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When pirates studied Euclid + Silk Road + How much of legend of Troy is real?

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How much of the legend of Troy is real?
https://www.historyextra.com/period/anci...rojan-war/

INTRO: Mighty warriors, the world’s most beautiful woman, divine intervention and a giant wooden horse – the Trojan War is one of ancient history’s greatest stories but, writes Michael Scott in BBC History Revealed, how much of the legend is actually true? And were the key characters involved – Achilles, Helen, Paris – based on real people? (MORE)


The Silk Road Was More Than a Vast Trade Route
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sci...rade-route

EXCERPT: Today, the legacy of the Silk Road is not the goods it carried but the philosophies and technologies that came with them. For the first time, the inhabitants of two very different worlds mingled and exchanged ideas, languages and artistry. Christianity flowed eastward, while Buddhism diffused out of India. Gunpowder and paper were introduced to Europe, and Roman glass travelled eastward. In the middle, people and philosophies mixed, leading to the development of new cultures and ways of life fed by the influence of both the Western and Eastern worlds... (MORE - details)


When pirates studied Euclid
https://aeon.co/essays/how-european-sail...navigation

EXCERPTS: During the 16th to 18th centuries, Europeans embarked on thousands of long-distance sea voyages around the world. These expeditions in the name of trade and colonisation had irreversible, often deadly, impacts on peoples around the globe. Heedless of those consequences, Europeans focused primarily on devising new techniques to make their voyages safer and faster. They could no longer sail along the coasts, taking their directional cues from prominent landmarks (as had been common in the preceding centuries). Nor did they have sophisticated knowledge of waves and currents, as did their counterparts in the Pacific. They had no choice but to figure out new methods of navigating across the open water. Instead of memorising the shoreline, they looked to the heavens, calculating time and position from the sun and the stars.

Celestial navigation was certainly feasible, but it required real technical skills as well as fairly advanced mathematics. Sailors needed to calculate the angle of a star’s elevation using a cross-staff or quadrant. They needed to track the direction of their ship’s course relative to magnetic north. Trigonometry and logarithms offered the best way to make these essential measurements: for these, a sailor needed to be adept at using dense numerical tables. All of a sudden, a navigator’s main skill wasn’t his memory – it was his mathematical ability.

To help the average sailor with these technical computations, maritime administrators and entrepreneurs opened schools in capital cities and port towns across Europe. Some were less formal arrangements, where small groups of men gathered in the teacher’s home, paying for a series of classes over the course of a winter when they were on shore. [...] In other instances, the crown set up official schools, usually footing the bill for young men who were expected to then serve in the nation’s navy. ... In the 17th century, navies and trading companies began requiring their mariners to pass an examination if they wished to be promoted – to master, lieutenant, eventually even to captain...

[...] In their quest for these credentials, maritime men sought out formal schooling. Pirates, privateers, merchants and navy hands did not just sail a boat from point A to point B; they needed to be able to track its position, to compute time and place. To do this, they needed mathematics. Fortunately, in the 17th and 18th centuries, practical mathematics took off. For a reasonable fee, anyone who wished could acquire this bookish knowledge.

Europeans felt the stakes were high, for their colonial fortunes rested on the shoulders of these navigators. In response, maritime educators developed an innovative hybrid form of training. Early modern navigation students memorised definitions and took notes but also got their hands on instruments, and answered many, many practice questions. Zodiac songs, creative diagrams, hands-on lessons along the beach – this combination of memory and mathematics caught the imagination of mariners, making it easier to grasp the technical skills needed on the high seas. Far from being drunken sailors, these men were clever mathematicians, using traditional approaches alongside the latest technologies to reach the far side of the globe... (MORE - details)
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