tlb wrote:Jonathan_S"Here's what House of Steel says. No mention of South America
[quote="House of Steel wrote:The original colony expedition to Manticore departed Old Earth on October 24, 775 PD, aboard the sublight hibernation ship Jason bound for the Manticore Binary System. Manticore, which lies approximately 512 light-years from Earth, was first confirmed to have planets in 562 PD by the astronomer Sir Frederick Clarke. Its distance was such that the voyage would take 640 years (just over 384 subjective years allowing for relativistic effects), requiring that each colonist be waked from cryosleep for exercise seven times. Accordingly, the colonists were investing about four and a half years of their lives and all their money in the voyage.
Sixty percent of the colonists were Western Europeans, with most of the remainder drawn from the North American Federation, the Caribbean, and a very small minority of ethnic Ukrainians.
(Emphasis added. Also the much older 'More than Honor' had essentially the same text but HoS came up first in my search)
dscott8 wrote:One factor to consider is that this happened far in our future. The ethic mix in any given territory may have changed drastically from what it is today.
True, but the text on the lack of people from South American was to answer the original supposition about the name Manticore deriving from Brazil, where the mythical beasts were rumored to have been sighted.
Wouldn't the planets have been named by the survey team, before the colony corporation ever bought the rights to the system? All three habitable planets were named after mythical beasts.[/quote]
All of the mythical animals have a theme in common namely the lion.
Manticore Lion with bat wings.
Sphinx lion body with a human head, depending on myth also wings of a bird.
Gryphon lion body with the head and wings of an eagle or falcon.