Funny how a theme on the ancients great art/skill of finding new lands in the pacific turn into a discussion on who is the least evil.
Reading history I have not found one example of peaceful and 'succesful' colonialization. No doubt church dogma and western religion played a big part in how the west conquered lands and people all over the planet back then. We still carry some of the dogmas accepted and used back in the 14. century with us today, as pointed to by Warbird. Racism is still alive, and as ugly as ever. We in the western world should all be very grateful that the renaissance came to us trough some great men (men, as in both men and women), if not we would still judge each other by the bible. Not much has changed since then, but education do tend to help.

I have got to give one to the hometeam. Norse explorers relied on the sun and stars to navigate across oceans, but they also had "travel stones", probably magnets. When they came to Newfoundland they named the natives "skræling" which in modern norwegian language means a sickly and thin person.. Racism as it's best as the settlements on Newfoundland was bested by the natives and an incredibly long line of supply.
Trivia: Newfoundland translates well to "new found land" in norwegian.

If you look at wikipedias short piece on history of navigation, the western bias is clearly there (but there are some pieces on polynesian and micronesian navigation in other sections): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_navigation


Hope the racism and navigational issues are solved til the Global Challenge at Zandvoort <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />