Glenn wrote:
<< it struck me forcefully that people were
expected everywhere. Like penguins, they were another bipedal part of the
fauna. Their presence proved so universal that when found int he normal
course of discovery they merited no comment in the ship's log. If natives
were absent, the nearest representative was painted in their place.
"But why did the early European explorers show so little surprise at their
discovery of the unrecorded colonization of the globe? Their journals never
raise the presence of these natives either as an issue for speculation or
later, during the scientific voyages of men like Cook and Banks (1768-71),
as a circumstance requiring systematic investigation. >>
Is this because the surprise was over after Columbus? Since the ocean in NT
times and for some time afterward (even into the time of Columbus, I believe)
was considered too vast to be crossed, humans were not expected to exist on
remote shores---until Columbus discovered them. (It was after their discovery
that theories of pre-Adamites and of a "limited Flood" came into existence.)
Paul S.
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