Shocking New Evidence Suggests Norse Hunters Met Indigenous North Americans 500 Years Before Columbus

The Debrief ^ | September 27, 2024 | Christopher Plain

[Verginius Rufus]

I read somewhere that two Genoese (maybe they were brothers) tried sailing west from Europe in 1291 and were never heard of again. Did their ship sink? Were they eaten by cannibals? Did they find some paradise-like island in the West Indies and decide to stay there instead of returning to Genoa?

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks! Never heard of them before:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandino_and_Ugolino_Vivaldi

[SunkenCiv]

Majorcans and Genoese on the North Sea Route in the Thirteenth Century [article]
sem-link R. S. Lopez
Revue belge de Philologie et d’Histoire Année 1951 29-4 pp. 1163-1179
https://www.persee.fr/doc/rbph_0035-0818_1951_num_29_4_2120

[Verginius Rufus]

Thanks for the link. I didn't know that so much was known about them. It appears they were trying to sail around Africa, not across the Atlantic like their later compatriot.

It took the Portuguese a long time and much effort to reach the Cape of Good Hope so I doubt anyone sailed around Africa to Ethiopia in the 1290s. It's possible that Phoenician explorers got to what is now Nigeria or Cameroon.

[SunkenCiv]

Off the top of my head, I’d say unless they made landfall for supplies in Spain or Portugal, they probably didn’t make it out of the Mediterranean. :^) Lotta piracy, and not just muzzies.

[Verginius Rufus]

There were contacts between the rulers of Ethiopia and western Europeans in the 1400s--before the Portuguese rounded the southern tip of Africa.

The Ethiopian emperor David I (1382-1413) sent an embassy to Venice in 1402 requesting artisans--some were sent but it is not known if they arrived in Ethiopia safely.

The Ethiopian emperor Isaac I (1414-1428) sent a letter to King Alfonso V of Aragon in 1428 requesting an alliance and artisans.

The emperor Zar'a Ya'kub (1434-1468) sent a diplomatic mission to Europe in 1450.

A Venetian monk named Nicolo Brancaleon went to Ethiopia in the 1480s and spent more than 40 years there creating religious paintings, some of which still exist.

Of course the reason for the Europeans to be interested in Ethiopia and vice versa is that they were Christians facing Muslim enemies.

[SunkenCiv]

https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3257814/posts

[gleeaikin]

If they landed on one of the islands likely to be passed on the way into the Caribbean, they might have indeed been captured by cannibals. I think the island GUadalupe was mentioned with that kind of culture in the 1421 book.

[Verginius Rufus]

The word "cannibal" comes from the name of the Caribs, for whom the Caribbean Sea is named.

Giovanni Verrazzano, who explored the east coast of the present-day US in 1524 (Verrazzano Narrows in NY harbor is named for him), was killed and eaten by cannibals in 1525 when he made the mistake of going ashore on one of the Caribbean islands.