For the map enthused!
Rules:
post relevant content: interesting, informative, and/or pretty maps
be nice
I'm not so sure this is accurate, the Romans certainly knew of China at least, to them it was called Serica, and they believed in a Manifest Destiny myth that they would one day conquer it.
Which would have been fukkin' wild if it did play out, I think by that point the capital would have moved to Samarkand or somewhere else in Central Asia just to be able to maintain regulation over the silk road.
I find it very a very romantic notion to have unknown areas on the world. Like some desert in the far south, beyond which might lie anything.
Fittingly, the term romance originally meant “to derive from a romantic language”, meaning mostly Latin which was spoken in the Roman Empire.
The texts in reference were largely about chivalry and such. Hence the modern connotations.
So like, romance refers to a time before the world was fully known. :)
We have that today with outer space. For all intents and purposes it is the new ocean, and so far we've only put a few skiffs in it.
Yeah, but it's a lot harder to cross. Like, I could build a shitty boat from wood myself. A spaceship? Not so much. Especially not if it's actually supposed to leave this gravity well.
Oh no you can't. Building a ship that can cross the ocean (without you drowning first of course) is actually quite difficult. Not only does it have to be extremely durable, you also have to have a lot of knowledge to navigate. And then there's the economic problems, like who pays for it, how do you get enough food, etc..
Yet, people made the journey to Australia over 50000 years ago, long before they had developed agriculture, wheels or domesticated animals. There was no navigation or fancy ships. And they did in the hundreds. Enough genetic diversity to settle down for the next 50000 years.
We are very far from doing that in space and beyond our solar system it may even be completely impossible. But who knows what happens in the next 50000 years.
What’s the yellow line?
Silk road, I think
That’s what I was thinking, but I wasn’t sure
They didn't like the cold, huh?