Posted on 03/29/2021 9:05:58 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
LOL
That’s kinda what I was wondering: was this a slap at China?
“Nobody ever thought of sailing around Africa for thousands of years?...............”
“Thought of” and “knew how to cost-effectively” are very two very different concepts. Barring the significant possibility of someone doing it in prehistory, Vasco di Gama first did it in 1497; even so, he mostly established trade routes to India, etc.; the Silk Road remained the dominant route of trade to China.
The fact is, it’s not true.
The story in pjmedia says a French company. Did you cause the correction?
What’s not true? That trade with China remained primarily overland? That Vasco DiGama was the first person, at least since early antiquity, to sail around Africa? You know that Africa has an absolute lack of ports... it’s not sailing around Europe or the Americas or China. It’s several times further than crossing the Atlantic, and if you don’t have a safe place to land your ship, the fact that you’re within sight of land doesn’t help much.
Well, I hope so - that author was a lazy SOB...
As a funny aside, I spent a year serving as a UN Observer in the Sinai (1988-89) and one time I decide to swim across the Suez Canal and back just for the fun of it. When I got partway across, a Soviet freighter was passing down the canal, so I stopped and yelled at them in Russian, using all of the potty-mouth stuff that I learned in college.
Those were severely dumbfounded Russkies! - Like "Where the heck did this guy come from?"
Great fun.
It’s not true that there was no maritime trade for thousands of years, that trade relied entirely on overland traffic. That’s what’s not true.
You’re saying that there was maritime trade completely around the entire Cape of Good Hope?
... because no-one ever suggested that there was zero maritime trade, just that no-one ever traded between Europe and Eastern/Southern Asia without needing to do one leg over land. It certainly well known that Egypt had massive exchange with both India and Europe... but that’s irrelevant.
Of *course* they did. The Indians referred to the great ships of the westerners, which were coming and going for centuries; even the Han Court in China recorded the arrival of traders from the Roman Empire during the reign of Marcus Aurelius.
You do know that the Roman Empire extended to ports on the Indian Ocean, don’t you? They established ports along the East Coast of Africa as far South as Tanzania... but this was from the Gulf of Arabia and the Gulf of Aden. Roman maps show no hint of any knowledge of sub-equatorial maps.
You do know that you’re slowly but surely just retreating while trying again to shift toward irrelevance? Why not just go back to Vasco de Gama? Crack a book.
Archaeologists Unearth Roman Era Artefacts In Kerala (India)
https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/1806669/posts
More evidence unearthed at ancient port of Muziris
https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2475027/posts
Mould for minting Roman coins found in Talkad [India]
https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3161974/posts
Tamil Brahmi script in Egypt
https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/1933979/posts
Tamil Trade
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1213591/posts
The Voyage around the Erythraean Sea
https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1214273/posts
When In Vietnam, Build Boats As The Romans Do
https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/1619016/posts
Goddess Lakshmi statue in Pompeii | The Mysterious India | 2015-03-19
http://www.themysteriousindia.net/goddess-lakshmi-statue-in-pompeii/
I know quite well that Romans traded with India! St Thomas established churches in India that were prospering 1,500 years later (and absolutely prove that so much of Catholicism-Orthodoxy dates back to the apostles, by the way). But we’ve only ever been discussing whether they sailed all the way around Africa to get there. Which they did NOT.
And since you’re claiming I’m backtracking, here’s my initial point of contention:
“You’re saying that there was maritime trade completely around the entire Cape of Good Hope? ... because no-one ever suggested that there was zero maritime trade, just that no-one ever traded between Europe and Eastern/Southern Asia without needing to do one leg over land. It certainly well known that Egypt had massive exchange with both India and Europe... but that’s irrelevant.”
No, we haven’t. Once again you’re acting shifty.
The Phoenicians circumnavigated Africa.
The Romans had a colossal amount of maritime trade.
Those are two different things, and two different eras.
By contrast, you’ve stated that the all the goods went overland, which they very definitely didn’t.
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