SC - Americans and corn (was: Food guessing game)

[Siegfried Heydrich]

> Date: Mon, 8 May 2000 00:03:09 EDT
> From: CBlackwill at aol.com
> Subject: SC - Americans and corn (was: Food guessing game)
> 
> I think most Americans remember that story (if they went to school at all), 
> but I think they also may have considered that Columbus discovered America in 
> 1492, and considered it possible that corn (maize) could have been in 
> widespread use in Europe by the end of the middle ages (after all, who could 
> resist such a fine, sweet and delicious American product??).

Don't forget that if you're dealing with children, a lot of the more
recent crop will have "learned" or deduced that the Great Leap to maize
(which, being so darn sensible, happened nearly overnight) was made
through the agency of John Smith and Pocahantas more than a century
later. Add to that the fact that if they weren't listening carefully at
the demo, they may well have decided that the Middle Ages ended in
1601... .   

> After all, the 
> wreckage of a Trireme was discovered off the coast of South America (though 
> it is speculated, and I believe, that this was a hoax).  With misinformation 
> like this floating around, it is easy to believe that trade between Europe 
> and Distant lands was commonplace (which it was, though not to the extent 
> most people believe)

Wreckage can travel great distances underwater with submerged currents.
Regardless of whether this was a hoax or an anomaly, what it was _not_
was evidence of Roman trade with the [as yet undiscovered??] new world.
As with later Viking longships that are suppsed to have gone to all
kinds of interesting places, neither the longship nor the trireme is
really designed for ocean travel, but for river use and coastal travel,
but the design differences between the trireme and the kind of
deep-draft, keeled vessel needed for semi-safe ocean travel are greater,
I believe, than with the longship.  The odds against a trireme making an
intentional and successful trip across the Atlantic, properly
provisioned so that anybody survived at journey's end, are astronomical.

And it is my further opinion that Carthage must be destroyed!

Adamantius 
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com