Prester John and Magellen

Kadizzled rarely has the patience to read an entire book, but he got involved in the history of Magellan's voyage around the globe and read about half the book yesterday.  Like today the people of Magellan's time could be sold just about any bullshit story.  How the world actually worked and was laid out, and how the world was perceived were two entirely different things. 

Until reading about Magellan Kadizzle had never heard of Prester John, but in Magellan's day people believed in Prester John much like people believe in Jesus today.  Apparently embellish lying had a way of becoming truth in the old days even as it does on some news stations today.  Marco Polo claimed to have met Prestor John.   Next is an excerpt from Wikipedia about Prester John in case you want to know more:  You can skip the details if you please and go on.

The legends of Prester John (also Presbyter Johannes) were popular in Europe from the 12th through the 17th centuries, and told of a Christian patriarch and king said to rule over a Christian nation lost amidst the Muslims and pagans in the Orient. Written accounts of this kingdom are variegated collections of medieval popular fantasy. Prester John was reportedly a descendant of one of the Three Magi, said to be a generous ruler and a virtuous man, presiding over a realm full of riches and strange creatures, in which the Patriarch of the Saint Thomas Christians resided. His kingdom contained such marvels as the Gates of Alexander and the Fountain of Youth, and even bordered the Earthly Paradise. Among his treasures was a mirror through which every province could be seen, the fabled original from which the "speculum literature" of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance was derived, in which the prince's realms were surveyed and his duties laid out.^[1]
At first, Prester John was imagined to reside in India; tales of the Nestorian Christians' evangelistic success there and of Thomas the Apostle's subcontinental travels as documented in works like the Acts of Thomas probably provided the first seeds of the legend. After the coming of the Mongols to the Western world, accounts placed the king in Central Asia, and eventually Portuguese explorers convinced themselves that they had found him in Ethiopia, which had been officially Christian since the 4th century. Prester John's kingdom was thus the object of a quest, firing the imaginations of generations of adventurers, but remaining out of reach. He was a symbol to European Christians of the Church's universality, transcending culture and geography to encompass all humanity, in a time when ethnic and inter-religious tension made such a vision seem distant.

The lesson in this whole exercise is how readily people can be mislead.  Magellan's attempt to circle the globe was made infinity more difficult because myth interfered so much with reality in his time.  The amazing thing is how little has changed today.  Progress is stifled by peoples willingness to believe nonsensical lies widely held.