![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.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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