Mark

“How could the colonists starve in the midst of plenty? One reason was that the English feared leaving Jamestown to fish, because Powhatan’s fighters were waiting outside the colony walls. A second reason was that a startlingly large proportion of the colonists were gentlemen, a status defined by not having to perform manual labor.”
― Charles C. Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

“Menaced by environmental problems, torn by struggles between the tiny coterie of wealthy Spaniards at the center and a teeming, fractious polyglot periphery, battered by a corrupt and inept civic and religious establishment, troubled by a past that it barely understood—to the contemporary eye, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Mexico City looks oddly familiar. In its dystopic way, it was an amazingly contemporary place, unlike any other then on the planet. It was the first twenty-first-century city, the first of today’s modern, globalized megalopolises.”
― Charles C. Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

“Scholars had known for more than fifteen hundred years that the world was large and round. Colón disputed both facts.”
― Charles C. Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

“It’s an old pirate tradition. Burial at C.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Galactic North