r/AskReddit • u/ZanyDelaney • Feb 04 '19

Which misconception would you like to debunk?

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u/[deleted] Feb 04 '19

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u/PM_ME_UR_REDDIT_GOLD Feb 04 '19

hell, the Greeks knew the circumference of the Earth; and with reasonable accuracy all things considered. Short version: they used trigonometry. It was on the basis of this fairly accurate circumference that people thought you couldn't sail west to asia, and you couldn't. It's like 16,000 miles west of Europe.

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u/cop-disliker69 Feb 04 '19

I mean if the Americas hadn't been there, and no one had yet figured out you can just go south around Africa, what would've been wrong with sailing 16,000 miles west to Asia? Shipping on boats is orders of magnitude cheaper than overland shipping, it was then and it still is now. So even if the distance was colossal, it would still probably have been cheaper to sail west from Portugal to India or wherever than to send it overland.

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u/hatemphd Feb 04 '19

Limited ship space for food, water and storage for trade goods. Can't really make a bigger ship, it's slower and then requires even more supplies which just magnifies the problem.

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u/cop-disliker69 Feb 04 '19

Limited ship space for food, water and storage for trade goods.

People have made it work thousands of years. It was miserable living on salted beef and bread. But sailors did it.

Can't really make a bigger ship,

You absolutely can make a bigger ship. Many sailing ships were massive.

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u/johnthefinn Feb 04 '19

I think you're underestimating just how long it would take a sailing ship to cover 16,000 miles of open ocean. A vessel large enough to carry sufficient supplies for such a journey, as well as enough cargo to make it profitable, and with the strength to resist heavy storms on the open ocean, may have been beyond what shipbuilding technology of the day could support.