Re: Amerindian navigators and Eurocentrism in scholarship

[hgibbons@spamproof.stic.net (Hugh Gibbons)]

In article <199709152051371704338@gre2-169.abo.wanadoo.fr>,
Jean.Pelmont@wanadoo.fr (J.R. Pelmont) wrote:

> Inger Johansson <ingere.johansson@swipnet.se> wrote:
> 
> >........ In older times people (Vikings and other) used to take cattle
> > with them to have at least some milk. 
> > ........
> 
> Hum, quite amazing to me. Cattle would require a lot of water and fodder on
> board to produce any milk. How did they manage to do this on long trips?

Every couple days, they'd make a sortie and raid a village or two for 
more cows, so there was no need to water or feed them.

> > Itīs also possible for a shorter time to drink seawater if you use two
> >different lichens and cinders from a fire as a filter before drinking.
> >Thatīs not the major problem. The monotonous food and lack of C-vitamin
> >is a bigger one.
> 
> Do you mean theses stuffs could desalt partially sea water, acting as an ion
> exchanger ? This would require large quantities. Vitamin C is available from
> fish, plankton and algae. Anyway we may assume that people in ancient times
> were quite tough compared to us, and could survive longer in very harsh
> conditions, because they were trained so since the young age.

People can't get enough vitamin C from fish.  I doubt there's an appreciable
amount in it.  As for algae, most people don't eat it, and nobody eats
plankton.

So since they had bad nutrition from a young age, they were *less* likely
to suffer from scurvy?

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