Do you believe it?

Apparently some Irish man made it as far as Sumatra in the 14th century.
What in the actual fuck? Do you think the locals thought he was some preternatural form of orangutan?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_of_Ireland

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odoric_of_Pordenone
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Battuta
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanno_the_Navigator
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

It kills me that people keep talking about Marco Polo when Odoric or Ibn Battuta were more admirable by far:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odoric_of_Pordenone
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Battuta

Also to answer you question, no, I think they were somewhat used to being visited by red-haired eurasians by then.

>Odoric
>Returning overland across Asia, through the Land of Prester John (possibly Mongolia), and through Casan, the adventurous traveller seems to have entered Tibet, and even perhaps to have visited Lhasa.

>Land of Prester John (possibly Mongolia)
excuse me, what?

At the time a large number of Mongols were Nestorian Christians. Prester John was supposedly a Christian king or realm in the Far East or the south. So the traveler calling a realm of Christians in the Far East “the land of Prester John” is not inconceivable.

Prestor John was a proto-meme, some guy wrote an elaborate shitpost about a vague Christian kingdom of the east so every country (real or imagined) with some Christians not in Europe became the land of Prestor John

>tfw the dog headed people and Prestor John were just hoaxes
The world just isn't as magical as it used to be.

The Prester John was also bordering muslims and an enemy of them. This is an important part because euros tried to identify with the Prester John basically any leader that was fighting the muslims that threatened Europe, even other muslims. I remember reading an article about how italians saw the persian Shah and basically you see them wish-thinking that he's actually a crypto-christian that will come out of the closet soon.

How the fuck were humans brave enough to sail huge distances?

Weren't they scared that a storm could destroy their boat? Drowning is a pretty cruel death. And even if they didn't drown they would need to stay afloat for several hours in the fucking cold water 3000 meters above the fucking ocean floor, until they are too exhausted and then they drown. And then their bodies slowly descend into the fucking darkness where they get eaten by monstrosities. What a fucking nightmare.

Most of their travel was overland at this point

Sure, but I meant in general. It always blows my mind when I read about some remote island in the pacific which was settled like 2000 years ago like the easter island.

How is that even possible? Did life suck so much that humans were suicidal? Were they simply too dumb or incredibly smart?

Or coastal.

C14th the spice trade was in swing, so there were ships taking you from Arabia to India, from India to South Asia, and from South Asia to East Asia.

Why are you such a pussy? Afraid of death or something?

There was a fucking Carthaginian who went as far down in Africa as the the fucking Congo

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanno_the_Navigator

They even brought back gorillas, which they thought were just people.

Death sucks ass.

>this poster is a skeleton

Don't you think that "death is peaceful" is just propaganda, made up by the military to make soldiers dying a lot easier?

weird that phoenicians didnt make colonies or ports there

I have no idea what death actually entails, as I’m not dead. I have beliefs and some ideas based on a near-death experience a few years back but no certain knowledge.

Also, I’m not a coward in general so this base recoiling-from-danger you’re espousing is foreign to me.

Good. Remember this post the next time you have a fucking car crash, retard.

It's what everyone tells themselves because dying is shit. It's not propaganda. It's just a natural cope.

lol wtf
they called black people gorillas
>In its inmost recess was an island similar to that formerly described, which contained in like manner a lake with another island, inhabited by a rude description of people. The females were much more numerous than the males, and had rough skins: our interpreters called them Gorillae. We pursued but could take none of the males; they all escaped to the top of precipices, which they mounted with ease, and threw down stones; we took three of the females, but they made such violent struggles, biting and tearing their captors, that we killed them, and stripped off the skins, which we carried to Carthage: being out of provisions we could go no further.
—The periplus Hanno, [8]

Ok coward, continue to shy away from experiences in life cause you may get an infected hangnail.

Johnny Storm and Wyatt Wingfoot met
him in the 60's.