to figure out that the same boats they used to catch fish could be rigged to be ocean going, and so to travel the whole world. I read about every new discovery with great interest.
I also think the travel and trading reach of the early empires extended much further than we give them credit for. The Romans were such meticulous keepers of the accounts of ocean voyages and the listing of trade goods on their manifests-they and the Greeks before them refer to places previously unknown in those accounts all the time, and a lot of those descriptions of places, people, and the merchandise they traded for sure sound like they were in the Americas.
Since they were trading with places as far as China on a regular basis for everything from concubines and medicinal plants to rice paper and delicacies for the tables of the well-to-do, why wouldn’t they be sailing in the opposite direction for more exotic goods to sell to the Roman Equestrian and Patrician classes all over the Empire who could afford such rare items?