A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas • Hacker News Board

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#61

Post by ChainOfFools » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 1:42 AM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #23

exdsq wrote: post #15

And even if they were written down, the Catholic church sure did love to burn books back then!

The "love to burn books" mostly happened during the Counter-Reformation, which is several centuries after this book would have been written.

well that and the entire Mayan corpus.

what pittance of codices we have today come from Christianized Maya scribes, a massively condensed post-columbian highlight reel of their obliterated textual culture compiled at the behest of the Spanish crown and under the direction of their Catholic overseers.

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#62

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 1:45 AM UTC

tootie wrote: post #22

frupert52 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And pandemics?

Pandemics would be pretty unlikely in the days of such low population density. Epidemics definitely happened pretty routinely though.

[deleted]

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#63

Post by joshuaissac » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 1:45 AM UTC

kome wrote: post #37

jbay808 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that was mostly due to Islamic scholars. Weren't the monks mostly erasing and repurposing old scrolls to make copies of the Bible?

what? no. if we can read plato and aristotle - and a bunch of others - it's thanks to Catholics monk.

The works of Aristotle were translated from Greek to Arabic by Islamic scholars in the early Middle Ages, mostly pre-dating the Latin translations, and they were sometimes the source from which the Latin translations were made.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovery_of_Aristotle

2. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arabic-islamic-influence/

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#64

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 1:46 AM UTC

tootie wrote: post #22

frupert52 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And pandemics?

Pandemics would be pretty unlikely in the days of such low population density. Epidemics definitely happened pretty routinely though.

[deleted]

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#65

Post by exdsq » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 1:51 AM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #23

exdsq wrote: post #15

And even if they were written down, the Catholic church sure did love to burn books back then!

The "love to burn books" mostly happened during the Counter-Reformation, which is several centuries after this book would have been written.

Books were still hand written and centralized, they’d have been burned such that we aren’t aware of them today - doesn’t matter if it’s 15th or 17th century

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#66

Post by bobthechef » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 1:52 AM UTC

ChainOfFools wrote: post #61

jcranmer wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "love to burn books" mostly happened during the Counter-Reformation, which is several centuries after this book would have been written.

well that and the entire Mayan corpus. what pittance of codices we have today come from Christianized Maya scribes, a massively condensed post-columbian highlight reel of their obliterated textual culture compiled at the behest of the Spanish crown and under the direction of their Catholic overseers.

Also, languages like Guarani survived because of the efforts of missionaries (the Jesuits in this case).

(But I will say that the current policy of "protecting" the isolated tribes in the Amazon from human contact by categorically shutting them off is quite horrible and uncharitable. This is rooted in the preposterous myth of the noble savage. Tribal peoples are not innocent children.)

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#67

Post by duncanawoods » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 1:56 AM UTC

jbay808 wrote: post #30

hprotagonist wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite the opposite: you have copyist monks to thank for the survival of the vast majority of written material that remains from pre-christian antiquity.

I thought that was mostly due to Islamic scholars. Weren't the monks mostly erasing and repurposing old scrolls to make copies of the Bible?

You are getting downvoted but this is the traditional history of philosophy as I understand it too (the history of Christianity will be different).

Hellenic culture and texts had permiated Africa and and Mid-east. There were various ancient libraries and academies. Byzantine scholars at the Neoplatonic Academy fled to Persia after it was closed by Justinian. Later in the 8th Century, the Greaco-Arabic Translation Movement gathered books and translated original Greek texts into Arabic at the House of Wisdom (Grand Library of Baghdad). Study of hellenic philosophy restarted in the Arabic world until the Golden Age of Islamic Philosophy with Averroes whose commentarities reintroduced Hellenic philosophy to Europe in the 12th century.

I don't think that particular flow needs any Irish Monks but I don't know the specific sources of books used by the Translation Movement.

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#68

Post by fsckboy » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 1:58 AM UTC

CryptoPunk wrote: post #39

Intriguely, Columbus claimed that in 1477, after visiting Bristol, England (which is confirmed), he visited Iceland, where the stories of Markland would have predominated.

interesting! here's what wikipedia says:

"In May 1476, [Columbus] took part in an armed convoy sent by Genoa to carry valuable cargo to northern Europe. He probably docked in Bristol, England, and Galway, Ireland. He may have also gone to Iceland in 1477. It is known that in the autumn of 1477, he sailed on a Portuguese ship from Galway to Lisbon, where he found his brother Bartolomeo..."

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#69

Post by bobthechef » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 1:59 AM UTC

masswerk wrote: post #43

jcranmer wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "love to burn books" mostly happened during the Counter-Reformation, which is several centuries after this book would have been written.

However, there was also the Albigensian Crusade and not a single piece of catharian writing survived this.

This is false. The "Liber de duobus principiis" survived.

Re: A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas

#70

Post by hadlock » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 2:28 AM UTC

interestica wrote: post #40

crakenzak wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> birds could be seen returning to the West Coast of England with twigs and leaves from somewhere. Are you saying birds were carrying twigs over the Atlantic from Americas -> Europe?? Genuinely curious as to if birds actually do that, seems pointless.

> seems pointless I'm more wondering about the effects of seed/life transfer. Doesn't seem feasible to me.

Every year or two, people decide to fly from North America to Europe in a short range Cessna. They get the extra fuel tankage package, then hop from PEI to Greenland, Greenland to Iceland, then Iceland to.... Svalbard, or maybe somewhere in the Scotish Isles. From there it's pretty standard flight operations over local bodies of water. If a Cessna can do it, that's well within a bird's migratory travel distance.