carro.línea's blog

I remember sitting in class while we were discussing one of the readings recently and all of the sudden becoming very discouraged with the lack of representation of women in the travel explorations of the past. Where are we? Why do we have to be the ones stuck back at home waiting for the men to return? There are very few examples of women having power or occupying space equal to or above men. There are obviously many societal expectations of women and a history of subjugation to patriarchal ideals that create an environment in which it is not acceptable for women to travel or to be considered as equals.

Tracing back through the readings, women occupy very minimal positions and don’t get a chance to partake in the glories of travel. In The Odyssey, there is Circe who does represent a powerful woman figure, but she is stuck on the island and has no influence on the world of the explorers except for her sexual exploitations. She is a very sexualized figure, which is an important way in which women can be empowered, but she is confined to this flirtatious ability and sorcerer magical powers and cannot assert herself in other meaningful ways.

Also, Ulysses had many relationships with women besides his wife who sat at home the whole time, faithfully waiting for him to return. His wife, Penelope, demonstrated her commitment to Ulysses while he had relationships with Circe and Calypso. In the first place, Penelope didn’t have the opportunity to go out and explore, and in the second place she gets cheated on several times. Ulysses knew that his wife and child remain at home waiting for his return. Penelope represents a very suppressed and submissive figure to a licentious Ulysses.

Marco Polo’s encounters with the Kublai Khan reiterated the discrimination women experienced in the domination of the male hierarchy. Polo seems to idolize Kublai Khan for his many achievements but also particularly for his abundance of women. The Kublai Khan has his pick to any woman he wants from the within the empire and can pluck them from wherever they are to gain them as property of his own. They become trophies or statues that can accompany him and fulfill his every desire as a man. He even builds a summerhouse in Xanadu where it is said he took women to spend significant time with.

Herodotus’ account of Egypt may the one of the only enlightening report giving recognition to women as independent and power beings. Herodotus even identifies the Egyptian customs as strange because he is not used to seeing women have the abilities that the Egyptian women do have. The women are the ones to go to the market while the men stay at home and weave. Also, the Egyptian rulers are female, granting rights to women that other ancient societies wouldn’t have dreamed to give to women.
There are no examples of women who traveled. This is probably the most discouraging part for me. They may have been able to obtain power in a few instances, but they were still stuck in their places of residence and never had the chance to venture out into the unknown world. Who knows what the encounters with the New World would have looked like if women had been allowed to join in on the journies?

Montaigne’s understanding of the words barbarous or barbarian only slightly resembles the modern day connotation that the words have adopted. To highlight a couple of key points, Montaigne states “everyone gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country.” This doesn’t fall far from how barbarism is understood these days. Something embodies barbaric qualities because it is completely foreign to those who are making the identification. Many things unfamiliar to a certain place become barbaric because they have never been encountered before.

But then Montaigne moves on to claim that the people he encounters from the New World are far from barbarous, using Plato’s idea of beauty being related to nature to support this argument. Montaigne makes the connection that because the Native Americans live close to the land and have a strong relationship to nature that they are “the greatest and most beautiful” by Plato’s standards. “The laws of nature…govern them still,” Montaigne says, emphasizing that their culture hadn’t been spoiled by anything before the Europeans brought their way of life over to the New World.

Making a bold statement, Montaigne claims that his culture is a “vitiated” or tainted one and that Italy and Europe have been affected by art and have become imperfect because of their encounters with “human invention” or man-made creations. If we take Montaigne’s understanding of barbarism then almost every place on our earth is moving further and further away from purity and beauty and becoming more barbaric by the minute. I think Montaigne’s point of view is an interesting position to take because it is quite opposite of how we view barbarism today. Most people these days would agree that a culture that stays close to nature and remains without technology is completely barbaric. Montaigne sees it otherwise through the understanding of a quote from Plato. It’s important to consider Montaigne’s point and acknowledge that our definition of barbaric or barbarous isn’t necessarily the correct one.

When ship wrecked and stripped of all of their possessions, Cabeza de Vaca and the crew he is with slowly revert to what they initially viewed as backwards or savage. In their minds, the Native Americans were uncivilized because they didn’t have the same materialistic and over-the-top sense of need. There is evidence that tribes in the Americas were cannibalistic, but it would be wrong to assume that all the Native Americans that the men encountered were cannibalistic.

Cannibalism is an extreme to what they had to do because of their misfortune, but it goes to show that most will do anything to survive. It is interesting to see how they had to be denied all of their possessions and things before they could begin to make an effort to understand the Native Americans. Most still didn’t anyways. You would think that going through hardship like they did would put them on an equal plane, but it instead created an internal hatred from the similarities that arise between the explorers and the Native Americans.

After class on Tuesday I was really struck by the passage (from page 161 in my University of Nebraska 2003 edition) that Steve brought up. On Tuesday, I hadn’t gotten that far in the book yet, so it was my first exposure to it. What an interesting intersection of the different groups of “explorers.” The Christians that Cabeza de Vaca speaks of are Diego de Alcaraz and his men who are viewed as horseback riding, lance toting, stealers and killers. The Native Americans recognize the differences between Diego de Alcaraz’s men and Cabeza de Vaca. It’s almost as if Cabeza de Vaca has been converted and accepted to be one with the Native Americans.

The Christians tried to claim that Cabeza de Vaca was the same as them only because they wanted to gain the same respect that Cabeza de Vaca had. They continue by insulting Cabeza de Vaca because he has lost most of his connection to the old world and doesn’t resemble or embody the same conquistador and malicious spirit that they do. I wonder if because we are getting the perspective from Cabeza de Vaca’s point of view, that he is playing up the idea that he is understood and accepted, and that the other men are still feared as hostile people. Cabeza de Vaca is an example to the Native Americans that not everyone who comes from other countries and places has an evil agenda. He makes cultural understanding seem possible.

Cabeza de Vaca becomes defined as an other against Diego de Alcaraz and his men, rather than the Native Americans being the other. He has to occupy the same position that the Native Americans were once in, before Cabeza de Vaca experienced all of the hardships that he did which transformed his relationship to the Native Americans. His story speaks a lot to adaption and transformation through the loss of one’s position of power over the “other” into becoming he who is othered.

I realized after reading the history of Columbus’s journeys that we’re given no information about what the Americas were actually like (as far as we can tell from archeological and anthropological perspective) before Columbus and the other European’s arrived (the pre-columbian Americas). It is an obvious omission because Columbus and those writing about him didn’t have this information at the time.

So I did a little bit of research into the history of the Americas before Columbus arrived and discovered quite a few fascinating facts. Absolutefacts.com writes a synopsis and review of Charles C. Mann’s book 1492, revealing information about the pre-Columbus Americas. It was intriguing to find how completely wrong Columbus was in his assumptions about the Native Americans.

Mann reveals in his book that researchers have found evidence that there were probably more people living in the Americas than there were in Europe before 1492. Tenochtitlan, the capital city of the Aztec Empire was larger than any contemporary European city. It also had running water, botanical gardens and clean streets- unlike any European cities of the time.

The unprecedented agricultural processes of the Native Americans marked "man's first, and perhaps the greatest, feat of genetic engineering” with their breeding techniques with corn as the journal Science recently described. We could also learn a thing or two about deforestation and how to prevent it from the Amazonian native peoples’ rain forest farming process.

In other words, we lost a great deal of knowledge and history that is slowly being uncovered by archeologists and anthropologists today, but it is devastating that Columbus and the other explorers didn’t make an effort document or learn from the Native Americans. A lot of crucial knowledge was lost, and we will never know what the Americas could have been if Columbus and the rest of the explorers hadn’t stomped in and taken over.

The motivations and purpose of Columbus’s trip are laid out rather clearly; he wanted to find a direct route to the west from Spain to China so that gold, jewels and spices could be more easily transported to the ports of Castile. Money is the motivation. Profit and wealth brought a sense of urgency to Columbus’s voyage. One of the problems he ran into while preparing for the trip was convincing someone to provide the initial support and monetary backing in order for the route to be discovered.

Having an idea of what kept Columbus’s fire aglow, I wanted to understand better the history of the Catholic Monarchs, Isabella and Ferdinand so that I could grasp the overall motivations of the ruling royalty and country. Columbus had a very difficult time gaining the support or trust of anyone with authority or money. He tried several different times with many different people, so you would have thought he could work out the kinks of his speech and business plan. Moving from England, to Portugal and then finally through Spain, Columbus made proposals to Kings and Dukes.

Columbus understood where the money was going to have to come from, but didn’t necessarily do his research to figure out what the Kings and Dukes had as common motivations or goals. After seven years of living in poverty and poor conditions, Columbus finally began to realize what the Catholic rulers were most concerned with and could begin to convince Isabella and Ferdinand of the importance of his voyage.

Alfonso de Quintanilla’s pity on Columbus had a lot to do with how Columbus was able to get his foot in the door. Once Columbus had that on his resume, it was necessary to understand that the King and Queen were more concerned with the Spanish Inquisition than they were of gaining more wealth. Between 1480-1492 Isabella and Ferdinand ordered the expulsion or forced conversion to Catholicism all Moors and Jews. With a better understanding of Isabella and Ferdinand’s history, it is interesting to compare the motivations of Columbus and the motivations of those who provided the support.

While Columbus was primarily motivated by the wealth and gain of riches, he was also interested in conversion. He said many times that he felt the native people could be easily converted to Christianity and that they had no practice of religion themselves. Although religion was not the main reason Columbus wanted to set out on his voyages, it became a part of what he did because he had no respect and no desire to understand the culture of those whose land he was invading. Religion was easily tacked on to the list of priorities because it wasn't difficult for Columbus.

I have friends who swear to the healing powers of coconut water after a long night of drinking. Coconut as a cure for hangovers? It’s feasible, what with all the electrolytes and potassium that it contains. As useful as we (or marketing companies) have found coconut to be today, coconuts have been appreciated by civilizations hundreds of years ago.
 
Ibn Battutah encounters coconut trees and finds it important enough to talk about their features and uses. Coconut trees have often been called trees of life in many civilizations so it isn’t surprising that he finds them important enough to talk in depth about. He spends a good amount of time going in depth about the tree explaining:
 
The coco-palm is one of the strangest of trees, and looks exactly like a date-palm. The nut resembles a man's head, for it has marks like eyes and a mouth, and the contents, when it is green, are like the brain. It has fibre like hair, out of which they make ropes, which they use instead of nails to bind their ships together and also as cables. Amongst its properties are that it strengthens the body, fattens, and adds redness to the face. If it is cut open when it is green it gives a liquid deliciously sweet and fresh. After drinking this one takes a piece of the rind as a spoon and scoops out the pulp inside the nut. This tastes like an egg that has been broiled but not quite cooked, and is nourishing. I lived on it for a year and a half when I was in the Maldive islands.
 
His comparison of a man’s head to the coconut is an interesting touch and adds a very humanistic quality to his writing. Interestingly enough, the Coconut Research Center reveals that early Spanish explorers identified the nut as “coco” because “coco” means monkey face because they felt the three indentions on the nut resembled the eyes and face of a monkey.
 
The medicinal qualities that Battutah ascribes to the coconut may not actually be accurate. Instead of fattening, coconuts actually are “utilized by the body to produce energy in preference to being stored as body fat like other dietary fats” (Coconut Research website). It has been said that coconut oil does reduce redness when applied to the skin, so Battutah was correct in that statement.
 
The tradition of breaking a piece of the rind off to scoop the pulp out is still practiced today all over the world. I visited Brazil this winter break and coconuts were everywhere. The coconut stands always had a machete ,which they used to slice a portion of the rind off to use to scoop out the cut-in-half nut.

Battutah’s descriptions of the Nile River depict how humans have understood it as an extremely important resource for hundreds, and as we know now, for thousands of years. Nearly all the remainders and ruins from Ancient Egyptian life and culture are found on sites along the Nile River. It is regarded as the longest river in the world, at 4,130 miles long. The Nile has been a huge part of culture and survival since long before Battatuh visits, but he is still able to appreciate the beauty and awe.
 
It’s interesting that the first thing that Battutah notes about the Nile is how delicious it is when he says, “the Egyptian Nile surpasses all rivers of the earth in sweetness of taste, length of course, and utility.” Note the order in which he lists the attributes- taste, size, and usefulness. You would think that he would describe it in another order, with perhaps the size or utility being first.
 
Battutah mentions the unique fluctuations that the river takes during different seasons saying, “one extraordinary thing about it is that it begins to rise in the extreme hot weather at the time when rivers generally diminish and dry up, and begins to subside just when rivers begin to increase and overflow.” Although the causes of the swelling and falling were not understood, it must have had a great affect on the lives of the people just like it still does today as this NASA webpage describes.
 
It’s interesting to look at the map of Ibn Battutah’s travels and note how the majority of his travels are along coasts and rivers. It makes sense, obviously, with the conditions of travel and means to drinking water. Cars didn’t exist, so sea travel was very widely used. There were no bottles of water to be bought in the middle of Africa back then (and I won’t assume there are today, but that’s a completely different topic…) so they had to stay close to the source. If he wasn’t sticking close to the northern coast of Africa, then he was traveling up and down the Nile River.
 
Water affected the way in which people had to travel and it also played a huge role in the lives of those who were settled in their towns living their day-to-day lives. Battutah explains how, “the inhabitants of every township have canals led off the Nile; these are filled when the river is in flood and carry the water over the fields.” The Nile was used and is still used as a major source of water.

As every great emperor should, Kublai Khan had a summerhouse in the province of Shangdu that he built in order to indulge himself in his every desire. Until its discovery in the 20th century, Xanadu was believed to be a mythical creation. Although only ruins are left, archeologists have identified what they believe to have been an irrigation system. This particular system is said to have been used later in other parts of the country to progress agricultural advances and also to repair damages done during the Mongolian war.
 
Xanadu has been the inspiration of poets and filmmakers alike. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote a poem entitled “Kubla Khan, or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment” which goes like this:
 
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
      Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
     Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.....

It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
 
Although much of this is speculation considering no one truly knows what went on in Kublai Khan’s “pleasure-dome,” Coleridge has evoked an image of a very indulgent emperor. I feel that it’s pretty accurate to say that even though the details may be off, Kublai Khan most likely went all out in having no shame giving himself whatever it was that he wanted.
 
The film Xanadu, from my understanding of the Xanadu (film) wiki page references Coleridge’s poem. One of the main characters is trying to open a nightclub and he wants to name it Xanadu. That says a lot there about how he probably wants the place to be like, modeling it after a “pleasure-dome.”
 
Kublai Khan doesn’t know what his creation did to inspire future artists, but I am sure he would have been happy to know that his work is appreciated, even hundreds of years later.

As I think about one of the many times my family was driving from Austin, Texas to Crested Butte Colorado I begin to question the idea of patience and being a flexible travler. My family- six people, two dogs, all the luggage in one vehicle- made the 18 hours drive every summer. The time in particular that I am talking about was one to remember, for sure.  We broke down about halfway there and we were stranded in the middle of nowhere, Texas. After the tow truck finally came a few hours later, the diagnosis was bleak. They had to order a part that would take a few days to get in… and the story goes on. I remember being so frustrated and irritated that we were delayed even a few days.

With this experience in mind, what I can’t understand is how the Polo brothers had the patience to wait years at certain points along their journeys. Then again, to have the flexibility to settle in a new place when it was unexpected would be a luxury. It demonstrates the men’s wealth and stature that they were able to make themselves comfortable in a foreign place.  This idea of time obviously has a lot to do with the circumstances of the time in which the Polo brothers lived. Everything took longer. So they didn’t necessarily know or consider a faster way of doing things.

The whole concept of travel for these two brothers takes on a very different meaning then the term generally does today. The men were not traveling for their own experience; they didn’t have any personal interest in gaining knowledge about foreign lands. Until the Great Khan gives the men orders, they have little purpose in their travels. They are traveling to benefit the needs of someone else, which isn’t a popular concept in today’s day. To be destinationless until the Great Khan asks for something, stranded in a foreign place might not be all that bad, but I can’t imagine being stuck in a place I don’t know with little purpose.

The men don’t seem to feel stranded though. As long as they completed their assignments, they felt very fulfilled and proud of what they accomplished. It didn’t matter how long it took them to do, they focused on the outcome of the matter. Today’s world struggles with the idea of patience that these men were able to comprehend and demonstrate. We live in a face-paced world that expects things to get done yesterday.

I could be slightly off, but I counted “if” 80 times in Herodotus’s An Account of Egypt. If is a word used when speculating, or if there is any sort of doubt involved. Bearing in mind that many deem Herodotus the “Father of History,” it’s difficult to understand Herodotus’s account in terms of what history resembles today.

To me, history is fact. History is a recounting of what happened. I understand there are different lenses to consider and it’s important to remember that there way be multiple perspectives. But when it comes down to it, history is made up of real events. This leads me to question whether or not Herodotus’s account is a cultural study rather than a historical report.

Is it the actual and physical act of writing his experiences down that makes him the “Father of History,” or is there more to it? Then I consider how my questions aren’t necessarily relevant to the important issue. The fact of the matter is that Herodotus provided insight into a culture and place different from where he came from. He took the time and effort to recount stories of the Egyptian way of life- their religious practices, the geographical aspects, their relationships with animals and more.

Other questions that may be more abstract that come to mind are- what motivated Herodotus to keep track of what he encountered? Did he have certain intentions for the work he was producing?

Some scholars and historians these days like Daniel Mendelsohn started out a bit skeptical and confused about whether or not Herodotus was a historian. Frustrated with his colloquial and long-winded accounts filled with much of his own opinion, it seems as though scholars and historians today acknowledge Herodotus as “the Father of History” but still take an unconvinced stance on whether or not what he did was write the first historical account. As Mendelsohn notes, “Herodotus, by contrast, always seemed a bit of a sucker. Whatever his desire, stated in his Preface, to pinpoint the “root cause” of the Persian Wars…what you take away from an initial encounter with the Histories is not, to put it mildly, a strong sense of methodical rigor.” You can fault him for lengthy conversational jargon, but there was nothing like what Herodotus wrote before his time, so he had no basis or example to learn from.
 
It’s easy to give him a hard time for his statements, “it seemed to myself,” “I am bound to declare an opinion of my own,” and “I suppose” and the like, but at least the guy is honest, right? I find it important to note that Herodotus is honest about his confabulations. He is prompt to tell the reader when what he writes is of his own opinion and point of view. If something isn’t first hand experience, he lets the reader know that the information came from another source. He doesn’t make things up for the sake of entertaining an audience.
 
Herodotus’s technique got me thinking about what differentiates a tourist with a diary from a historian. I think it has to do with the intended audience. Herodotus wrote with an understanding that hopefully his works would be read and appreciated in the future by a wide audience. A diary is obviously not meant for this purpose. Herodotus started with what he knew- his own perspective on the happenings of the Greco-Persian Wars. He was able to pave the way for future historians by documenting his encounters and arriving to conclusions through investigating all that he experiences. He is a very traveled man, and he has a personal point of view of what the Persians go through which he is able to draw many conclusions about in his writings. Not that my opinion necessarily matters in the long run, but I raise a glass to commemorate Herodotus as the successful and meaningful Father of History.

Throughout the trials, fighting, temptations, gods and goddesses, it is rather clearly understood that the ultimate goal of Odysseus and his men is to make it back to Ithaca, the land ”where they were born and bred (chapter 10, line 541).” Not much is said about Ithaca the place itself except for a short description in the beginning of chapter 9, so we know that the desire to get home doesn’t necessarily lie in the physical land or what it may have to offer. What is it that drives these men to persevere through all the difficulties they must suffer in order to have a chance to return home? Why is it then, that to Odysseus, “nothing one can see is ever sweeter than a glimpse of one’s own native land (chapter 9, lines 38-39)?
 
As a leader, Odysseus attempts to look out for the wellbeing of his crew, but he is willing to do whatever it takes to get back on course toward Ithaca. He would rather not lose men along the way, but anytime it does happen that some of his men die, he does not hesitate to board the ship and move along. Don’t they each represent their native land to one another? Odysseus even describes the reunion between those who Circe turned into swine and those left on the ship saying, “that's how my shipmates, once they saw me,/ thronged around, weeping—in their hearts it felt/ as if they they'd got back to their native land,/ the rugged town of Ithaca itself (chapter 10, lines 537-540).” This is a concept well understood by most- the idea that the people you surround yourself with are what truly make a home.
 
Most of the men probably have family in Ithaca that they would like to get back to, so it makes sense that they don’t derive full satisfaction in the company of one another. On top of their desires and wants to be back in Ithaca, the otherness of what the islands embodied drove them to want to get home. The dedication they all put towards getting home showed their fear of being in the unknown and being alone. They were pushed away from the foreign places by all of their dreadful encounters. But more than that, they were powerfully magnetized toward home with the desire to be with the familiar. Two forces work together- one pushing them away from the other islands, and the other pulling them en route to Ithaca.