What did Europeans think was across the Atlantic before Columbus?

>>3091860
To answer both questions

Mythical lands of faerie and immortality

>>3091860
>What did Europeans think was across the Atlantic before Columbus?

India

>Bonus points for what the Asians thought was across the pacific.

Barbarians.

>>3091883
>India
Fucking retarded meme. They thought that the INDIES were across the Pacific. Even the most bumfuck retard of the era would have known that China is farther east than India.

A straight shot to the mystical land of Cathay (China). Every European knew the Earth was round, Plato and Aristotle (the GREAT Aristotle!) said so, and as per Scholasticism, whatever Aristotle said was true. And, more importantly, every educated European at that point would know that Demosthenes proved it. It's actually pretty neat how he did it too.

What every good man in Christendom denied, however, was the notion of Antipodes. Such a belief was pagan superstition, continents on the opposite side of the Earth mirroring Africa and Asia, preposterous! Even more preposterous was the loony pagan idea that they were inhabited by cynocephali, that is, humans with dog heads.

>What did China think was to the east?
Water until you fell off the Earth. The Chinese believed the Earth was a flat square.

>>3091860
They thought the Far East was across it, ovbiously. Incorrect calculations meant they didn't think an entire continent could rest between them and east asia. Maybe some islands and shit.

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>Pomponius Mela, the first Roman geographer, asserted that the earth had two habitable zones, a North and South one, but that it would be impossible to get into contact with each other because of the unbearable heat at the equator.

>>3091900
>From the time of St Augustine, the Christian church was skeptical of the notion. Augustine asserted that "it is too absurd to say that some men might have set sail from this side and, traversing the immense expanse of ocean, have propagated there a race of human beings descended from that one first man."[6]
>Pope Zachary declared the belief "that beneath the earth there was another world and other men, another sun and moon" to be heretical.
>The antipodes being an attribute of a spherical Earth, some ancient authors used their perceived absurdity as an argument for a flat Earth.[12]
Fucking Chr*stians. Le Chr*stian Golden Age meme.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antipodes

>>3091860
One famous Chinese Emperor sent an expedition to the 'east' in order to discover a land fabled to have the secrets to immortality. One can conclude from the treasure expeditions they knew at least the lay of the land until polynesia in the 1500s, They probably just assume across the sea were more barbarians, earlier supersitions about immortality aside.

>>3091891
I don't even understand why people keep saying "India" or "Indies" when the modern term would be Asia. It's doubly weird because plenty of other Renaissance terms got lost and no one cares about them but "Columbus set sail for India/the Indies" is the one thing that endures somehow.

I think the only other historical mixup is "corn" because people insist on using that in the Roman context too.

>>3091860
They knew the Earth was round and thought that if you went West you were going to reach China (what Columbus said and died believing he has done). Columbus whole project came from the idea that Earth was smaller than it is, he believed that because of the conversion from Arab miles to Spanish mile from some book.

Like I said, everybody knew the Earth was round, but they didn't know nor had evidence of there being something between Europe and Asia. I remember reading this book of a geographer (?) saying that probably there were islands as big as Great Britain somewhere there, but the chances of reaching one, with the provisions an European ship could handle with the minimum crew requirement for the travel were pretty low, so the odds of surviving the voyage were very low.

>>3091893
Tell me how that demo man proved it

I don't know about Asia's knowledge of the New World, but the New World knew about Asia pretty early. It's somewhat inconclusive how early, but tribes in the Pacific Northwest have some folklore about people coming from the sea. Didn't think they were gods, thought they were just people from somewhere far away. Best modern guess is that they were shipwrecked Japanese fishermen.

>>3092451
It's complicated, but basically he compared shadows at different times of day at different latitudes. The shadow was longer in Greece than it was in Alexandria.

>>3091860
1. The East Indies, specifically the Spice Islands.

2. For East Asia, they knew the Polynesian peoples were inhabiting the pacific islands up to the Hawaiian islands, but beyond that they mostly left it to the Polynesians and didn't concern themselves with what was on the other side.

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>>3091900
Well, I mean, when you think about it.

>>3091900
>it would be impossible to get into contact with each other because of the unbearable heat at the equator.

neat
sounds like scifi

>>3092474
What's that little green booger on the west side just above the desert border?

>>3092512
Google earth is making it look like shallowly submerged land.

>>3092512
>>3092689
Or a fuckton of plankton.