The abundance of numbers, new concepts and unexpected turns in the program will not leave the Viewer indifferent, because Andrei Stepanenko touched on a very interesting topic for the entire alternativeist crowd of new chronologists...

Just imagine: some 30 years ago, that is, practically within one generation, on Earth in general, and on the territory of the former Soviet Union in particular, there was no science NEW CHRONOLOGY. Or rather, it was, but it was located only in the brilliant brains of Anatoly Fomenko, and fragmentarily, unformulated in writing on the desktop of this scientist...

There were, of course, predecessors to the founding father of the New Chronology, for example:

– the great Nikolai Morozov, who laid the foundation for doubts about the correctness of the constructions of Traditional History;

– a brilliant polymath Mikhail Postnikov, who qualitatively comprehended and systematized countless historical works, mostly fantastic and graphomaniac...

And so, at the end of the twentieth century, the real scientific guard gets down to business, and side by side with Fomenko stand Igor Davidenko and Yaroslav Kesler, Gleb Nosovsky and Vladimir Ivanov, Nikolai Kellin and Erlendas Meskis, Andrei Stepanenko and many, many devotees, most of whom are for their selfless activity will remain in the annals of History...

As part of the eternal conflict between the bullshit Traditional History and the uncompromising New Chronology, a conference was held in Moscow at the Russian New University, at which speakers presented their latest research. Most of the developments were, as always, fresh, unusual, and even shocking for the uninitiated, for listeners far from the problem!

Andrey Stepanenko examines the mysteries and paradoxes of the Great Geographical Discoveries from an unorthodox, new-chronological point of view, and this is all the more interesting because research of this level is very rare these days.

The deepest penetration into the material, comprehensive databases collected by the researcher in a completely academic manner, and an innovative, unbiased understanding of historical facts and artifacts - this is what surprises and delights both Andrei Stepanenko himself and his work.

We hope that the abundance of numbers, new concepts and unexpected turns in the program will not leave the Viewer indifferent, because Andrey directly says that he personally does not have enough time to comprehend the immense material. And therefore he dreams of a kind of friendly community of like-minded people who will translate the Paradoxes of the Great Geographical Discoveries into the plane of ordinary scientific and historical routine.

And as a kind of addition, we offer a review text, written in a traditional, university style by our friend, who asked to be introduced under the nickname Absolute Zero, about how, by whom and why the Great Geographical Discoveries were made.

The Great Geographical Discoveries usually include the largest discoveries of the 15th-16th centuries, the main of which were the discovery of America and the sea route to India around Africa. In other words, it was the discovery of overseas lands by Europeans under certain historical conditions. Therefore, one should not include, for example, the Viking journeys to America or the discoveries of Russian explorers.

For a long time, the peoples of Europe lived without making long sea voyages, but suddenly they had a desire to discover new lands, and almost simultaneously both America and a new route to India were discovered. This “suddenly” does not happen by accident.

There were three main prerequisites for the discoveries.

1. In the 15th century. The Turks, having conquered Byzantium, cut the trade route from Europe to the East. The flow of eastern goods to Europe sharply decreased, and Europeans could no longer do without them. It was necessary to look for another way.

2. Lack of gold as a monetary metal. And not only because gold flowed to the East. The economic development of Europe required more and more money. The main direction of this development was the growth of the marketability of the economy and the growth of trade.

They hoped to extract gold in the same eastern countries, which, according to rumors, were very rich in precious metals. Especially India. Marco Polo, who visited there, said that even the roofs of the palaces there were made of gold. “The Portuguese were looking for gold on the African coast, in India, throughout the Far East,” wrote F. Engels, “gold was the magic word that drove the Spaniards across the Atlantic Ocean; gold - that’s what the Europeans first demanded as soon as they stepped onto the newly discovered shore.”

True, gold had its owners, but this did not bother us: the Europeans of that time were brave people and not constrained by morality. It was important for them to get to the gold, and they had no doubt that they would be able to take it away from the owners. And so it happened: crews of small ships, which, from our point of view, were just large boats, sometimes captured entire countries.

3. Development of science and technology, especially shipbuilding and navigation. On previous European ships it was impossible to sail into the open ocean: they either sailed with oars, like Venetian galleys, or under sail, but only if the wind was blowing in the stern.
The sailors were guided mainly by the appearance of familiar shores, so they did not dare to go into the open ocean.

But in the 15th century. A ship of a new design appeared - the caravel. It had a keel and sailing equipment that made it possible to move in crosswinds. In addition, in addition to the compass, by this time an astrolabe had also appeared - a device for determining latitude.

Significant advances had also been made in geography by this time. The ancient theory of the sphericity of the Earth was revived, and the Florentine geographer Toscanelli argued that India could be reached by moving not only to the east, but also to the west, around the earth. True, it was not expected that there would be another continent on the way.

So, the Great Geographical Discoveries were led to by: the crisis of trade with the East, the need for a new path, the lack of gold as a monetary metal, and scientific and technological achievements. Major discoveries were made in the search for routes to India, the richest country in Asia. Everyone was looking for India, but in different directions.

The first direction is to the south and southeast, around Africa. The Portuguese moved in this direction. In search of gold and treasures, Portuguese ships from the middle of the 15th century. began to move south along the coast of Africa. Characteristic names appeared on maps of Africa: “Pepper Coast”, “Ivory Coast”, “Slave Coast”, “Golden Coast”. These names show quite clearly what the Portuguese were looking for and finding in Africa. At the end of the 15th century. A Portuguese expedition of three caravels led by Vasco da Gama circumnavigated Africa and reached the shores of India.

Since the Portuguese declared the lands they discovered to be their property, the Spaniards had to move in a different direction - to the west. Then, at the end of the 15th century, the Spaniards on three ships under the command of Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean and reached the shores of America. Columbus believed that this was Asia. However, there was no gold in the new lands, and the Spanish king was dissatisfied with Columbus. The man who discovered the New World ended his days in poverty.

In the footsteps of Columbus, a stream of poor, brave and cruel Spanish nobles - the conquistadors - poured into America. They hoped to find gold there and found it. The detachments of Cortez and Pizarro plundered the states of the Aztecs and Incas, and the independent development of American civilization ceased.

England began searching for new lands later and, in order to take its toll, tried to find a new route to India - the “northern passage”, through the Arctic Ocean. Of course, this was an attempt with inadequate means. Chancellor's expedition, sent in the middle of the 16th century. in search of this passage, she lost two of her three ships, and instead of India, Chancellor ended up through the White Sea to Moscow. However, he was not at a loss and obtained from Ivan the Terrible serious privileges for the trade of English merchants in Russia: the right to trade duty-free in this country, pay with his own coin, build trading yards and industrial enterprises. True, Ivan the Terrible scolded his “loving sister,” Queen Elizabeth of England, as a “vulgar girl” because her kingdom, in addition to her, was ruled by “trading men,” and sometimes he oppressed these merchant men, but still provided them with patronage. The British lost their monopoly position in Russian trade only in the 17th century - the Russian Tsar deprived them of their privileges because they “committed an evil deed with the whole earth: they killed their sovereign King Charles to death.”

The first consequence of the Great Geographical Discoveries was a “price revolution”: as cheap gold and silver poured into Europe from overseas lands, the value of these metals (hence the value of money) fell sharply, and the prices of goods rose accordingly. The total amount of gold in Europe in the 16th century. increased by more than twofold, silver - threefold, and prices increased by 2-3 times.

First of all, the price revolution affected those countries that directly plundered new lands - Spain and Portugal. It would seem that the discoveries should have caused economic prosperity in these countries. In fact, the opposite happened. Prices in these countries increased 4.5 times, while in England and France - 2.5 times. Spanish and Portuguese goods became so expensive that they were no longer bought; preferred cheaper goods from other countries. It must be taken into account that as prices rise, production costs also increase accordingly.

And this had two consequences: gold from these countries quickly went abroad, to the countries whose goods were purchased; handicraft production fell into decline because its products were not in demand. The flow of gold went bypassing the economy of these countries - from the hands of the nobles it quickly floated abroad. Therefore, already at the beginning of the 17th century. There was a shortage of precious metals in Spain, and so many copper coins were paid for a wax candle that their weight was three times the weight of the candle. A paradox arose: the flow of gold did not enrich Spain and Portugal, but dealt a blow to their economy, because feudal relations still prevailed in these countries. On the contrary, the price revolution strengthened England and the Netherlands, countries with developed commodity production, whose goods went to Spain and Portugal.

First of all, the producers of goods benefited - artisans and the first manufacturers, who sold their goods at increased prices. In addition, more goods were now needed: they went to Spain, Portugal and overseas in exchange for colonial goods. Now there was no longer any need to limit production, and guild craft began to develop into capitalist manufacture.

Those peasants who produced goods for sale also benefited, and paid their dues with cheaper money. In short, commodity production won.

And the feudal lords lost: they received the same amount of money from the peasants in the form of rent (after all, the rent was fixed), but this money was now worth 2-3 times less. The price revolution was an economic blow to the feudal class.
The second consequence of the Great Geographical Discoveries was a revolution in European trade. Maritime trade grew into ocean trade, and in connection with this, the medieval monopolies of the Hanseatic League and Venice collapsed: it was no longer possible to control ocean roads.

It would seem that Spain and Portugal should have benefited from the relocation of trade routes, which not only owned overseas colonies, but were also geographically located very conveniently - at the beginning of routes across the ocean. The rest of the European countries had to send ships past their shores. But Spain and Portugal had nothing to trade.

The winners in this regard were England and the Netherlands - producers and owners of goods. Antwerp became the center of world trade, where goods from all over Europe were collected. From here, merchant ships headed overseas, and from there returned with a rich cargo of coffee, sugar and other colonial products.

The volume of trade has increased. If previously only a small amount of eastern goods arrived in Europe, which were delivered to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea by Arab merchants, now the flow of these goods has increased tenfold. For example, spices to Europe in the 16th century. received 30 times more than during the period of Venetian trade. New goods appeared - tobacco, coffee, cocoa, potatoes, which Europe did not know before. And the Europeans themselves, in exchange for these goods, had to produce much more of their goods than before.
The growth of trade required new forms of its organization. Commodity exchanges appeared (the first was in Antwerp). On such exchanges, merchants entered into trade transactions in the absence of goods: a merchant could sell coffee from the future harvest, fabrics that had not yet been woven, and then buy and deliver to his customers.

The third consequence of the Great Geographical Discoveries was the birth of the colonial system. If in Europe since the 16th century. capitalism began to develop; if economically Europe overtook the peoples of other continents, then one of the reasons for this was the robbery and exploitation of the colonies.

The colonies did not immediately begin to be exploited by capitalist methods, nor did they immediately become sources of raw materials and markets. At first they were objects of robbery, sources of initial accumulation of capital. The first colonial powers were Spain and Portugal, which exploited the colonies using feudal methods.

The nobles of these countries did not go to new lands in order to organize an orderly economy there, they went to rob and export wealth. In a short time, they captured and exported gold, silver, jewelry to Europe - everything they could get their hands on. And after the wealth was taken out and something had to be done with the new possessions, the nobles began to use them in accordance with feudal traditions. The conquistadors captured or received as a gift from the kings territories with a native population, converting this population into serfs. Only serfdom here was brought to the level of slavery.

What the nobles needed here was not ordinary agricultural products, but gold, silver, or at least exotic fruits that could be sold at a high price in Europe. And they forced the Indians to develop gold and silver mines. Entire villages of those who did not want to work were exterminated. And around the mines, according to eyewitnesses, even the air was contaminated from hundreds of decomposing corpses. The natives were exploited using the same methods on sugarcane and coffee plantations.

The population could not withstand such exploitation and died out in droves. On the island of Hispaniola (Haiti) at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards there were about a million inhabitants, and by the middle of the 16th century. they were completely exterminated. The Spaniards themselves believed that in the first half of the 16th century. they destroyed the American Indians.

But by destroying the workforce, the Spaniards undermined the economic base of their colonies. To replenish the labor force, African blacks had to be imported to America. Thus, with the advent of the colonies, slavery was revived.

But in general, the Great Geographical Discoveries accelerated the decomposition of feudalism and the transition to capitalism in European countries.

So, watch on the channel “one of the parts of our series, in which, from the most unexpected sides, our famous and beloved author sometimes expresses completely paradoxical views on the history, sociology and culture of Mankind.

Svet Yakov Mikhailovich::: Columbus

A small stream flowing from the icy celestial springs gives rise to the great Amazon River, which carries more water into the Atlantic than the Amur, Yenisei, Ob, Volga, Dnieper and Danube taken together.

Great plans have origins as inconspicuous as the queen of rivers. A chance meeting, an inadvertently spoken word is like a spark from which a mighty flame will flare up.

Perhaps the former wool worker from the San Stefano suburb did not think or wonder about any plans or projects at the time when he became a frequent visitor to the Genoese harbor.

But, more than once, he must have had to listen to the bitter complaints of sailors and merchants: such difficult times have come, there is no way to the East, the damned Turks are crowding us out and ruining us. And, perhaps, in Saint-Siro Square, perhaps in the same harbor, he more than once heard wise people talking about new routes to India that the Portuguese were laying.

House of Centurion, traded with the West. This was the European West, but from the harbors of Castile, Portugal, France, and England, roads led to as yet unknown distances. Signors Centurione, Negro, Spinola, Lomellini were business people, and they knew only commercial geography: from Tana to Bruges the journey is forty-two days, from Genoa to Lisbon a week and a half, and it is more profitable to stay on such and such a coast, and bypass such and such islands and capes.

But they knew that in Calicut or Hormuz, quintal pepper costs ten times less than in Alexandria.

Due to lack of leisure, they did not read Marco Polo, but they knew that in Far Asia there is a country of China and a country of Sipango, and that many other eastern countries are incredibly rich. Perhaps the Venetian merchant Niccolo Conti visited Piazza San Siro, or if he didn’t, then one way or another rumors about his adventures on the islands of the Malay Archipelago, in Burma and Siam reached Old Genoa. There they read fascinating stories - “Four Books of History about the Variability of Fate.” According to Niccolò Conti, these four “geographical novellas” were written by the wonderful stylist and great polymath Poggio Bracciolini.

That the Earth is a sphere was learned in the 15th century not only by geographers, but also by businessmen. Both of them knew: Europe is washed by the Ocean in the west, but this same Ocean also approaches the shores of China, Sipango, Java and India. It's not that wide. Businessmen believed the geographers, but, as sober people, they refrained from drawing practical conclusions. From this, however, it does not at all follow that the tempting possibilities of finding a Western route to India and China were not discussed in table conversations.

There was a corporation of cartographers in Genoa, and it lived in close friendship with geography, and not with commercial, but with true geography. It included people whose works were well known. It was they, the Genoese cartographers, who in 1457 compiled a map of the world, which incorporated information from Niccolò Conti about the countries of Far Asia and the Portuguese discoveries in Africa.

Columbus apparently met with his fellow cartographers, in particular, with the fairly famous compiler of nautical maps Niccolo Cauvery, but it is difficult to establish what influence these figures had on him.

In a word, we can assume that the roots of the Columbus project go to the Genoese “subsoil”. Unfortunately, it has not yet been sufficiently examined by historians, and this task is not easy. Notarial documents, which have given so much to clarify the family situation in the "House of Columbus", remain silent in all cases when it does not involve litigation, deeds of gift, wills and trade transactions.

Italian Columbus scholars more than once accused the great navigator of ingratitude: he proposed his project first to the Portuguese King João II, and then to the Spanish royal couple, but at the same time forgot about Genoa. And if so, then perhaps Columbus’s ties with his native city were not so close...

Yes, of course, Columbus’s project was considered, rejected and approved in the countries of the Iberian Peninsula. But the possibility cannot be ruled out that Columbus made some proposals to the Genoese authorities, although documents in this regard have not yet been found.

The initial “points of growth” of Columbus’s plan should be sought in Genoa, although, undoubtedly, it finally crystallized in Portugal in 1480-1484.

Niels Bohr was extremely reserved about theories that were not crazy enough. From the standpoint of modern geography, Columbus's project was insane. Crazy and wrong.

This was his strength. Know Columbus that departure his the calculations are incorrect, it is unlikely that he would have gone out into the Sea-Ocean. Mistakes led him to victory, but he discovered something completely different from what he wanted to discover, and until the end of his days he defended false ideas killed by his own voyages.

Columbus's plan was simple.

It was based on two premises: one absolutely true and one absolutely false.

Premise No. 1 (absolutely true): The Earth is a ball.

Premise No. 2 (absolutely false): most of the Earth’s surface is occupied by land - a single massif of three continents, Asia, Europe and Africa, a smaller part - by sea, and because of this, the distance between the western shores of Europe and the eastern tip of Asia is small, and in a short time it is possible , following the western route, reach India, Sipango (Japan) and China.

The first premise is an axiom, unconditionally accepted in the era of Columbus.

The second premise corresponded to the geographical ideas of this era. Since the times of classical antiquity, the opinion has taken root that on our planet there is a single landmass - Eurasia with an African touch - and a single, its all sides washing the ocean. At the same time, ancient and medieval geographers believed that a single landmass was either equal to or greater in length than a single sea.

The greatest authority in ancient geology, Ptolemy believed that the width of the land was equal to the ocean; his predecessor, the Greco-Syrian geographer of the 1st century AD. e. Marin of Tire argued that the land is much “longer” than the sea. Marinus of Tire calculated that land accounts for 225 degrees out of 360 degrees of the earth's circumference, and only 135 degrees for the ocean.

And from this it followed that the western route from Europe to Asia should be relatively short. A navigator who chose this route could reach India and China by covering only 2/5 of the earth's circumference.

However, a purely practical question arose: what is the length of this sea leg of the circumnavigation of the world?

This question could be easily answered, knowing the extent of the earth's degree. This type of measurement was carried out repeatedly in pre-Columbian times. Back in the 3rd century BC. e. the remarkable Greek geographer Eratosthenes established that on the meridian of Aswan the degree distance is 700 stadia. 700 stadia correspond to 110.25 kilometers.

This is actually the length of the earth's degree at the equator. At the latitude of the Canary Islands it is less - 98.365 kilometers.

Columbus was not satisfied with this value. Even taking the considerations of Marin of Tire as the basis for the calculation, he would have to obtain a very respectable figure for 2/5 of the earth’s circumference. In fact: 135 X 98.365 = 13,216 kilometers.

And the author of the project to sail to Asia by the western route decided to reduce this distance. Columbus knew that the length of a degree was determined even after Eratosthenes. He knew that such research was carried out, in particular, by the Central Asian geographer of the 9th century, Ahmed ibn Muhammad ibn Kathir al-Fargani, who was called Alfargan in Europe.

Alfargan in 827, on behalf of Caliph Mamun, checked the calculations of the Greeks and found that on the meridian of the city of Raqqa, located in the upper reaches of the Euphrates, the length of a degree is 56 2/3 miles.

An Arab mile corresponds to 1973 meters, and therefore there were 111.767 kilometers in an Alfargan degree. But Columbus replaced Arab miles with Italian ones. There are only 1480 meters in one Italian mile. After such an operation, the length of the degree was immediately reduced by 25 percent, and the length of the thirty-five degree ocean decreased accordingly: 56 2 / 3 X 1480 X 135 = 11,339 kilometers.

A lot of!!! And this figure should have been cut. Are being entered further amendments. Marinus of Tire lived at a time when the eastern tip of Asia was unknown to the Romans and Greeks. Asia ended somewhere beyond the Golden Chersonese - the modern Malacca Peninsula. But Marco Polo visited beyond this border, in China, and found out something about the country of Sipango, or Chipangu, Japan. Therefore, Columbus reasoned, the land contains not 225, but much more degrees. And to the figure of Marin of Tire he added another 58 degrees - 28 for China and 30 for Japan.

Now the Ocean has only 77 degrees left. But the open and unknown sea began only behind the Canary Islands, the westernmost of which were 9-10 degrees west of Lisbon; therefore, from the reduced value of 77 degrees, it was possible to drop another 9 degrees. It was 68 degrees left. That's all. The “true” distance separating the Canary Islands from Sipango - Japan was obtained:

68 X 56 2 /з X 1480 = 5710 kilometers.

In fact, the Canary Island of Ferro (Hierro) lies at 18° west longitude, and Tokyo at 139° 47 "east longitude. And the distance between them (if you overcome it from east to west) is not 68, but 202° 13 /, the length of the degree the distance at 28° north latitude is 98.365 kilometers.

202°13" X 98.365 = 19042 kilometers!

Columbus's Japan lay on the meridian of Cuba and Chicago, and the Chinese harbor of Hangzhou - the miracle city of Kinsai in Marco Polo's notes ended up in the places where the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco now stand.

Winners are not judged, but Columbus was harshly judged by geographers and historians of the 19th and 20th centuries.

But if there is a higher court of history, then such a tribunal should pronounce a verdict: the accused is guilty, but deserves all possible leniency. It is not only Christopher Columbus, the Genoese, who must be held accountable, but also his century.

We, people of the 20th century, judge Columbus’s ways of seeing the world from our high bell tower. We are accustomed to accurate maps, the most advanced methods for measuring spatial parameters, and jewelry techniques for counting microunits of time have become part of our flesh and blood.

We live in the age of milli-micron tolerances, the designs of our spacecraft and satellites are calculated with fantastic precision.

Meanwhile, the man of the 15th century did not feel the slightest need for such assessments of spatial and temporal elements.

The Florentine merchant Balduci Pegolotti, who lived one hundred and fifty years before Columbus, surprised the world with a wonderful guide for traveling merchants, a book called “Pratica de la mercatura” - “The Practice of Trade”. This was an archetypal reference guide for that time, but in it the distances on the way from Crimea to Catay or from Constantinople to Tabriz were given in days, and the path itself remained unmeasured. The day is an indefinite unit. It can stretch or contract depending on the means of transport at hand. One could travel from Kaffa to Sarai for a month on camels or in a week if fast Tatar horses were at hand. The indications on the distance traveled by the famous travelers of the 15th century - Clavijo, Varbaro, Contarini, Afanasy Nikitin - are no less vague. And this is not because they were careless. These people simply did not feel the need for accurate measurements of the path traveled.

Ptolemy's Geography, retrieved from the darkness of oblivion, estimated distances in degrees, and this completely satisfied the geologist of the 15th century.

In addition, the greatest confusion reigned in the “metrology” of that time. Almost every province used its own measures; there were leagues, miles, feet, cubits of different lengths, arrobs, almuts and fanegas of different capacities; this incredible discrepancy did not really bother the sailors and merchants. Indeed, what did the distance between Lisbon and Venice, determined by the helmsman, matter in Italian or Portuguese miles, if it was not indicated whether favorable or contrary winds were blowing at the time when this voyage was made?

Even the most advanced maps of the 15th century with a degree grid and scale bars were archetypal, and this circumstance did not irritate or surprise anyone.

Therefore, we unwittingly fall into error when applying modern criteria to Columbus's calculations. Psychological error. And in order to avoid it, one should abandon the usual standards of our time and imagine the structure of thought and norms of behavior of people of a long-gone era.

Yes, the people of the 15th century thought and acted completely differently from their distant descendants living in the times of Einstein and Bohr, Korolev and Armstrong.

If we ignore the historical and psychological aspects and move on to less shaky ground, then it is impossible not to note that any contemporary of the great navigator, developing a project for sailing the western route to the eastern outskirts of Asia, would have proceeded from approximately the same considerations. It is no coincidence that John Cabot developed a similar project independently of Columbus. . Perhaps other contemporaries of Columbus would not have allowed such “overexposures,” but ultimately their routes would still have been much shorter than the Lisbon-Havana-Tokyo air route.

This was very convincingly demonstrated by the Soviet Columbus scholar M. A. Kogan in the article “On the geographical views of Europeans on the eve of the great geographical discoveries” (12).

M.A. Kogan rightly says that the very concept of the United World Ocean - and it dominated science from ancient times until the era of Columbus - assumed that it was possible all the time, following from the shores of Europe to the west, to reach the eastern edge of Asia.

The idea of ​​the reality of such a voyage was expressed by Aristotle and Seneca, Pliny the Elder, Strabo and Plutarch, and in the Middle Ages the theory of the Single Ocean was consecrated by the church. It was recognized by the Arab world and its great geographers Masudi, al-Biruni, Idrisi.

The great scientists of the 13th - 14th centuries, in particular Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon, had no doubt that India could be reached by following from the shores of Europe to the west; Dante was also convinced of this.

Cartographers of the 14th and 15th centuries held similar views. In 1959, the Yale University Library acquired a map by the German Heinrich Martel, compiled around 1490. On it, the Eurasian land is elongated according to the standards of Marin of Tire, and the single sea is compressed to 110 degrees.

Approximately the same proportions are maintained on the famous globe made by the German cartographer Martin Beheim in 1492.

M.A. Kogan in the 60s of the 20th century knew much more ancient and medieval advocates of the concept of the Western route than Columbus in the 70s and 80s of the 15th century.

The literature he had at his disposal was sufficient to develop this project; it mirrored the ideas of the prophets of the Western path.

In Columbus’s personal “library” the most valuable book is “Imago Mundi” - “Image of the World” by the French polymath, Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly (the Spaniards and Columbus called him Aliak).

This is the most important reference book of the great navigator. It is incredibly disheveled, there are many notes in the margins (marginalia), sometimes very brief, sometimes very lengthy. In all likelihood, Columbus acquired the “Imago Mundi” in 1481 and did not part with this book until his death.

Pierre d'Ailly lived for a very long time and died in 1420. He wrote “Imago Mundi” ten years before his death and in this work brought together the most important ancient and medieval judgments about the figure of the Earth, its size, its belts, the extent of land and sea His book was a detailed commentary on the treatises of Greek, Roman, Arab and Western European authors. Pierre d'Ailly was not interested in facts. He was not a geographer in the modern sense of the word, but a book reader, very diligent and very thorough.

He apparently considered descriptions of all kinds of travel to distant lands a frivolous form of literature, if only because neither Aristotle, nor Pliny, nor Holywood-Sacrobosco could find references to the opinions of Marco Polo or Odorico Pordenone.

There was some embarrassment between d'Aya and Ptolemy. Circumstances so happened that at the same time as the "Imago Mundi" the Byzantine Manuel Chrysolorus finished the Latin translation of Ptolemy's "Geography" (he took the Greek manuscripts of this work from Constantinople) and his Italian student, Jacopo d" Angelo.

For Columbus, Imago Mundi, a rather mediocre work even by 15th-century standards, was invaluable. This book faithfully served him as an oracle; it was that storehouse of wisdom from which he drew the necessary information and the necessary references to authorities by the full handful.

There are 898 marginal notes in the margins of Kolumbov’s “Imago Mundi”. True, not all of them were made by the hand of the great navigator. Bartolome Columbus also used the book, and his handwriting was very similar to that of his older brother. There are also notes from later owners of this work.

However, the lion's share of marginalia belongs to Columbus. Christopher, not Bartholomew, and it was from Pierre d'Ailly that the future great navigator found the assessments and opinions that he based his project on.

The first premise of his plan is given in the form of a brief maxim in marginalia No. 480: “The Earth is a round sphere. The earth is divided into five climatic zones. The earth is divided into three parts."

The second premise (the land is large, the sea is narrow, the distance from the western end of Europe to the eastern edge of Asia is small) “ripens” in marginalia No. 23, 43, 363, 366, 486 and 677.

Here is the text of Pierre d'Ailly: “According to Aristotle and Averroes... the end of the inhabited earth in the East and the end of the inhabited earth in the West are quite close to each other, and between them there is a small (parvum) sea.”

Fifteen years would pass, and in a letter to Isabella and Ferdinand about his third voyage, Columbus would remember Aristotle, Averroes, and the author of “Imago Mundi,” from whom he borrowed information about the “small sea.”

And here is the marginalia for this passage. Marginalia No. 43: “The end of the inhabited land in the East and the end of the inhabited land in the West are quite close [Columbus’ style remains unchanged] and in the middle is a small sea.”

Again Pierre d'Ailly: “Pliny says that elephants live in the Atlas Mountains, and likewise in India... Aristotle concludes that these places are close.” And marginalia No. 365: “Elephants live near the Atlas Mountains, likewise and in India. Therefore, one place from another is not at a great distance."

And in marginalia No. 677, the idea of ​​​​the smallness of the Sea-Ocean is confirmed in this way: “Expertum est quod hoc mare est navigabile in paucis diebus, ventus conveniens” - “experience has shown that this sea can be passed by ships in a small number of days with favorable winds.” It is not clear whose experience we are talking about - either the Portuguese voyages, or the voyage of Columbus himself.

Combinations with data on degree distances are expressed in eight marginalia (No. 4, 28, 31, 481, 490, 491, 698, 812). The sacramental Alfargan figure 56 2 /3 appears here more than once, and in marginalia No. 490 Columbus, referring to his own experience of the Guinean voyages and to the calculations of the Portuguese cosmographer “Master Joseph”, or José Vizinho (this Vizinho was a member of the commission of the Lisbon Mathematical Junta, which in 1484 or at the beginning of 1485 rejected Columbus's project), definitely states that a degree is equal to 56 2/3 miles and there are 20,400 miles in the earth's circumference (along the equator).

From the text of the 689th marginalia it is clear that Italian miles are meant. The shortest and most “profitable” for the western route project.

Reading all these notes, we seem to be entering the “creative laboratory” of young Columbus. In “Imago Mundi” he looked for and found not so much specific data as authoritative confirmation of his daring and risky calculations. At various stages of project development, he again and again resorted to this invaluable source for him. One very important marginalia clearly dates back to 1488 or 1489. It evaluates the results of the expedition of the Portuguese Bartolomeu Dias, who rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488.

Pierre d'Ailly kept silent about the wonders of the East, but Columbus extracted all the information he needed on this matter from the 1485 Latin edition of Marco Polo's Book. Before acquiring this edition, Columbus probably used the manuscript of the Book. At that time in Europe there were many lists of Marco Polo's work.

Here the marginalia are brief, but there are quite a lot of them - 366, as many as there are days in a leap year.

For a European of the 14th - 15th centuries (and even more so for a Genoese), the tale of an enchanted Venetian wanderer, recorded by his enthusiastic neighbor in his prison cell, the not very literate Ligurian Rusticciano, was a true revelation.

The wanderer learned with the greatest amazement that the Earth is immensely large, that it is inhabited by countless peoples, about which the biblical prophets and evangelical apostles had no idea, that strange animals live in it, and in the alien skies shine stars that are not in Italian or French sky.

The Wanderer was the son of Venice, an amphibious city with burning worldly desires. A merchant and the son of a merchant, he, traveling from country to country, along the way compiled inventories of the countless riches of the East.

And his book aroused selfish dreams among Europeans. They raved about the incense of Arabia, the spices of India, the treasures of the Great Khan, the ruler of Manzi, or Manji (South China), Cathay and Tartary.

Somewhere in the inaccessible distance were the miracle cities of Kinsay, Khanbalyk, Zaiton, and, reading through the “Book” of Marco Polo, the Genoese, Venetians, Catalans, Portuguese and Castilians tried to find guiding instructions. Not those that Marco Polo gave, those that could no longer be used, but others that would make it possible to build roundabout routes to India and Cathay.

There were no such instructions, but it was not for nothing that it was said: “Push and it will be opened.” And Columbus reread “The Book” of Marco Polo dozens of times.

And in the margins he noted: “cinnamon”, “rhubarb”, “precious stones”, “gold”. And with a compass he measured on the map how large the possessions of the Great Khan were and how far the country of Sipango lay from them.

225 + 28 + 30 = 283. The number is the key to the treasures of the East. After all, if you subtract 283 degrees from 360 degrees, it turns out that Sipango is just a stone's throw from Lisbon and the Canary Islands...

The 366 marginalia in Marco Polo's Book are applications for future discoveries.

Perhaps no less important for Columbus was the work of Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini. The work of an all-knowing man, whom heaven itself elevated to the papal throne. The 1477 Venetian edition of this book was used by Columbus.

In a rather dry, detailed manner, with references to old authorities and travelers of modern times, he described the peoples and countries of the earthly ecumene. Not very accurate, but what can you do, the information in the far eastern and northern lands that we had to use was vague and inconsistent.

With pen in hand, Columbus read this short geographical encyclopedia and noted in the margins the names of rivers, mountains, lakes, and seas of Europe and Asia.

In terms of the number of marginalia, “Historia Rerum” is almost as good as “Imago Mundi”. There are 861 notes in this book.

Obviously, even in the Italian edition of Pliny, Columbus did not feel any particular need. Everything he needed, he took from Pierre d'Ailly, Marco Polo, Aeneas Silvius. Therefore, the fields of “Natural History” are quite clean - there are only 23 notes on them.

It is not known exactly when, but probably quite late, a palimpsest (a parchment from which the original text was scraped out to make a new entry) with poems by Seneca came to Columbus quite late.

This Roman poet and philosopher in his “Medea” predicted the future discovery of the land beyond the Ocean.

The years will fly by, and through many centuries

The ocean will loosen the shackles of things,

And the vast earth will appear before our eyes,

And new Tifis will open the seas,

And Fula will not be the limit of the earth

Columbus, with his penchant for mystical insights and belief in all kinds of prophecies, undoubtedly likened himself to Jason's helmsman Tiphis. He translated these poems into Spanish (though in prose), and this translation was preserved in the margins of an old palimpsest:

“There will come a time in the world when the Ocean will loosen the bonds of things, and a large land will open up, and a new navigator, like the one who led Jason and bore the name Tithys, will open a new world, and then the island of Thile will not be the last of the lands.”

Columbus's translation is somewhat free, and the prophetic words “new world” are included in it. Columbus did not call the lands he discovered that way, although after his third voyage the term “otro mundo” - another world - entered his nomenclature.

The “New World” does not sound here as a geographical reality, it is an abstract symbol, but it was not by chance that Seneca interested the author of the Western Route project.

Seneca was a pagan and, of course, in terms of prophecies, he could not be compared with the psalmist David, Ezekiel, Zechariah, Isaiah and Ezra.

This is what the biblical kings and prophets said:

1. Psalm XVIII, art. 2-5: “The heavens proclaim the glory of God, and the firmament speaks of the work of his hands.

Day imparts speech to day, and night reveals knowledge to night.

There is no language and no dialect where their voice is not heard.

Their sound goes throughout the whole earth, and their words to the ends of the world.”

2. Ezekiel, ch. XXVI, art. 18:

“The islands of the sea are in turmoil because of your destruction.”

3. Zechariah, chapter VI, page 10:

“And he will proclaim peace to the nations, and his dominion will be from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth.”

4. Isaiah, ch. XLI, page 5:

“They saw the islands and were horrified, the ends of the earth trembled. They became close and grew apart.”

5. The third book of Ezra, ch. VI, page 42:

“On the third day you ordered the waters to gather on the seventh part of the earth, and dried up six parts so that they would serve before you for seeding and cultivation.”

It would seem that these biblical sayings had no direct (or even indirect) relation to Columbus’s plan.

But his age was not like our time.

In his declining years, having girdled his loins with a rope, he will begin to read the “Book of Prophecies” - and he will value every line in it above the diaries of his great voyages. Then he will plunge into the dark abyss of astrology, sharpen his mind by reading medieval empty saints - interpreters of Old Testament prophecies, devote hours of sleep to the search for unsolved revelations in the works of Blessed Augustine, St. Ambrose, "The Venerable Bede, Josidore of Seville.

This will happen in 1501, when he will have only a few years left to live in this world. In 1480 he was still young and prophetic visions did not disturb his Soul.

But even in the Lisbon years, he looked for guidance in the Bible and believed that the spirit of Isaiah and Ezra was hovering over him.

She was captivated by the frantic power of the Old Testament, books of precise calculations and heavenly insights. In cubits, shekels, talents, minas, human deeds, the walls of Solomon's temple and the grain in the Hillile granaries were weighed and measured.

On July 7, 1503, on the island of Jamaica, in a letter to Isabella and Ferdinand, Columbus gave some biblical calculations: “One day they brought Solomon 166 quintals of gold from one trip... from this gold he ordered to make 200 spears and 300 shields, and cover the back of the thorn with gold , and decorate it with precious stones... David, in his will, refused three thousand quintals of gold from India to Solomon for the construction of the temple...” The count is based on Spanish quintals, it’s more convenient, but the numbers are named with biblical (or Genoese?) accuracy. What about human destinies?

Kings and generals, shepherds and publicans went to glory and shame, prosperity and poverty in unspeakable ways, led by the will of God, and their destinies were in the right hand of the Lord.

His command, gentlemen, is not given to the blind, for whom the path of true revelation is closed. But let him who has eyes see, and the paths reserved for other mortals will be opened to him. And you outline them in short miles, in short ones, and not in long ones, for it is not without reason that Isaiah says: “they came close and came together,” and it is not without reason that Ezra says that the waters gathered only in the seventh part of the world, that is, in the “small sea.”

These were the book sources of Columbus at the time when his project was created.

There were also epistolary sources. Quite dubious. These are letters from the famous Florentine scientist Paolo Toscanelli.

Two letters. The first Toscanelli addressed to the Portuguese canon Fernand Martins, the second to Columbus. Letter No. 2 was a response to a request from Columbus, who, having read letter No. 1, turned to the Florentine cosmographer for additional clarification and asked him to approve his project.

These letters were reproduced in his book by Fernando Colon, and after him Las Casas introduced them into the text of his History of the Indies.

Both authors translated, with considerable discrepancies, letters from the original language (Latin) into Spanish, and the text given in the first edition of Fernando Colon’s book was subjected to a secondary translation into Italian. The original letters are unknown. In 1860, X. Fernandez y Velasco, librarian of the Biblioteca Colombiana in Seville, found in Silvius Piccolomini's Columbus copy of Aeneas a copy of Letter No. 2, taken, he claimed, by the great navigator himself.

Fernando Colon considered Toscanelli the godfather of the great project. “Maestro Paolo... a Florentine, a contemporary of the Admiral himself,” wrote Fernando Colon, “was largely the reason that the Admiral undertook his journey with great inspiration. For it happened this way: the said Maestro Paolo was a friend of one Fernando Martinez, a Lisbon canon, and they corresponded with each other regarding the voyages made to the country of Guinea in the time of King Don Alfonso of Portugal, and about what should be done when sailing to the West. News of this reached the Admiral, and he showed the greatest curiosity about such things, and the Admiral hastened through a certain Lorenzo Gerardi, a Florentine who was in Lisbon, to write to the mentioned Maestro Paolo regarding these matters and sent him a small globe, revealing his plan. Maestro Paolo sent an answer in Latin, which I translate into our vulgar dialect” (58, 46).

So, Toscanelli. Paolo del Pozzo Toscanelli. One of those Toscanellis who from time immemorial lived in Florence in Piazza de San Felice, near the old “pozzo” - a well with very tasty water.

Paolo Toscanelli was very old in the 70s of the 15th century. He was born in 1397. He was an anchorite scientist, selflessly devoted to science. He had no family; he devoted all his leisure time to mathematics, astronomy, and cosmography. In his youth, he received an excellent education at three Italian universities - Bologna, Padua and Pavia.

Geography was his favorite science. He knew the “Book” of Marco Polo by heart; all Italian travelers returning from the distant countries of the East came to him in Florence.

But, collecting various geographical information with ant-like diligence, Toscanelli did not often pick up a pen. He did not write any books; only one single, undoubtedly Tuscanelli manuscript, drafts of astronomical tables and many sketches of various maps have survived.

However, all of Italy spoke about his great learning, the name of Toscanelli was known in all university centers of Europe, German, Portuguese and French cosmographers and cartographers made a pilgrimage to Florence to Piazza San Felice.

His brother was the head of a trading house that went bankrupt immediately after the fall of Constantinople. It is no coincidence that Paolo Toscanelli, in the 60s and 70s, showed great interest in finding a western route to India!

He was a close friend of the famous humanist scientist Nicholas of Cusa, and he was patronized by the enlightened ruler of Florence, Cosimo de' Medici.

Paolo Toscanell died in the spring of 1482, leaving his nephews a large library with valuable manuscripts." Among them was the work of the great Avicenna,

Let us now turn to two messages from Toscanelli. In the first, in a letter to Canon Fernand Martins dated June 25, 1474, Toscanelli responded to Martins' request. The Lisbon canon addressed the Florentine scholar on behalf of the Portuguese king Alfonso V.

The king wanted to know what the shortest routes to Guinea were. In response, Toscanelli sent “a map drawn with his own hand,” on which “your shores and islands, from which the path goes west all the time,” and the path to the land of spices are depicted. The shortest. West. The letter itself was a brief explanation of this map.

Toscanelli gave the following instructions in it: “From Lisbon to the west are mapped, in a straight line, 26 sections, each 250 miles long, to the great and magnificent city of Quinsay.” Kinsai, or Huangzhou, at one time fascinated Marco Polo, and Toscanelli described this richest Chinese harbor in the words of the Venetian.

Then Toscanelli reported “From the also famous island of Antilia, which you call the island of the Seven Cities, to the very famous island of Chippangu - Japan - 10 segments.”

Consequently, according to Toscanelli, from Lisbon to the country of Manzi (South China) with its magnificent harbor of Kinsay was:

26X250 = 5250 miles.

And before Japan, from some land lying in the center of the Sea-Ocean, there were:

10 X 250 = 2500 miles.

The second letter (undated), addressed to Columbus, contained absolutely no specific information. Toscanelli condescendingly approved of “the bold and grandiose plan to sail to the eastern countries by the western route. He considered this plan correct and reliable.

In conclusion, Toscanelli expressed the hope that “you, overwhelmed by the same high feelings as the entire Portuguese people, who always at the right time put forward men capable of outstanding deeds, are burning with the desire to carry out this voyage.”

Neither the first nor, especially, the second letter contains any new information about the western route. It is quite possible that King Alfonso V was indeed concerned about the shortest routes to India. In the mid-70s of the 15th century, Portuguese captains reported that the Guinean coast, along which ships had previously always sailed east, suddenly deviated sharply to the south. This was bad news; the eastern route to India now had to be found further south than previously thought.

Under such circumstances, the wise advice of the famous Florentine could not have been more appropriate, but for some reason Toscanelli limited himself to two or three figures and a description of the city of Quinsaya, borrowed from Marco Polo.

Toscanelli is a subtle stylist, but both letters do not justify his reputation.

In short, it seems that Toscanelli was not the author of these messages.

And yet, the version about his correspondence with Portuguese correspondents was not created out of nowhere.

Canon Fernão Martins Roriz actually lived in Lisbon at that time. Moreover, he knew Toscanelli and his friend Nicholas of Cusa well. In 1461, in Rome, Toscanelli and Martins simultaneously affixed their signatures to the will of Nicholas of Cusa as witnesses.

Real figure and Lorenzo Gerardi. This is a merchant from the Florentine Geraldi family. The House of Geraldi conducted business in Portugal and Castile, and one of its representatives, Janoto (the Spaniards called him Juanoto Berardi), a Seville banker, played a significant role in the further destinies of Columbus.

In addition, there is one very interesting document that suggests that Toscanelli was indeed involved, if not in the Columbus project, then in the Portuguese and Spanish voyages in the Atlantic.

On June 26, 1494, soon after the news of Columbus's amazing discoveries spread in Europe, the Duke of Ferrara Ercole d'Este, a very inquisitive man, wrote to his ambassador Manfredo di Manfredi in Florence and instructed him to obtain from the nephew of the late Toscanelli maps of “some islands, discovered by Spain" (31, 222).

It was obviously about Tuscanelli's maps of the Atlantic and, possibly, about the routes of the western route outlined by the Florentine scientist.

Toscanelli's correspondence has long been of concern to Columbus scholars. Objective researchers did not understand why Fernando Colon, who was so eager to increase the glory of his father, attributed Toscanelli the role of guide to the great navigator. It is equally inexplicable why the example of Fernando Colon was followed by Las Casas, who always defended the priority of Columbus in the discovery of the New World.

It is not clear why the Spanish chronicler of the late 16th - early 17th centuries, Antonio Herrera (73, I), who had access to all the archives of the Spanish kingdom, did not mention Toscanelli and his letters at all in his work dedicated to the discovery of America.

As a result, the “Tuscanelli” question remains open to this day, and it is unlikely to be “closed” in the foreseeable future.

Whether Toscanelli's letters existed or not is not that important in general. Columbus had no need for Florentine prompters. Everything he put into his project was borrowed from other sources, more thorough, although equally deceptive.

Columbus was not an armchair recluse, and while paying tribute to useful books, he at the same time supported his plan with survey information.

There was a certain logic in this: in fact, if the eastern tip of Asia lay somewhere beyond the “small sea”, then certain ships could accidentally sail to it or some lands near the coast of Cathay and India. Equally important were the physical signs of the desired part of Asia. The “Small Sea” brought them quite often, as Columbus became convinced of during his stay on the islands of Porto Santo and Madeira. Information about these signs of an overseas land complemented the picture that he created by studying the works of Pierre d'Ailly, Aeneas Silvius and Marco Polo.

The result was a very attractive concept, and its author, stroke by stroke, sketched out a picture of the earth’s ecumene with a huge landmass and a “small sea.”

All that remained was to find a generous patron of the arts and, with his help, begin to implement the intended plan. .

The modern Genoese historian P. Revelli tried to trace Columbus’s connections with the Genoese cartographers of the 15th century. Unfortunately, he did not suffer from a lack of imagination and, without sufficient evidence, attributed to the Ligurian cartographic school a decisive role in the formation of the geographical views of the great navigator (108, 109).

In 1534, a collection dedicated to the newly discovered lands was published in Venice. Its compiler was the famous collector of materials about all kinds of travels, Giovanni Battista Ramusio. In the brief summary of Pietro Martira's work on the New World, which opened this collection, there was one phrase that was missing from all other works of this author. It sounded like this: “At the age of 40... Columbus first proposed to the Genoese signoria to equip ships so that they would leave Gibraltar, and, heading west, circumnavigate the globe and reach the land where spices are born” (71, I, 338, 339).

In 1708, the Genoese chronicler Casoni mentioned a similar proposal (50, 25-31). Both of these reports are doubtful; it is not clear why other Genoese authors were silent about them and for what reasons the Genoese signory could have rejected Columbus’s project. But this information deserves careful verification.

“Since I proceeded from the fact that the Earth is a sphere,” Cabot wrote, “I had to, sailing to the northwest, find a shorter route to India.”

Marginalia of the five books that Columbus used (“Historia Rerum Gestarum”, “Aenea Silvia Piccolomini”, “Imago Mundi” by Pierre d'Ailly, “Natural History” by Pliny the Elder in the Italian translation, the Latin edition of Marco Polo and “Parallel Lives” by Plutarch) , were published by C. Lollis in 1894 (78, 292-522). The ownership of most marginalia by Columbus was disputed in the 20s and 30s of our century by the German Jesuit paleographer F. Streicher (118). His arguments, however, were not recognized by Columbus scholars.

Translation by S. Solovyov. Tithis is the helmsman of the Argonauts' ship. Fula, or Thule, is the northernmost land of the ecumene.

No Toscanelli map survives. Various books dedicated to Columbus contain reconstructions made in the 19th century by the German scientists Kretschmer and Peschel and the French historian and geographer Vivien de San Martin (124).

In 1872, G. Harris doubted the authenticity of Toscanelli's letters. 29 years later, his compatriot G. Vigneault, who, like a torpedo, blew up all traditional versions in Columbus studies, declared these letters to be fakes and laid the blame for the forgery on Fernando Colon. Vigneault gave many convincing arguments in favor of his hypothesis, but disdained all opinions and facts that did not fit into his scheme (129).

In the 30s of our century, the attack on Toscanelli's correspondence was resumed by the Argentine historian R. Carbia. He accused Las Casas of the forgery. Carbia proceeded from the completely absurd assumption that Las Casas was the author of the work of Fernando Colon, and this technique allowed him to develop all sorts of fantastic conjectures (49).

The Soviet historian D. Ya. Tsoukernik went even further (33, 35, 36). In his opinion, Columbus himself forged Toscanelli's letters. Meanwhile, the great navigator did not mention Toscanelli at all in his messages and notes. The name of the Florentine scientist, however, appears in the diary of Columbus’s first voyage, but this diary has come to us in a revision and retelling by Las Casas, and Columbus bears no responsibility for references to Toscanelli, and Tsoukernik himself denied the authenticity of this source. But if Columbus composed the Toscanelli letters to support his project with the authoritative judgments of the Florentine cosmographer, then why did he not refer to these judgments, although he often cited in his letters references to Marco Polo, Pierre d'Ailly, Aeneas Silvius and various commentators on the Holy Scriptures?

The hypotheses of Carbia and Tsoukernik are built on obviously incorrect premises, but Vigneault’s arguments should be taken into account.

Although in recent years, Columbus scholars are inclined to believe that Fernand Martins, and possibly Columbus, corresponded with the Florentine geographer [these opinions are supported by the Spanish historian F. Morales Padron (91, 68-70), the Belgian researcher S. Verlinden (127 , 10-15) and the Italian geographer R. Almaggia (39)], the author of these lines joins them with great reservations. It seems that Columbus did not have direct epistolary contacts with Toscanelli, although it is possible that he could have become acquainted with Toscanelli’s opinions in the 80s of the 15th century without attaching much importance to them.

From the mid-16th century to the present day, Columbus's true goals and intentions have been periodically questioned. Critics of the “traditional” version of Columbus’s plan either accuse him of plagiarism, believing that he took advantage of the fruits of other people’s discoveries, or prove that he was not looking for India and Cathay, but for some Atlantic islands lying at the end of the great western route (35 , 36, 129). The authors of these critical hypotheses come to the conclusion that Columbus and his first biographers deliberately misled their contemporaries by concealing the “genuine” sources of information about the Western lands or hiding the “real” goals of the voyage to the West. The plan of the great navigator is so closely connected with his first voyage, committed in 1492, that we will return to the analysis of various critical versions on pp. 144-146.

Florentine artist Sandro...

First letter "b"

Second letter "o"

Third letter "t"

The last letter of the letter is "i"

Answer for the question "Florentine artist Sandro...", 10 letters:
Botticelli

Alternative crossword questions for the word Botticelli

Poem by V. Bryusov

The real name of this artist is Alessandro Filipepi

The name of this painter means “barrel” in Italian.

Italian painter, painting "The Birth of Venus"

Definition of the word Botticelli in dictionaries

Encyclopedic Dictionary, 1998 The meaning of the word in the dictionary Encyclopedic Dictionary, 1998
BOTTICELLI Sandro (real name Alessandro Filipepi, Filipepi) (1445-1510) Italian painter. Representative of the Early Renaissance. He was close to the Medici court and the humanist circles of Florence. Works on religious and mythological...

Examples of the use of the word Botticelli in literature.

All the other students of Master Verrocchio - and Sandrik Botticelli, and Petrik Perugino - they will confirm to you that I am the best of them.

Botticelli was a student of Philippe Lippi and Mantegna, who were both protégés of Repe of Anjou, as well as the alchemist and hermeticist Verrocchio, teacher of Leonardo da Vinci.

Botticelli, partly due to their common apprenticeship with Verrocchio, and had the same patrons, to which was added Ludovico Sforza, son of Francesco Sforza, a close friend of René of Anjou and one of the first members of the Order of the Crescent.

That is why alchemy does not tell us anything, just like the Olympian gods or paintings. Botticelli.

He spoke about the beauty of the sculptures of Ghiberti, Orcagna, Donatello, Mino da Fiesole, about the paintings of Masaccio, Ghirlandaio, Botticelli.

People did not immediately learn that our planet has a spherical shape. Let's smoothly move back to ancient, ancient times, when people believed that the Earth was flat, and let's try, together with ancient thinkers, philosophers and travelers, to come to the idea of ​​the Earth being spherical...

(This post is inspired by the thoughts of the author and blog guests to the message " How I improved my skills through courses. Part 2: How cartoons can harm our children")

The ideas of our distant ancestors about the Earth were mainly based on myths, traditions and legends.

Ancient Greeks They believed that the planet was a convex disk, similar to a warrior’s shield, washed on all sides by the Ocean River.

In Ancient China there was an idea according to which the Earth has the shape of a flat rectangle, above which a round convex sky is supported on pillars. The enraged dragon seemed to bend the central pillar, as a result of which the Earth tilted to the east. Therefore, all rivers in China flow to the east. The sky tilted to the west, so all the heavenly bodies move from east to west.

Greek philosopher Thales(VI century BC) represented the Universe in the form of a liquid mass, inside of which there is a large bubble shaped like a hemisphere. The concave surface of this bubble is the vault of heaven, and on the lower, flat surface, like a cork, the flat Earth floats. It is not difficult to guess that Thales based the idea of ​​the Earth as a floating island on the fact that Greece is located on islands.

Contemporary of Thales - Anaximander imagined the Earth as a segment of a column or cylinder, on one of the bases of which we live. The middle of the Earth is occupied by land in the form of a large round island of Oikumene (“inhabited Earth”), surrounded by the ocean. Inside the Ecumene there is a sea basin that divides it into two approximately equal parts: Europe and Asia:

And here is the world in view ancient egyptians:

Below is the Earth, above it is the goddess of the sky;
to the left and to the right is the ship of the Sun god, showing the path of the Sun across the sky from sunrise to sunset.

Ancient Indians represented the Earth in the form of a hemisphere resting on elephants.

Elephants stand on the shell of a huge turtle standing on a snake and floating in the endless Ocean of milk. The snake, curled up in a ring, closes the near-earth space.
Please note that the truth is still far away, but the first step towards it has already been taken!

Residents of Babylon imagined the Earth in the form of a mountain, on the western slope of which Babylonia is located.

They knew that to the south of Babylon there was a sea, and to the east there were mountains that they did not dare cross. That’s why it seemed to them that Babylonia was located on the western slope of the “world” mountain. This mountain is surrounded by the sea, and on the sea, like an overturned bowl, rests the solid sky - the heavenly world, where, like on Earth, there is land, water and air.

A in Rus' They believed that the Earth is flat and is supported by three whales that swim in the vast ocean.

When people began to travel far, evidence gradually began to accumulate that the Earth was not flat, but convex.

For the first time, the assumption of the sphericity of the Earth said by the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides in the 5th century BC

But first evidence This was given by three ancient Greek scientists: Pythagoras, Aristotle and Eratosthenes.

Pythagoras said that the Earth cannot have any other shape than a sphere. It can’t - and that’s it! Because, according to Pythagoras, everything in nature is arranged correctly and beautifully. And he considered the ball to be the most correct and therefore beautiful figure. This is some kind of proof))))

Aristotle was a very observant and intelligent person. Therefore, he was able to collect a lot of evidence of the sphericity of the Earth.
First: If you look at a ship approaching from the sea, then first the masts will appear from the horizon and only then the ship’s hull.

But this proof did not satisfy many.

Second, Aristotle's most serious evidence comes from the observations he made during lunar eclipses.
At night, a huge shadow “runs over” the Moon, and the Moon “goes out,” though not completely: it only darkens and changes color. The ancient Greeks said that the Moon becomes "the color of dark honey."
In general, the Greeks believed that a lunar eclipse was a very dangerous phenomenon for health and life, so it took a lot of courage from Aristotle. He observed lunar eclipses more than once and realized that the huge shadow covering the Moon is the shadow of the Earth, which our planet casts when it finds itself between the Sun and the Moon. Aristotle drew attention to one oddity: no matter how many times and at what time he observed a lunar eclipse, the Earth's shadow was always round. But only one figure has a always round shadow - the ball.
By the way, the next lunar eclipse will be... April 15, 2014.

In one source I found this interesting fragment with the words of Aristotle himself:

Three proofs of the spherical shape of the Earthwe find in Aristotle's book "On Heaven".

1. All heavy bodies fall to the ground at equal angles. This first Aristotelian proof of the sphericity of the Earth requires explanation. The fact is that Aristotle believed that heavy elements, to which he included earth and water, naturally tend to the center of the world, which therefore coincides with the center of the Earth. If the Earth were flat, then the bodies would not fall perpendicularly, for they would rush towards the center of the flat Earth, but since all bodies cannot be directly above this center, most bodies would fall to the earth along an inclined line.

2. But also (the sphericity of the Earth) follows from what is revealed to our senses. For, of course, lunar eclipses would not have such a shape (if the Earth were flat). The defining line during (lunar) eclipses is always arched. So, due to the fact that the Moon is eclipsed due to the Earth being between it and the Sun, the shape of the Earth must be spherical. Here Aristotle relies on the teaching of Anaxagoras about the cause of solar and lunar eclipses.
3. Some of the stars are visible in Egypt and Cyprus, but are not visible in places further north. From this it is not only clear that the shape of the Earth is spherical, but also that the Earth is a sphere of small dimensions. This third proof of the sphericity of the Earth is based on observations made in Egypt by the ancient Greek mathematician and astronomer Eudoxus, who belonged to the Pythagorean Union.

The third famous scientist was Eratosthenes. He was the first to find out the size of the globe, thereby once again proving that the Earth has the shape of a ball.

The ancient Greek mathematician, astronomer and geographer Erastophenes of Cyrene (about 276-194 BC) determined the size of the globe with amazing accuracy. Now we know that on the day of the summer solstice (June 21-22), at noon, the Sun on the Tropic of Cancer (or Northern Tropic) is at its zenith, i.e. its rays fall vertically onto the surface of the Earth. Erastothenes knew that on this day the Sun illuminated the bottom of even the deepest wells in the vicinity of Siena (Siena is the ancient name of Aswan).

At noon, using the shadow of a vertical pillar installed in Alexandria, 800 km from Siena, he measured the angle between the pillar and the rays of the sun (Erastofen made a device for measurement - skafis, a hemisphere with a rod casting a shadow) and found it equal to 7.2 o, which is 7.2/360 fractions of a full circle, i.e. 800 km or 5,000 Greek stadia (1 stadia was approximately equal to 160 m, which is approximately equal to the modern 1 degree and, accordingly, 111 km). From here Erastophenes deduced that the length of the equator = 40,000 km (according to modern data, the length of the equator is 40,075 km).

Let's see what the textbook offers for fifth-graders:

Feel like ancient geographers!

Characteristic of this time are the ideas of the Byzantine geographer of the 6th century. Cosmas Indicoplova. A merchant and trader, Cosmas Indicopleus made long trading journeys throughout Arabia and eastern Africa. Having become a monk, Cosmas Indicopleus compiled a number of descriptions of his travels, including the only Christian topography that has reached us. He presented his fantastic picture of the structure of the Earth. The earth seemed to him in the form of a rectangle, stretched from west to east.
Referring to the Holy Scripture, he established the ratio of its length to width - 2: 1. The earth's rectangle is surrounded on all sides by the ocean, and along its edges there are high mountains on which the vault of heaven rests. The stars move along the vault, moved by the angels assigned to them. The sun rises in the east and disappears at the end of the day behind the mountains in the west, and during the night passes behind the mountain located in the north of the Earth. Kosma Indikoplov was not at all interested in the internal structure of the Earth. They also did not allow any changes to the Earth's topography. Despite the obvious fantastic nature, Indikoplov's cosmographic ideas were widespread in Western Europe, and later in Rus'.

Nicolaus Copernicus also contributed to the proof of the sphericity of the Earth.
He found that moving south, travelers see that in the southern side of the sky the stars rise above the horizon in proportion to the distance traveled, and new stars appear above the Earth that were not previously visible. And in the northern side of the sky, on the contrary, the stars descend towards the horizon and then completely disappear behind him.

In the Middle Ages, European geography, like many other sciences, entered a period of stagnation and rolled back in its development, incl. the fact that the Earth is spherical and the assumptions about the geolicentric model of the solar system are rejected. The main European navigators of that time - the Scandinavian Vikings - were not too interested in the problems of cartography, relying rather on their art of sailing the waters of the Atlantic. Byzantine scientists believed that the earth was flat, Arab geographers and travelers did not have clear views about the shape of the Earth, being primarily engaged in the study of peoples and cultures, rather than directly in physical geography.
Ignorants and religious fanatics brutally persecuted people who doubted that the Earth is flat and has an “end of the world” (and with the cartoon about Smeshariki, we seem to be returning to those times).

A new period of knowledge of the world begins at the end of the 15th century; this time is often called the era of great geographical discoveries. In 1519-1522, a Portuguese traveler Ferdinand Magellan(1480-1521) and his crew make the first trip around the world, which in practice confirms the theory that the Earth is spherical.

On August 10, 1519, five ships - Trinidad, San Antonio, Conception, Victoria and Santiago - set sail from Seville to circumnavigate the globe. Ferdinand Magellan was absolutely unsure of the happy ending of the voyage, because the idea of ​​the spherical shape of the Earth was just an assumption.
The journey ended successfully - it was proven that the Earth is round. Magellan himself did not live to return to his homeland - he died on the way. But before his death he knew that his goal had been achieved.

Another proof sphericity can be served by the observation that when the Sun rises, its rays first illuminate clouds and other high objects; the same process is observed during sunset.

Also is evidence the fact that when you go up, your horizons increase. On a flat surface, a person sees around him for 4 km, at an altitude of 20 m already 16 km, from a height of 100 m his horizons expand to 36 km. At an altitude of 327 km, one can observe a space with a diameter of 4000 km.

Another proof sphericity is based on the statement that all celestial bodies of our solar system have a spherical shape and the Earth in this case is no exception.

A photographic evidence sphericity became possible after the launch of the first satellites, which took photographs of the Earth from all sides. And, of course, the first person to see the entire Earth was Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin on April 12, 1961.

I think that the sphericity of the Earth has been proven!!!

Do you agree?

When writing this article, materials from textbooks and atlases on geography were used (according to the new Federal State Educational Standards, geography from grade 5):
Geography. 5-6 grades Workbook_Kotlyar O.G_2012 -32s
Geography. 5-6 grades Alekseev A.I. and others_2012 -192s
Geography. 5kl. Atlas._Letyagin A.A_2013 -32s
Geography. 5kl. Introduction to Geography. Domogatskikh E.M. and others_2013 -160s
Geography. 5kl. Beginner course. Letyagin A.A_2013 -160s
Geography. 5kl. Planet Earth_Petrova, Maksimova_2012 -112s,
as well as Internet materials.

None of the sources used

DOES NOT INCLUDE ALL EVIDENCE DESCRIBED AT THE SAME TIME!

The death of feudalism and the transition to capitalism in Europe accelerated the Great Geographical Discoveries. These include the largest discoveries of the 15th-16th centuries, the main of which were the discovery of America and the sea route to India around Africa. In other words, it was the discovery of overseas lands by Europeans under certain historical conditions. Therefore, one should not include, for example, the Viking journeys to America or the discoveries of Russian explorers.

For a long time, the peoples of Europe lived without making long sea voyages, but suddenly they had a desire to discover new lands, and almost simultaneously both America and a new route to India were discovered. This kind of “suddenly” does not happen by chance. There were three main prerequisites for the discoveries.

1. In the 15th century. The Turks, having conquered Byzantium, cut the trade route from Europe to the East. The flow of eastern goods to Europe sharply decreased, and Europeans could no longer do without them. It was necessary to look for another way.

2 Lack of gold as a monetary metal. And not only because gold flowed to the East. The economic development of Europe required more and more money. The main direction of this development was the growth of the marketability of the economy, the growth of trade

They hoped to extract gold in the same eastern countries, which, according to rumors, were very rich in precious metals. Especially India. Marco Polo, who visited there, said that even the roofs of the palaces there were made of gold. The Portuguese were looking for gold on the African coast, in India, throughout the Far East, wrote F. Engels, gold was drunk with that magic word that drove the Spaniards across the Atlantic Ocean; gold - that’s what the Europeans first demanded as soon as they stepped onto the newly discovered shore.”

True, gold had its owners, but this did not bother us: the Europeans of that time were brave people and not constrained by morality. It was important for them to get to the gold, and they had no doubt that they would be able to take it away from the owners. And so it happened: the crews of small ships, which, from our point of view, were just large boats, sometimes covered entire countries.

3. Development of science and technology, especially shipbuilding and navigation. On previous European ships it was impossible to sail the open ocean: they either sailed with oars, like Venetian galleys, or under sail, but only if the wind was blowing in the stern.

The sailors were guided mainly by the sight of familiar shores, so they did not dare to go into the open ocean.

But in the 15th century. A ship of a new design appeared - the caravel. It had a keel and sailing equipment that made it possible to move in crosswinds. In addition, in addition to the compass, by this time an astrolabe had also appeared - a device for determining latitude.

Significant advances had also been made in geography by this time. The ancient theory of the sphericity of the Earth was revived, and the Florentine geographer Toscanelli argued that India could be reached by moving not only east but also west, around the earth. True, it was not expected that there would be another continent on the way.

So, the Great Geographical Discoveries were led to by: the crisis of trade with the East, the need for a new path, the lack of gold as a monetary metal, and scientific and technological achievements. Major discoveries were made in the search for routes to India, the richest country in Asia. Everyone was looking for India, but in different directions.

The first direction is to the south and southeast, around Africa. The Portuguese moved in this direction. In search of gold and treasures, Portuguese ships from the middle of the 15th century. began to move south along the coast of Africa. Characteristic names appeared on maps of Africa: “Pepper Coast”, “Ivory Coast”, “Slave Coast”, “Golden Coast”. These names show quite clearly what the Portuguese were looking for and finding in Africa. At the end of the 15th century. A Portuguese expedition of three caravels led by Vasco da Gama circumnavigated Africa and reached the shores of India.

Since the Portuguese declared the lands they discovered to be their property, the Spaniards had to move in a different direction - to the west. Then, at the end of the 15th century, the Spaniards on three ships under the command of Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean and reached the shores of America. Columbus believed that this was Asia. However, there was no gold in the new lands, and the Spanish king was dissatisfied with Columbus. The man who discovered the New World ended his days in poverty.

In the footsteps of Columbus, a stream of poor, brave and cruel Spanish conquistador nobles poured into America. They hoped to find gold there and the nations of Cortez and Pizarro plundered the states of the Aztecs and Incas; the independent development of American civilization ceased.

England began searching for new lands later and, in order to take its toll, tried to find a new route to India - the “northern passage”, through the Arctic Ocean. Of course, it was an attempt with inadequate means, Chancellor's Expedition, sent in the middle of the 16th century. in search of this passage, she lost two of the three ships; instead of India, Chancellor ended up through the White Sea to Moscow. However, he was not at a loss and obtained from Ivan the Terrible serious privileges for the trade of English merchants in Russia: the right to trade duty-free in that country, pay with his own coin, build trading yards and industrial enterprises. True, Ivan the Terrible scolded his “loving sister”, Queen Elizabeth of England, as a “vulgar girl” because her kingdom, in addition to her, was ruled by “trading men”, and sometimes he oppressed these trading men, but still provided them with protection. Monopoly position The English were deprived of Russian trade only in the 17th century - the Russian Tsar deprived them of their privileges because they “committed an evil deed with all the land: they killed their sovereign King Charles to death.”

The first consequence of the Great Geographical Discoveries was a “price revolution”: as cheap gold and silver poured into Europe from overseas lands, the value of these metals (hence the value of money) fell sharply, and the prices of goods increased accordingly. The total amount of gold to Europe in the 16th century. increased by more than twofold, silver - threefold, and prices increased by 2-3 times.

First of all, the price revolution affected those countries that directly plundered new lands - Spain and Portugal. It would seem that the discoveries should have caused economic prosperity in those countries. In fact, the opposite happened. Prices in these countries increased 4.5 times, while in England and France - 2.5 times. Spanish and Portuguese goods became so expensive that they were no longer bought; preferred cheaper goods from other countries. It must be taken into account that as prices rise, production costs also increase accordingly.

And this had two consequences: gold from these countries quickly went to the countries whose goods were bought; handicraft production fell into decline because its products were not in demand. The flow of gold flowed, bypassing the economy of these countries from the hands of the nobles and floating abroad. Therefore, already at the beginning of the 17th century. There was a shortage of precious metals in Spain, and so many copper coins were paid for a wax candle that their weight was three times the weight of the candle. A paradox arose: the flow of gold did not enrich Spain and Portugal, but dealt a blow to their economy, because feudal relations still prevailed in these countries. On the contrary, the price revolution strengthened England and the Netherlands, countries with developed commodity production, whose goods flowed to Spain and Portugal.

First of all, the producers of goods benefited - artisans and the first manufacturers, who sold their goods at increased prices. In addition, more goods were now needed: they went to Spain, Portugal and overseas in exchange for colonial goods. Now there was no longer any need to limit production, and guild craft began to develop into capitalist manufacture.

Those peasants who produced goods for sale also benefited, and paid their dues with cheaper money. In short, commodity production won.

And the feudal lords lost: they received the same amount of money from the peasants in the form of rent (after all, the rent was fixed), but this money was now worth 2-3 times less. The price revolution was an economic blow to the feudal class.

The second consequence of the Great Geographical Discoveries was a revolution in European trade. Maritime trade grew into ocean trade, and in connection with this, the medieval monopolies of the Hanseatic League and Venice collapsed: it was no longer possible to control ocean roads.

It would seem that Spain and Portugal should have benefited from the relocation of trade routes, which not only owned overseas colonies, but were also geographically located very conveniently - at the beginning of routes across the ocean. The rest of the European countries had to send ships past their shores. But Spain and Portugal had nothing to trade.

The winners in this regard were England and the Netherlands - producers and owners of goods. Antwerp became the center of world trade, where goods from all over Europe were collected. From here, merchant ships headed overseas, and from there returned with a rich cargo of coffee, sugar and other colonial products.

The volume of trade has increased. If previously only a small amount of eastern goods arrived in Europe, which were delivered to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea by Arab merchants, now the flow of these goods has increased tenfold. For example, spices to Europe in the 16th century. received 30 times more than during the period of Venetian trade. New goods appeared - tobacco, coffee, cocoa, potatoes, which Europe did not know before. And the Europeans themselves, in exchange for these goods, must produce much more of their goods than before.

The growth of trade required new forms of its organization. Commodity exchanges appeared (the first was in Antwerp). On such exchanges, merchants entered into trade transactions in the absence of goods: a merchant could sell coffee from the future harvest, fabrics that had not yet been woven, and then buy and deliver to his customers.

The third consequence of the Great Geographical Discoveries was the birth of the colonial system. If in Europe since the 16th century. capitalism began to develop; if, economically, Europe overtook the peoples of other continents, then one of the reasons for this was the robbery and exploitation of the colonies.

The colonies did not immediately begin to be exploited by capitalist methods, nor did they immediately become sources of raw materials and markets. At first they were objects of robbery, sources of initial accumulation of capital. The first colonial powers were Spain and Portugal, which exploited the colonies using feudal methods.

The nobles of these countries did not go to new lands in order to organize an orderly economy there, they went to rob and export wealth. In a short period of time, they captured and exported to Europe gold, silver, jewelry - whatever they could get their hands on. And after the wealth was taken out and something had to be done with the new possessions, the nobles began to use them in accordance with feudal traditions. The conquistadors captured or received as a gift from the kings territories with a native population, converting this population into serfs. Only serfdom here was brought to the level of slavery.

What the nobles needed here was not ordinary agricultural products, but gold, silver, or at least exotic fruits that could be sold at a high price in Europe. And they forced the Indians to develop gold and silver mines. Entire villages of those who did not want to work were exterminated. And around the mines, according to eyewitnesses, even the air was contaminated from hundreds of decomposing corpses. The natives were exploited using the same methods on sugarcane and coffee plantations.

The population could not withstand such exploitation and died out in droves. On the island of Hispaniola (Haiti) at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards there were about a million inhabitants, and by the middle of the 16th century. they were completely exterminated. The Spaniards themselves believed that in the first half of the 16th century. they destroyed the American Indians.

But by destroying the workforce, the Spaniards undermined the economic base of their colonies. To replenish the labor force, African blacks had to be imported to America. Thus, with the advent of the colonies, slavery was revived.

But in general, the Great Geographical Discoveries accelerated the decomposition of feudalism and the transition to capitalism in European countries