SETI again

totally different situation.

as i understand it they were basically kicked out of the country they
called home. If i understand the situation back there, there was
little area in South American that would have been better. also, i am
under the impression that there is a practically impenetrable jungle
there that would make any attempt at colonizing extremely difficult.
north America did not have that, nor were the people doing the
expansion leaving because they got kicked out (most of the time), but
instead were looking for a place of their own that they could make
into what they wanted it to be. For the most part they were leaving
crowded cities where everything was already owned by someone else who
wanted to keep it. In a few cases (Mormons as an example) they did
leave for religions reasons, but still they went west due to the fact
that there was land aplenty for the taking. Australia was a long ways
away, and there were lots of risk with taking a ship, risk that
passengers could do nothing about. heading west in a wagon train
meant they faced dangers that they were facing already, just a good
bit more extreme.

I'm sure if they had had a chance of going to Australia, many of the
Jews would have. for them, there was little difference in going to
New Amsterdam or Australia. for the american pioneers, there was a
major difference.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Lucio de Souza Coelho"
wrote:
>
> On 7/22/06, Robert wrote:
> (...)
> > why would they want to go there when they had so much space in
> > America that had not been explored yet. so much of it to fill
up. why
> > bother going halfway around the world to something that was
reported
> > to be rather hostile, when they can simply move a hundred miles
in a
> > wagon and have open territory. its a lot easier to afford to buy
a
> > wagon (if they did not have one) and horses and things to travel
for
> > a few weeks then to buy all of that and the cost of a boat trip
that
> > will take months.
> (...)
>
> Like in many of your hypothesis, in this case you are also falling
in
> the fallacy of undue generalization, assuming that one answer will
> serve for all cases, everywhere and at all times. But in that
> particular case the historical fact is that even in partially
> colonized Americas there were plenty of cases where people would
> gladly take a ship in a trip of months instead of moving to a
hundred
> miles far from where they lived.
>
> Take for instance the Jewish community living at the city of Recife,
> in the Northeast of Brazil, in the 17th Century. They fled to
Brazil
> in the first years of our colonization (after the discovery in
1500),
> running away from the Inquisition. Brazil was far away and at least
in
> the early times the Inquisition really was not that concerned about
> which religions people followed here. Also, in the beginning of the
> 17th Century, Northeast Brazil was invaded and conquered by Dutch
> Prince John Maurice of Nassau. The Dutch were very tolerant and for
> many decades the Jews were happy under their new ruler.
>
> Unfortunately that favorable state of affairs would not last
forever.
> In 1654 the Portuguese reconquered Recife. The Portuguese law
demanded
> that all Jews should be deported back to Portugal (were conceivably
> they could be exterminated - and they even did not have gas chambers
> at the time!). However, in a rare display of tolerance, the
Portuguese
> commander Barreto de Menezes gave to the Jews the option of simply
> evacuate the city and go anywhere they wished.
>
> The vast majority of those ancient Brazilian Jews moved to the
> Caribbean, but a few families ended up farther away in... New
> Amsterdam, which lately would become New York. In fact, as bizarre
as
> this may sound, they were the first group of Jews to arrive in North
> America, and the founders of the now-huge Jew community of New York
> City, over 350 years ago. You can find a somewhat explicative text
> about that in English at
> http://www.pousadapeter.com.br/judeusindex2.htm (I would say that
the
> best texts are in Brazilian Portuguese, though).
>
> So, according to your reasoning, those Jews should just move away a
> hundred miles from Recife. Instead that option apparently did not
look
> safe at all for them, and they chose to move thousands of kilometers
> North, with ships. Some of them even moved to New Amsterdam, which
for
> them was a horrible, sterile, cold, and completely alien non-
tropical