In the fourteen-hundreds, we are
told that a man named Columbus, attempting to
sail around the world, discovered America- or at
least, San Salvador. Though Columbus's attempt to
prove the world was truly round failed, Magellan,
in the next century, proved that Columbus was
correct; he, indeed, circumnavigated the Earth.
However, before Columbus began his journey into
the unknown, the Alexandrian geographer Strabo
wrote:
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'Those
who have returned from an attempt to
curcumnavigate the Earth do not say that they
have been prevented by an opposing continent,
for the sea remained perfectly open, but,
rather, through want of resolution and
scarcity of provision.....Eratosthenes says
that if the extent of the Atlantic Ocean were
not an obstacle, we might easily pass from
Iberia to India....'
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'It is quite possible that in
the temperate zone there may be one or two
inhabited Earths.....Indeed, if [this other
part of the world] is inhabited, it is not
inhabited by men such as exist in our parts,
and we should regard it as another inhabited
world ' (Sagan, Cosmos
16).
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the citizens of Spain knew little about the areas
outside present day Europe, they theorized from
information they obtained from map-making. Soon
they were proven correct through the voyages of
seafarers such as Magellan and Columbus. This
brings to mind a quote from Carl Sagan,
"Absence of evidence is not
evidence of absence." |
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