Well, where's my answer? It's not like I'm asking you to submit a disquisition.

Would I be asking you the question if I did? So, what's the answer?

@ kappert

 

You wrote: "The link of warlord-politician is obvious all over history to the present day".

 

Q: If this observable fact is obvious to you and obvious to me, could you please explain where our differences lie?

kappert: "I mentioned the edition of an (Chinese) encyclopedia, not the (China's) war against the Mongols".

 

Yes, you did, and I thanked you for that. I also asked you to explain to me how on earth ( flat or spherical) a Chinese warlord turned emperor would have been able to publish  that encyclopedia, despatch Chinese mariners on voyages of discovery and daring do and transmit valuable scientific data to India, Persia and Arabia if he and his fellow countrymen had previously been defeated by an army of marauding Mongols.

 

I'm still patiently waiting for your answer.

For your personal pleasure: http://www.gamershell.com/pc/rome_total_war_extreme_happiness_mod/

 kappert: "I doubt that civilisation is based on warfare".

 

Again, a falshood. It isn't that you doubt that it is, you KNOW it IS, you just wish that it wasn't. There is a difference.

 

btw:In a previous post you wrote, "ONLY the Bible talks about the 'four corners' of the Earth". WRONG. Take another look at that wikipedia link I gave you and you'll find this:

 

"Zeng Shen (505 BC - 436 BC) replying to a question of Shanchu Li admitt(ed) that t was hard to conceptualize the ORTHODOX CHINESE VIEW of the FOUR CORNERS OF EARTH and how they could properly be covered". [ my emphasis added].

 

You say that you are "reluctant to talk about the military achievements of the lords of war" but we both know that isn't true  because you have previously cited some of the many achievements of Zhu Di (Chengzu) whose achievements were only possible after he had vanquished the Mongols at the borders of his empire.

 

Try again?

Thank you.

 

Perhaps you would be kind enough to put as much thought, time and effort into answering the second part of my question as you have the first.

 

You cite even more noble Chinese achievements while stubbornly continuing to ignore the dragon in the room.

 

Consider:

 

Without these wars you might well be describing to me how the Mongolian aggressors viewed the world (flat, spherical or otherwise) but certainly NOT the views and undoubted achievements of the Han Chinese.  

I await your next response.

Thank you, kappert, for your serious and thought provoking response.(More of the same in the future please).

 

Let's take a look at a few of the points you raise.

 

i  re: Emperor Chengzu's encyclopedia of 1403 and 'The Great Encyclopedia of Yongle' (1408).

 

Kindly provide further evidence to support your claim that these publications showed "the Earth as a globe, with planets "

 

 

ii re: "There is no source in China proclaiming that the earth is flat".

 

 

see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth

 

scroll down to: China and the Far East.

 

Tell me, is the brief tidbit of information on this subject "British wishful thinking" too?

 

 

Finally, I'd like to return to our old friend (and an old subject) Chengzu. Take a look at this short bio:

 

http://www.cultural-china.com/chinaWH/html/en/33History204.html

 

and pay particular attention to the following quotes:

 

"launched FIVE wars againt Mongolia...which eased Mongolia's threat to the border areas of the Ming Dynasty".

 

and

 

"brought ethnic minorities in the northeast under control (in order to maintain) stability in the border areas".

 

NB: In 1399, he STARTED a civil war at Jing Nan in the name of "cleansing the central government", which lasted for 4 years, ending in 1402.

 

Consider:

 

No war, no victories.

 

No victories, no internal stability.

 

No internal stability, no dynasty.

 

No dynasty, no China.

 

No China, no chinese achievements.

 

 

Your comments, please. 

 

 

"About the Chinese, I have another view"

 

 

Do you accept the veracity of the following statement(s)?

 

 

 

i  "The general consensus among Chinese scholars well into the seventeenth century AD, more than two thousand years after the Greeks had demonstrated that the earth is spherical, was that the earth is flat...".

 

ii "The error wasn't corrected until the Chinese were confronted with European astronomy".

 

And, please, no prevarication.

Surprisingly, your comments appear to broadly support the Fjordman thesis. Am I correct in reaching that conclusion?

Pythagoras affirmed the Earth as a globe in the year 506 a.C. Marco Polo, around 1260, did not fear to fall off the Earth! There was no scholar at the end of the Ancient Era and the Middle Ages believing the Earth as a disc – with the exception of Kosmas Indikopleustes, Laktantius and Severianus de Gabala. But their visions were not taught in the Middle Ages. Only centuries later, their manuscripts were studied and provided us with the myth of the Middle Ages believing in a disc. In the 221 volumes of the "Patrologia Latina" (200-1216) is no hint at all to believe the disc-version. Only the Bible talks of 'four corners' of the Earth. Laktantius, though, was worried about the antipodes, where 'it should rain from the bottom to the top', while Augustinus around the year 400 proclaimed the Earth as "moles globosa" in the middle of the universe. The Earth as 'sphere' or 'egg' was taught by Basilius around the year 360. Pope Sylvester II ordered to make a globe, discussing the diameter. And the astronomer and mathematician Johannes de Sacrobosco, introduced his text 'Sphaera mundi' to European universities during the 13th century. A Portuguese jew, Salvador Fernandes Zarco, born in Cuba, Portugal, discovered the Antilles by chance and had little knowledge of geography - he is better known as Christopher Columbus. The Modern Era, with Nikolaus Kopernikus at the head, discredited the old teachings, writing lies in his main treatise. The idea of the stupidity of the Middle Ages was welcome by the Renaissance, documented in the "Acta Sanctorum" of the 17th century, maintaining itself up to our days and our schoolbooks, and fairy-tale books like Thomas Paine's "Age of Reason" of 1794/95 or Washington Irving's "The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus" of 1828.
And the Chinese mythology, 2nd millenium B.C., has this nice story: Pangu, the Creator of the universe. In the beginning it was chaos, then an egg developed. The egg became bigger while Pangu, the first living being, was sleeping. When he woke up, already a giant, he accidentally broke the egg. The clear parts, light and pure, rose to the sky, the thick parts, impure and heavy, fall down to earth. To reunify heaven and earth, Pangu secured the heaven with his head, and earth with his feet. He grew three meters every day during 18.000 years. When he reached 50.000km, Pangu was exhausted and never woke up again.

Books:
Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken (1992): Fines Terrae. Die Enden der Erde und der vierte Kontinent auf mittelalterlichen Weltkarten, Hannover (MGH-Schriften 36)
Manuel Luciano da Silva (2006): Cristóvão Colon era Português. Lisboa.
Reinhard Krüger (1999): Zur Archäologie des globalen Raumbewusstseins. Berlin.
Rudolf Simek (1992): Erde und Kosmos im Mittelalter. München.
Rudolf Simek (1993): Dictionary of Northern Mythology. Brewer. Cambridge.

It has indeed been a common error that in the middle ages people believed that the earth was flat. It was Jeffrey Russell who discovered that that wasn’t the fact at all. Jeffrey said it were secularists that spread this to discredit the Christian believe of the middle ages. Now Fjordman recuperates the same thought to emphasis the self-hate of Europeans. Both are remarkable, given the fact that the believe started with The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus written in 1828. At that moment nor secularism or so called “European self-hate” existed.

There's an advertisement currently being shown on British television (Stella Artois) that continues to perpetuate the myth that,"...in 1366 ... people believed the earth was flat and the sun set into the sea". Check out their website for further details.