You Should Always Know Where are You Going, and Where You’ve Been

You Should Always Know Where are You Going, and Where You’ve Been

Once upon a time a man organized a three-ship journey toward the west. He thought he arrived where he was going, but the map he had was wrong. Somehow, a few thousand miles of the Earth’s circumference was missing from the map.

He also wasn’t as successful as expected since the anticipated gold and other riches did not materialize. When he returned home, to divert attention from his lack of success, he started boasting about what he discovered using Biblical analogies and something about finding the Garden of Eden. He also thought he found a new route to the other side of the world. He went on a couple of more trips embellishing the same stories each time he returned. Meanwhile other people started following his route.

About 10 years after that first trip, one of the people that travelled his route wrote descriptions about the land he saw where the men and women went about their business completely naked and the women appearing attractive and lustful. He also claimed to have discovered a “New World.” His descriptions were printed and interest in them spread quite rapidly. Around that same time a map maker in Italy named Corvino published a map showing the previously unknown and unnamed new land.

Five years later a German mapmaker was putting together a world map and was combining information from previously printed maps and included the land mass shown in Corvino’s map. Wanting to name it, mapmaker Martin Waldseemüller and his partner Matthias Ringmann chose a version of the now popular writer’s name. Thus, because of the rapid spread of the descriptions with the sexual content, the previously unknown land mass was called America after Amerigo Vespucci.

It seems that Vespucci’s sex filled letters were more interesting to the prurient readers than Columbus’ attempt to boast about what he found using Biblical analogies. It also proved that truth can be stranger than fiction…or boasting. And possibly that believable sex sells better than unbelievable Bible stories.