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Alexander's successors in Kuwait
On the island of Failaka, in Kuwait, the excavatations of the ancient Hellenistic city of Icarea (built by the king's successors) have just begun.The mixture of Greek and Babylonian cultures is coming to light. One more element proving the impact of Alexander uniting the East and the West, this time in the Gulf region. In the years to come, I'm sure we'll know much more about the routes of commerce that connected Greece to India during more than three centuries before A.D.
Alexander, the Great is the man who invented Globalization. Don't forget, please.
And Portugal discovered Terra Austral
The author is an Australian scientist. His book is called:
Beyond Capricorn: How Portuguese Adventurers Secretly Discovered and Mapped Australia 250 Years Before Captain Cook.
It proves what was already suspected: that in 1522 Australia and New Zealand's coasts were cartographed by a Portuguese expedition led by Cristovão de Mendonça. In fact, the discovery of the North of Australia dated from more than a decade earlier, but this expedition occurred when they went there to really get the information they wanted.
To us, Portuguese, it's nothing new. But to others, specially the English and the Spaniards, it is. Soon they'll have to admit that the first Europeans in America (after the Vikings in the 10th century) were...Portuguese, of course. Columbus just did the same as Cook: they followed in my ancestors footsteps.
Portugal followed Alexander and went further. To be precise, we went everywhere before the other Europeans and united the world through sea-routes of commerce.That was the second globalization. Many history books need an urgent update.
For those who want to know a bit more, I suggest a lovely little book, very practical and simple, written by an English lusophile who lived in Portugal:
Martin Page, First Global Village. How Portugal Changed the World.
There you will discover that, for example, tempura was brought from Portugal to Japan and curry was brought from Brazil to India by the Portuguese. And many, many other things...
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P.S. May 2008: To whom it may concern, both books are already published in Portuguese.
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