Storia difficile di una circumnavigazione del mondo

The fi fth centenary of the First Circumnavigation of the World makes us reconsider some features of this crucial event. The expedition was aimed to find an alternative route to the Spice Islands, controlled by the Portugueses. Despite some modern misinterpretations, there was no need to demonstrate that the Earth was round. The most important chronicle of the travel was written by Antonio Pigafetta, a man from Vicenza: his Relazione, though abridged and badly translated into French, conveyed the fi rst information about the newfound lands to the Europeans. Some of his errors survived for a long time in the Old World’s collective imagination. This is the case of the so-called Patagonian giants, who kept a firm place in the travelogues for more than two centuries, and whose existence eventually became a matter of serious dispute in the Age of the Enlightenment. Sadly, the greed for land and the merciless policy of Argentina and Chile did not spare the native Patagonian tribes, which had to face extinction at the end of the 19th century.