excellent article

[psocoptera]

Maybe everybody already knows all of this, but I didn't. European fishing boats visiting New England as early as 1480? Tisquantum, kidnapped across the Atlantic, talking Englishmen into a trans-Atlantic venture so that he could get home, only to discover his people wiped out by disease? That is some serious post-apocalyptic science fiction there, except for the part where it actually happened in 1619.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/squanto.html?c=y&page=1

Comments

[gannet.livejournal.com]

Yep, I knew about this, though only just barely. I knew about the fishing boats because of a book by Farley Mowat.

I knew about Tisquantum because I only just read 1491 by Charles C. Mann, which is full of stories like that and more. Fascinating stuff.

[crystalpyramid]

I only heard about it through the post-apocalyptic science fiction version (which it sounds like you've read, but if not: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/11/28/the-story-of-thanksgiving-is-a-science-fiction-story/)

[q10.livejournal.com]

i got a somewhat sanitized but correct-in-the-outlines version of the Tisquantum story in school, but the political details surrounding it and the broader history, which are fascinating, were largely glossed over.

[q10.livejournal.com]

i feel increasingly like much of history and prehistory is science fiction if you know how to read it. planetfall and first contact have happened again and again, all over the place.

[irilyth]

Mary Anne has an interest, and possibly even a body of scholarly work (I should know this but I forget everything), in SF and colonialism.

[rose_garden.livejournal.com]

Thank you for linking! I am always fascinated by first contact stories.

[jaipur.livejournal.com]

That was fascinating--thanks for linking to it!!