MECHANICSVILLE, Va. — “Some Fundamentals of Conservation in the Southwest” was an unpublished (in his lifetime) manuscript by Aldo Leopold, author of the more famous environmental work, A Sand County…
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MECHANICSVILLE, Va.—Enthusiastic over his “discovery” of the region Columbus identified as the Indies, Spain’s rulers backed him with a much larger expedition set to leave the fall following his return…
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MECHANICSVILLE, Va.—For all our breast-beating about our history, Americans know surprisingly little about Christopher Columbus beyond a couple of lines from Ramon Montaigne’s poem about sailing the ocean blue and…
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MECHANICSVILLE, Va.—This post is a change of pace from the commentaries on exploration narratives posted previously. Instead, this post discusses a work that touches upon environmental ethics, which is another…
Read more![Ying-Yai Sheng-lan (The Overall Survey of the Ocean’s Shores [1433])](https://enviroexplore.davidmlawrence.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/ZhengHo_sculpture_featured-330x290.jpg "Ying-Yai Sheng-lan (The Overall Survey of the Ocean’s Shores [1433])")
MECHANICSVILLE, Va.—For much of its history, China had been an insular, rather xenophobic nation. There had been attempts, often successful, to subdue neighboring nations, but much of that aggressive spirit…
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MECHANICSVILLE, Va.—Marco Polo is much more better known in the west, if only for the kids’ game I had never heard of prior to a television commercial a few years…
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MECHANICSVILLE, Va.—I think it’s safe to say that Marco Polo was the most famous European explorer prior to Columbus. He has to have been, in any event, as his Travels…
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MECHANICSVILLE, Va.—Benjamin was a twelfth century Jewish scholar from the town of Tudela in Navarre, in what is now Spain. In 1165, Benjamin set off on a journey across the…
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MECHANICSVILLE, Va.—The Flat Island Book is a medieval manuscript containing a number of Icelandic tales, including the “Saga of Erik the Red” as well as the “Greenland Saga,” from which…
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MECHANICSVILLE, Va.—The Saga of Erik the Red documents the first sustained European contacts with North America from the latter part of the tenth century to the beginning of the eleventh.…
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