Chapter 62 – Different Geography and History
With this map, I could intuitively see the world’s situation. Unfortunately, I still couldn’t understand the text, so I had to rely on my past life’s experience to determine the places. Moreover, the division of countries was vastly different from my previous life.
This was only the first page. After turning to the second page, the map suddenly changed color. Numerous large areas of uniform color were divided into countless small pieces of different colored territories.
For example, the Iberian Peninsula, which had been pure yellow just now, had now become four territories of different colors. The pale yellow one in between should be the kingdom I was in, Castile.
Although the letters were somewhat deformed and still in bold, I could still vaguely discern their pronunciation. It should indeed be Castilla, but the writing was slightly different from my previous life, likely due to the passage of time or differences in script compared to my previous life.
The other three kingdoms around it, the fuchsia one to the west was definitely Portugal, no doubt about it. I spent a while deciphering the one to the east, and it should be Aragon.
“Have you heard of Aragon? Or the Kingdom of Aragon?” I asked Jayad.
“Heard of it before. I often hear that goods are transported from the Kingdom of Aragon, but I don’t know where it is,” Jayad replied.
He had heard of the Kingdom of Aragon but didn’t know where it was? I pointed to the east of the map and said, “This is Aragon! We are here, and the west is called Portugal.”
“Parul knows so much! But I haven’t heard of Portugal. I have heard of Portuguese, though. It seems the Empress’s husband is the King from there,” Jayad exclaimed.
He pronounced a somewhat complex sound, and I confirmed that this should be the original name of Portugal, similar to the pronunciation marked on the map. Parul’s past memories also surfaced; she had heard this word before.
I was now troubled by a problem. Due to the differences in time and world, the geographical and English terms I learned in my previous life often had subtle pronunciation discrepancies, or perhaps different regions had different pronunciations, similar to dialects.
So, I could only match my past life’s knowledge with the map and slowly adapt.
Finally, there was one more area. To the south was a green land that I also didn’t recognize.
If I could read the words on it, Jayad might have heard of it. But he was completely illiterate and didn’t even know the pronunciation of the letters. I had to rely on myself to read it. Fortunately, although there were differences between the Spanish and English languages, the alphabets had many commonalities, and the pronunciations weren’t drastically different.
“Gra…nada? That should be the pronunciation. Have you heard of Granada?” I tried my best to replicate the pronunciation of the word on the map.
“Ah, yes, I’ve heard of it. The people from the Church often talk about it, saying the south is a barbaric land of heathens, inhabited by ferocious Moors. We must never go to Granada,” Jayad said.
I understood. That should be a country ruled by the crescent moon. In my previous life’s history, there was a very famous event on the Iberian Peninsula called the Reconquista, which was part of the Crusades. Simply put, it was a war where Christians expelled heathens from Iberia and drove them to Africa.
But from the current map, the Moors were still present, and the crescent moon country still existed. According to my memory, the Reconquista was completed long before the Age of Discovery. By the time the Industrial Revolution began, Castile and Aragon should have already merged to become Spain!
